protest in nyc

I was in NYC the other day at Union Square park where, according to the New York Times the police had "a near-zero tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect of disorder". No need to worry about that musty old constitution or anything. Luckily they didnt hear my four-year-old son who sat on my shoulders chanting "Bush Must Be Defeated" -- his favorite new song from Dan Bern who performed a week or so ago down at South Street Seaport (and whose new book was helpfully edited by my brilliant wife).

Mostly I saw cops scooting around on their cool new scooters, trying to practice their flying wedges and single-wing offence, while bicyclists plotted ways to get arrested and dozens of media vampires scouted for the best angle on the much-hoped-for confrontation.

Another take on the goings-on in NYC comes from the also brilliant Michelle Chen -- read her now so you can say you read her when. Enjoy this prose as you squirm with anguish:

The synergy between the mediated image as an activist tool and the depths of war as the media’s most tragic subject was embodied in one of the night’s speakers, Wafaa Bilal, a delicately handsome, soft-spoken visual artist who came to America fourteen years ago as a refugee of the first US invasion of Iraq. The desperation of his homeland followed him to American soil and inspired his bleak art installations, which depict children’s graves, charred bodies and other gruesome symbols of the destruction wrought by US forces. For him, there is no divide between the most recent Iraq war and the 1991 war; the past decade and a half, for Bilal and for those who were unable to flee, have been a continuum of suffering. “Never was there optimism,” he reflected. “From the beginning, you’ve got to consider that Saddam came to power because of the United States.” Senseless death continues to plague his family: his brother in Najaf was killed in the crossfire between US forces and the Iraqi resistance, and his father, who was hospitalized with kidney failure upon learning of his son’s death, died during a power shortage. As the screen above him streamed a nightmarish sequence of pictures of starving children, he urged the audience to recognize that the American government not only “has no intention [of turning] Iraq over to the people of Iraq,” but has in fact “systematically destroyed democracy” by razing indigenous political institutions and movements in order to more firmly establish its own influence in the country.

More from Michelle as I wade my way through the scads of links she sent me.