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I have been away from the board for a few days and just now realized all this came up in the LTE (I rarely read the LTE anyway.) I was right in the thick of things and I must say it was alot of fun.

This will be a long post with alot of links and quotes so bear with me.

Thursday Night
We heard of a protest in Schenley Plaza so of course being curious college kids we decided to check it out. Me and about 5 friends walked down there and there were roughly 50 protesters but close to 500 college kids. The line of riot cops didn't do much for the first few hours but just advanced a few feet every 20 minutes or so. Finally the police declared it wasan unlawful protest and everyone had to leave. Many of the protesters did. Many of the college kids didn't. That was the main problem. Crazy stuff did'nt really start to happen until we were told to leave 4 or 5 times. This is something mt friend Ryan Ernst wrote which may not make much sense but I'll put it here anyway.

THEN SHIT GOT REAL.....
(this is from a convo i typed to my friend and didnt want to re-type it)
i dunno we were walking down forbes to meet up with gabby at the cathedral
and they tear gassed forbes and bigelow when we were right there
so we went up bigelow to 5th
and were standing there
then they set up a line and stormed the union patio and tear gassed it
so then i tried to wait by the covered area in between the union patio and quad
then i saw a guy drag a trashcan towards the police and i booked it thorugh the quad towards fifth
then all these protestors were yelling walk and had the sidewalk blocked on fifth
so i tried to backtrack through the quad towards towers
and then they tear gassed the quad and i ran into holland
and the security guards were yelling at us

Basically kids were getting pushed back into the quad which is basically a big patio between a few res halls. Which makes it easy for the cops to block off all of the entrances/exits. Tear gas and rubber bullets went flying in. I was gone by this point because I have a brain. But Ryan was running for his life and couldn't go anywhere except into Holland Hall, which is an all female res hall. Which is where everyone in the quad was running into but the security guard had to kick most of them out. Luckily someone signed Ryan in so he was able to wait out the danger inside.

My buddy Colin didn't get pushed into the quad but as he was trying to get back to our dorm they shut down Forbes Ave which you need to cross to get back. So he and a friend had to go farther and farther into South Oakland (not a nice neighborhood btw, especially at night) and wait it out down there.

While all of this is happening businesses on Forbes Ave were being destroyed. I have plenty of pictures of this on Facebook for those so inclined.

This pretty much sums up the night right here



And some links (if you only look at one watch the 1st video linked here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etv8YEqaWgA

Plenty of videos on this site http://www.indypgh.org/g20/#k-fbd79b0e2ce5faae

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXCIyIw7 ... re=related

And a ton of photos by the Pitt News. Definitely worth the look.
http://www.pittnews.com/photo

Thanks for posting, Ben, and glad you were able to stay smart, and stay safe.

Any idea of who took the photo of the police on the street w/the students up above? That's a great photo.

Glad you were safe.
Cheers,
Lavabe

Lavabe wrote:Any idea of who took the photo of the police on the street w/the students up above? That's a great photo.

Glad you were safe.
Cheers,
Lavabe

No idea. Its been popping up all over Facebook. But it is definitely my favorite pic of all of them.