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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT
At 2:30 the next afternoon, Black Tuesday, downtown Philadelphia was preparing to become a war zone. The streets were much quieter than usual. Choppers whirred overhead. On one corner, a dozen mounted police were putting tear-gas shields over their horses' eyes. Clumps of black-clad kids were everywhere, sitting on park benches, splashing in fountains, walking this direction and that, appearing and disappearing like left-wing wind sprites. I walked from 16th Street to Eakin's Oval, at 23rd and the Franklin Parkway, where I was supposed to meet an "activist liaison" who was going to take me and other reporters to various fields of engagement. When I arrived, I found a protest organizer complaining that the cops had raided a warehouse in West Philly, and were engaged in unwarranted acts of puppet confiscation. There were, he said, dioramas depicting police brutality and starving children. These were being held hostage, and the police were threatening to destroy a paper-mache slave ship. A gang of kids dressed as clowns rode by on their bicycles and honked their horns. The organizer continued to complain, and he spelled his name for about 20 different people. I didn't know where I wanted to be, but it wasn't there. Within minutes, I was in a car being driven by Stephanie, a photographer for the Chicago Tribune, along with Flynn McRoberts, a Tribune reporter who I knew from home, and who, coincidentally, was arrested two weeks later by Los Angeles police as he covered a Critical Mass bike rally during the Democratic National Convention. We arrived at 41st and Haverford, a West Philly street corner where a showdown was ongoing. The police had cordoned off 41st Street for a block, and had established an unsmiling blue wall of silence that no one dared penetrate. The warehouse was behind them. From a window, someone had thrown out what must have been the most hastily constructed banner in the history of banner construction. It read, "Puppeteering Ain't A Crime. Free the Haverford 70." Thank goodness Julie Barton was on the scene. Apparently, she told me, at 10 minutes to 2 PM, the police had arrived on a tip that puppet makers had weapons in the house, which they were planning to use for mass destruction of public property. Whoever was in the warehouse was trapped, and if they emerged, they would be arrested. The police had brought along a couple of buses for that purpose. They had no search warrant, but were trying to get one. Outside the barricade, the local television crews had set up, along with a number of protesters who had escaped the blockade for one reason or another. The ACLU was there, and was outraged. The residents of the neighborhood had naturally come out to see the fuss, and had a variety of reactions. "The last time somebody got shot around here, how many cops did you see?" asked one woman. Another said, "We're in a black neighborhood. All we know is that if there had been black people in there, they would have burned that damn building down. They're negotiating with them, but who'd be talking to us?" Still another had this to say: "This is like Waco! Why they be raiding a building if there aren't any hostages. What the hell are they doing?" That was a good question. Nobody was entirely sure, and we all settled in to see how things would play. Some of the hippies were eating a cucumber salad, which was blue. The police didn't flinch. We learned that Captain William Fisher, the commanding officer of the department's civil-affairs unit, had been asking people if there were any vehicles inside the warehouse leaking gas. Then he intimated that there might be "tire-puncturing tools" inside. Plastic pipe and chicken wire were also deemed dangerous. Suddenly, police, protesters, and various neighborhood types ran screaming down Haverford. I followed. Apparently, a "domestic violence dispute" was in full bloom, and the cops were carting away some sorry fellow who had the bad timing to get in a fight with his woman as 100 police officers and an equal number of television cameras were on his front stoop. I returned to the main action, where I encountered Kenneth Young, an excitable attorney for Oakhart Flooring Corporation, the unfortunate company that owned the warehouse in question. The owners of the building, which, Young added, was a union shop, were renting to the puppeteers for the week, and there had been no problems. "There are no bombs in that building," Young said, reassuringly. The metal gate to the warehouse rolled up to reveal dozens of protesters wearing clown noses and paper hats designed to look like prison bars. They were chanting "The People United, Will Never Be Defeated," and waving their fists in defiance. It was like watching the curtain rise on the opening scene of La Traviata. One at a time, the kids began to emerge from the warehouse; the cops cuffed them and put them on the bus. Their remaining number continued to chant. Some extremely annoying freak, who actually should have gone to jail, stood in front of the cops, banged a drum, and yelled in their faces. "You wanna see some news?" said an especially lippy neighborhood guy. "Go next door and see the cocaine and crack dealers. Shut some of them people down." A middle-aged woman grabbed my arm. "What's going on in there?" she said, worriedly. "I'm not quite sure," I said. "My son is in there! He's the office manager! He was trapped. He called me and said, 'mom, I'm in a hostage situation. Make sure that the police know that there are other people in there!" Kenneth Young, the attorney, assured her that her son would be saved from the mob. The chanting, defiant protesters were gradually removed from the warehouse onto the buses. I saw a cop force a girl to remove her party hat and clown nose before he slapped on the cuffs. This little battle had ended, and the cops had won. It was time to go downtown. NEXT INSTALLMENT
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