And I thought Wednesday was crazy...
I went back to Olympia last night, and stayed up all night at the port. nothing particularly exciting happened, other than me meeting lots of people and getting only half an hour of sleep. it was raining, windy, and really cold, so it wasn't the best night of my life, but it was worth it nonetheless.
two entrances to the port had been barricaded by protesters earlier in the day, and we knew that once the morning rolled around the cops would probably try to get through so that the port could reopen. the barricade that i wasn't at was the first targeted; about 30 riot cops showed up, and while i don't know exactly what happened i know that a lot of people were pepper sprayed and the barricade was bulldozed. our barricade was next. we had simply redirected a chain link fence so that it closed off the street and then secured it with zip ties and bike locks. there were 2 layers, and the cops cleared the inner layer easily. however, we had a human barricade sitting in front of the outer layer, and for some reason this meant the cops couldn't clear it. (i'm not quite sure why, since they were on the opposite side of the fence, but oh well.)
many of the cops from the other barricade came over to ours on the street, which is when the abuse of civil rights began. their goal was to clear the road, but they did this by clearing across from one sidewalk to the other. they pushed everyone off the sidewalk and into the street, and then stood there menacingly for a while.
i'll finish this later, since i need sleep and typing is making my arm hurt from a cop-induced injury that you'll hear about later.