If you are a Pittsburgh resident you knew that the G20 summit was here last week. If you are not a Pittsburgh resident the G20 summit was a meeting between a group of finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 economies. So basically we had 20 world leaders including President Obama in Pittsburgh for a few days. Downtown Pittsburgh was basically shut down because the Summit was being held at the Convention Center. This was not really a big deal to me since I work from home and really do not have to drive through the city to get groceries or anything like that.
With any major summit like this there is going to be protestors and people who are against the government. Pittsburgh was ready for it bringing in police from many different states to help out and keep Pittsburgh safe. Also with the president in town the Secret Service, National Guard and Coast Guard was here.
Since Pittsburgh has never hosted an event like this I really did not know what to expect, some said there would be 25,000 protestors coming in etc. Well the day before the world leaders started showing up Greenpeace did one of the most creative and peaceful demonstrations that I’ve seen. They repelled down from the West End Bridge and hung a huge banner that said, “Danger Climate Destruction Ahead Reduce CO2 Emissions Now”. The 4 people hung from the bridge for 2-3 hours to get their point across. No one was injured during this demonstration.
Over the next few days I followed the G20 events on Twitter and the local news and it seemed that there were some anarchist groups in Pittsburgh demonstrating. Down in Lawrenceville they protested and were confronted by police, they then decided to wheel a dumpster into police! Things just went downhill from there.
Friday night there was a demonstration down in Oakland and many people were caught in it as the University of Pittsburgh is right there. Many students went outside to see what was going on and were tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets by police. I’m sure police could tell the difference between students and protestors, I know that I could! Also Friday night many places in Oakland got their windows broken including Pamela’s which is a local family owned restaurant.
Saturday rolled around and I decided I wanted to check out the action myself. So during the day I went down to Oakland and checked things out. I was first surprised by all of the police in full riot gear on every corner of Oakland. We stayed in Oakland throughout the night and there was a small demonstration going on at Schenley Plaza. After just 15 minutes there had to be at least 300 police in full riot gear surrounding the Plaza.
Not wanting to get tear gassed we moved from the Plaza across the street by the Schenley Memorial Fountain. All together there were 5 of us, me, my 2 friends, and 2 reporters with official press credentials obviously visible. We were allowed to stand over there for about 15 minutes until around 100 police officers turned and started marching our way. Obviously when we saw this we started moving away, but couldn’t they just simply ask us to move? I mean there were only 5 of us, all not protestors and 2 official press.
From there we were told to go across the street and upon going across the street we were told to go back the other way. It seemed like they didn’t even know where to tell us to go. Like I said we were just obvious bystanders. One officer even pointed his shotgun at us and cocked it saying, “You better get out of here”. So we decided to get out of there, we walked across the bridge and cut through CMU to get back on Forbes. We were lucky to get out because everyone who was on Forbes from Schenley Plaza down was surrounded, tear gassed and even shot with rubber bullets. This includes Pitt students, people who were simply observing what was going on, and qualified press. The police even stormed the Pitt dorms and campus arresting anyone that was outside.
If I was a Pitt student I would be quite upset that the Police were able to just come onto my campus and go into residence halls without probable cause. Also the fact that they were injuring and tear gassing many students. And arresting anyone that was outside regardless of what they were doing.
I never thought I would see something like this in Pittsburgh, but it was quite crazy. I really did not feel safe with Police who had nothing better to do than beat up students and shoot rubber bullets at them. Some police officers even had the nerve to take photos with captured students. Overall I think the Pittsburgh Police did a horrible job in Oakland and as a resident of Pittsburgh I am quite upset at what went on. You can view my entire G20 FlickR set here, feel free to use any of the pictures.