Brown: G-20 police overkill

I found salvation in “The O.”

After getting the University’s emergency text message alert to stay near my residence Friday night, I naturally had to check out the action. Come on, we only have so many times to witness history, and the G-20 Summit happened to be one of those moments.

After I found a way to Forbes Avenue, weaving through buildings and police lines, I thought the night might come to a standstill. I was wrong. Behind me, a group of armored police with shields came charging down from the William Pitt Union. It felt like the running of the bulls, and I was in their way.

So I ran into “The O,” hoping I could find a place to hide. I hadn’t eaten there since freshman year, but that moment seemed like a good time to reacquaint myself with it.

Looking outside, the Pamplona in Pittsburgh suddenly became more like Tiananmen Square. I saw police throwing OC gas. I saw students being clubbed to the ground. I saw hell.

My fortress on Forbes Avenue kept me safe — and well-fed — while I looked outside at a world I didn’t think I’d ever see. The police were trying to ward off anarchists. But the anarchists weren’t there.

Instead, the only people I saw facing the wrath of the police were students. Our campus had suddenly become a battleground where there were no innocent bystanders.

The G-20 brought Pittsburgh to the forefront of places to assemble.

Compared to the 50,000 protesters who descended upon Seattle during the World Trade Organization assembly 10 years ago, this event turned out almost incident-free. County Executive Dan Onorato said the G-20 was a success on all accounts.

But after the big-name news stations left — after the celebrity politicians left, after Mayor Luke Ravenstahl had his photo op with President Obama — the police spared no mercy for those who remained in the area.

Watching YouTube clips of riots and police state events is one thing. But when you’re there to witness them firsthand, your heart pounds in your chest and your breathing becomes more difficult with each inhalation of OC gas.

It’s a surreal high of fright and exhilaration at the same time.

I love the United States and its principles. On the first night of protest in Schenley Plaza, I proudly wore my “John McCain for President” T-shirt in quiet dissidence. I can do that because the United States is a free country.

But the second night of Oakland protests was nothing more than an eradication of all life.

As it all happened, I asked myself, “Where did my college go? Where is my Oakland?” I didn’t recognize this place. This wasn’t my home. The principles of the United States had been lost in the wake of martial law.

I couldn’t walk to my South Oakland apartment because the police would have arrested me or worse. Even if I could, for the first time in my life, I was scared of my own government. During the protests, a cold terror in the back of my mind told me to flee to the nearest shelter I could find.

When I called them, both the city and Pitt police told me I just had to wait it out, and if I had a problem, I could file a grievance. If the anarchists had a message to spread, it wasn’t through throwing rocks at officers. It was in the subtle fact that with their stutter steps, they provoked chaos in Oakland. They turned our own police authorities into authoritarians.

The anarchists won.

As I sat down in “The O” with my fries and a cold beer, helplessly watching the outside world, I realized that even with low numbers, the anarchists proved their point.

Authorities forgot about the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights while they prepared for war on the streets. The anarchists embraced those documents as a symbol of where America had gone wrong — and they used them against the supposedly educated masses.

During the first night of protests, when an anarchist read the First Amendment from his pocket-sized Constitution, a student wearing a Pitt basketball shirt asked me what kind of garbage was spewing from the guy’s mouth.

The Pitt student seemed oblivious to our country’s most basic set of laws. He exemplified the ignorance that allows extremist groups to flourish.

On Friday night as the police disbursed, students returned to Forbes Avenue. It was like any other blissful weekend night in Oakland. It was as if the riot police, the SWAT teams and the armored vehicles had never been there.

As I left my shelter of french fries to go home for the night, I felt relieved that the G-20 circus and all of its sideshows were on the way out of town and that Pittsburgh’s civility was on its way back. Finally.

E-mail Jacob at jebrown13@yahoo.com.