Two months of goodwill between police and antiwar protesters dissolved quickly yesterday when a march through Downtown and the South Side during rush hour ended with 122 arrests, including several for inciting a riot.
Antiwar activists the world over had been planning protests for the day after the war with Iraq started, and the leaders in Pittsburgh, as in other cities and countries, had expected the intensity to increase.
It did. There were protests in 500 American cities, reports of 100,000 marching in Athens, Greece, and 5,000 in London, where the demonstrators shut down streets leading to the houses of Parliament. Demonstrations, too, took place in Muslim countries such as Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Turkey.
The first part of the two-hour march, which started after a 5 p.m. rally outside the William S. Moorhead Federal Building, looked much like recent ones. About 500 people participated. [I imagine the organizers were more than a little disappointed in the meager turnout!] Children walked next to their mothers. College students held multicolored "no-war" balloons. Some motorists responded to the chants and posters by high-fiving marchers and flashing the peace sign.
But as darkness fell and the protesters marched outside the Golden Triangle, the mood changed. When the march went to the South Side, police forced it to turn back, and around 7 p.m. everyone went back across the Smithfield Street Bridge and into Downtown. Up to then, police had tolerated occasional taunts, profanity and middle fingers flashed at them from the rowdier marchers. But then, as the marchers continued to disrupt traffic, they finally ran out of patience.
By the time the march reached William Penn Place, near Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street, the crowd had shrunk to less than half its original size. But the police presence swelled, and their patience with demonstrators ended at 7:20 p.m. Police in riot gear and others on horses appeared. Various officers told demonstrators to keep moving down a sidewalk. Other police shouted at the marchers to leave Downtown. Many began crossing the street, inflaming officers who had ordered them to move along the walk.
Then the arrests began. Police flung some of the louder protesters to the ground, riling the crowd. Other marchers were pinned against a building on William Penn Place and informed that they were under arrest.
full story, Post Gazette.