November 11, 2002
I write this memoir on a date which has long been considered important as the anniversary of the end of World War I, but which perhaps now has greater significance as the two month anniversary of the one year anniversary of September 11, 2002 (Yes, I stole this joke from 
the Onion). I have chosen this solemn occasion to relate my experiences visiting New York City around September 11, 2002. This account is not very current, but I hope it will be of some interest.
I live in the Washington, DC area. It is a little-known historical fact that this area, like New York City, was subject to a terrorist attack via jumbo jet on September 11, 2001. Nonetheless, September 11, 2002 found me, like other DC area residents such as George W. Bush and the members of the US Congress, up in New York City. My reason for going there was somewhat different than theirs, though. I was required to be in the city for a court hearing on September 12th.
Back in February I was wrongly arrested while attending a protest in Central Park. As a result, I have had to return to the city over and over again in order to deal with the bogus charges I'm still facing nearly a year later. For background, see http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=17858&group=webcast, http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=19218&group=webcast, http://www.earthtimes.org/feb/davos2002policefeb6_02.htm, http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=1768, http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=1768, http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18432&group=webcast, and http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/28/nyregion/28DEMO.html.
Anyhow, since I was required to be in Manhattan on September 12th, I decided to head up early in order to observe the anniversary. I had arranged with a friend for a place to stay in the city, and I arrived by bus on the evening of September 10th. When I called my friend's apartment, nobody answered, so I wandered around the city and I happened to see posters advertising an all-night Peace Vigil occurring in Washington Square Park that evening, so I headed over there.
I arrived at the park to find a large number of people there, many watching a stage where Amy Goodman served as MC for a variety of speakers and performers. Among them were the Reverend Billy, a woman who had served as a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge, and Father Daniel Berrigan.
Curious to see what else was happening that night I wandered a few blocks away, to Union Square, where another sort of memorial was occurring. Here, several free-standing wooden walls had been temporarily erected. Dubbed "Town Hall Walls", they were covered with sheets of paper filled out by area school children expressing their feelings about the anniversary. Some expressed the desire for peace, others, the opposite desire, like the one which read "Kick Their Ass and Take Their Gas. God Bless America. Bombs Away! --Matt M." Less clever, but perhaps more earnest, was the message "I'm sorry the twin towers fell. --Miles, Age 8". One message listed the URL http://www.rawa.org and read "Stop listening to the government. Start listening to your heart. --Marina". The next day I was told that originally the walls had borne posters submitted by the general public, most opposing war, but that these were taken down and replaced with the works of private school students. When I attended private school, I once got my mouth washed out with soap for cursing. Matt M. should count himself lucky that he lives in Manhattan and not Round Rock, Texas.
Other messages were chalked on the sidewalk. Many, a bit cryptic, appeared to come from a Zen and perhaps anarchist perspective, like "What we call love is using other for self-gratification," "Will denies freedom", "Practice dulls the mind," and "End of control is order."
A crowd stood in the park, gathered around a megaphone, which people took turns using. This was a speakout, evidently, as people simply expressed whatever they felt like saying. Most of the speakers turned out to be anti-war and critical of US foreign policy in general. Some supported war, and heated debate ensued at times, but the crowd generally remained civil. A Nuyorican guy did a bit of freestyle rapping that I enjoyed.
After repeatedly failing to contact my host, I returned to Washington Square. The vigil continued until late in the evening. I watched people making music together and dancing, holding candles, distributing flyers and literature and so forth. Weary from walking, I sat down on the sidewalk to just listen to speakers. After a minute or two, though, I noticed that cameras kept going off right next to me. I looked and discovered that a few people were photographing a young woman, maybe in her teens, who lay on the ground near me, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and holding a lit candle upright atop her bare navel. Some people photographed her repeatedly, from different angles. More and more photographers kept showing up and snapping her picture, and I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable sitting there, so I got up and left. The girl didn't seem to mind, or even notice much, though.
The square was abuzz with activity when, at midnight, police began telling everybody to leave the park. New York City parks have been closed by cops at midnight since the Giuliani administration (maybe before), and the organizers, who advertised the event as an all-night vigil, had gotten no exception for that night. Instead, they had a permit for Washington Place, a side street adjacent to the park. However, this had not been made clear enough.
An act of spontaneous civil disobedience began then, as the park's occupants simply ignored the cops' orders to leave. That seemed safe enough for the time being, so I stayed and observed. Chants started, such as "Whose park? Our park!", which later became, "Whose park? Our park! Don't leave!" The crowd also chanted "Leave the park open, close the INS!" If this had been Washington, DC, local activists would have chanted "close the IMF!"
Some of the vigil's organizers argued that everyone should move to the permitted area nearby. Some folks spoke about how the park had been open all night until a few years ago, and argued for people to stay and fight for public space. It was in this park, incidentally, that the NYPD instated a policy of systematically arresting black guys with dreadlocks for weed possession and charging them with intent to sell. The square lies in the middle of NYU's campus, and is frequented by numerous NYU students, who, if not black and dreadlocked, did not receive comparable treatment, though presumably Manhattan college students are about as likely to possess weed as dreadlocked black guys.
While the unmoving crowd shouted, argued, made speeches or chanted, I spotted an acquaintance of mine and talked to him. After I described my inability to contact my host, he suggested that his roommate would house me if he could contact her. As he scanned the crowd for her and tried to reach her via cell-phone, the remaining crowd formed a circle in order to have an open discussion about staying or going.
Lanterns and candles had been assembled in a shrine of sorts near one edge of the park and were being transferred to the permitted area. At 1 AM, after cops had threatened to arrest those who remained in the park, and reinforcements in riot gear began assembling, my acquaintance, his girlfriend and I helped carry lanterns over to Washington Place.
There a big group from China performed music, dance and martial arts in the street. Closer to the park, banners lay spread on the asphalt. They were addressed "To the people of Iraq," "To the people of the Philippines", and to the peoples of several other sites of the War on Terrorism. Markers were provided so that folks could sign the banners with messages of peace and friendship.
My acquaintance had had no luck contacting his roommate and I began to resign myself to spending the night on the street in Washington Place. The weather was warm enough and the organizers had assured the crowd that the permit allowed us to stay here all night. Very shortly after my arrival, however, once the Chinese people's performance ended, cops began walking through the street telling everybody to move to the sidewalks and to take the banners. Foreseeing that the cops might decide to clear the sidewalks too before long, by acquaintance and his girlfriend offered to let me stay the night at her place in Rockaway.
Once the street was mostly clear, cops began letting traffic onto it. A graying hippie woman, upset by this, briefly waked out in front of an on-coming car in a single-handed effort to block traffic. This being Manhattan, the driver may not have noticed any difference between this act of protest and ordinary pedestrian traffic.
By 1:30 a small group of vigillers remained in the park while a huge squad of riot cops had amassed nearby. My companions and I had left Washington Place and stood on the sidewalk outside the park watching. A cop in ordinary uniform, no riot gear, walked by us and confided, chuckling, "Patti Smith just walked by. I'm so embarassed to be here in uniform when Patti Smith walked by." I guess some days it doesn't pay to be a cop. After he walked away, a nearby man asked, "Who's Patti Smith?" Ah, these kids today. . . . I was a little let down not to have spotted her myself. I'm not really a fan, and I might not have recognized her anyway. Still, all the times I've been to New York I have yet to randomly run across a celebrity (not counting lefty-celebs like the aforementioned vigil speakers). I did see a guy in the vigil earlier who looked sort of like Busta Rhymes talking to an MTV News camera.
Moments later, the cops marched in a line and forced the remaining people out of the park to Washington Place. We decided to walk back and observe. A shouting match ensued among those just driven from the park and some of those already standing on the sidewalk outside.
Presumably in order to avoid escalation, the cops in riot gear stepped back from the frontlines. Under Giuliani they probably would have entered the park swinging and arrested everyone staying there, but instead they had spared themselves the stigma of mass arresting people at a peace vigil.
We began to leave the area in earnest, then, discussing the weird personalities of some members of the crowd, like a woman who habitually shows up to activist events wearing a papier mache egg mask with glasses and a smily face. On our way out we passed groups of visibly bored cops. One shifted his cap to the side of his head. I always thought that looked goofy when people did it with baseball caps in the late '80s, but on a uniformed policeman it was far more ridiculous. Another cop just flicked his flashlight on and off, while a third practiced fancy baton twirls.
We arrived at Rockaway via a 2-hour subway ride. I was a bit disappointed that our destination was just plain Rockaway rather than Far Rockaway (which would have taken the same length of time). I'm told that Far Rockaway is about the same: quiet middle class suburbs with houses and lawns. Far Rockaway, however, was the home of Richard Feynman, so I have just the slightest curiousity about it.
Thankful to have a roof over my head, I lay down to sleep in the tiny hours of the morning.