At one point the whole group was staging in the middle of K St. (without a permit), so the cops came to move everyone to the sidewalk (see photos below). The cops, I must say, were very professional and businesslike, not taking the bait to kick the living shit out of the idiots in the front of the group trying their best to provoke them. Instead, the officers simply formed a line, and with a higher ranking officer in back of them shouting instructions to the crowd, gently pushed back the throngs. Nobody got hurt, the crowd moved back, and the protest continued.
During the crowd control maneuver, some Internet reporter wannabe runs up with her HD cameraman, yelling at him to "get them pushing the protesters!" I turned to her and told her my thoughts on her kind of biased "journalism": basically, her kind of b.s. reporting is what gives the protesters (and the protest) a bad name with the rank-and-file Americans out there and provides fodder for the right to use against the anti-war movement. It's one thing to report on police brutality, which, as we know, happens all too often in the U.S.A., but she was attempting to spin the D.C. cops as brutalizing the protesters, which was not true at all. I think my photos of the incident prove that:
Here's the crowd in the middle of K St.:
The cops ask people to move back to the sidewalk:
The police form a line and start gently shoving the protesters back:
All the while, a lame-ass Rage Against the Machine cover band drones on (I kid you not: the singer had dreads and everything, it was comical):
I really wish the anti-war movement could rid itself of the freaks and provocateurs so that it would have a chance of attracting normal Americans who are sick to death of the war but don't want to be associated with the idiot fringe. It's one of the big reasons the right could care less about the movement: nobody takes these people seriously.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...business as usual.
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