Things get nasty in NYC

After three days of relative calm and cooperation on the streets, things have started to get pretty nasty today. First I was cut off in a crosswalk by a guy who insisted he had the right-of-way because he had the green light. He seemed to be ignorant of the legal concept of pedestrian right-of-way. His true colors shone through when he yelled "Kerry's a pussy!" (I should start I guess by saying I go nowhere this week without my protest sign.)

Then I was walking east across 25th street from the labor union rally, which was large and rowdy, but pretty well organized. This guy slammed into me, I guess to make some brute point. 'Course, I didn't let him by with that and asked him if he had trouble seeing me with my huge sign. His response was to push me, grab my sign and then throw a lit cigarette at me. That was pretty bad except that I was kind of jonesing for a cigarette and the one he threw at me he had barely started to smoke. So I grabbed it and kept up with him demanding to know why he thought he had the right to assault me when all I was doing was walking down the street carrying a sign. He asked where I was from. I told him I lived in Brooklyn and had been living in New York for 20 years. Well, then, of course I wasn't born here, so apparently that means I have no right to be on the streets with a sign. By this time we were back on the avenue where the cops were all guarding the Garden. But they wouldn't lay a hand on the guy because they "hadn't seen him" attack me. It was all right, though, because I could tell the guy's asshole was tightening up at the thought of having to pay a price for his actions.

At Herald Square Matt, Hamilton and I were interviewed by a guy from Voice of America. The cops made us move. It seemed they were getting very antsy about anything happening around the Garden. I found out about an hour later from niece Jessica that some protestors had gotten into the Garden. That would explain why the cops back on 7th Ave had checked the cardboard tubes holding our signs.

At the NE corner of Macy's some guy challenged me to support something and not just be hateful and against something. I told him that I was supporting Kerry and the Democrats but at the moment my concern was protesting George Bush. He told me that he's my president and I should respect him. So naturally I went off on him about why should I respect a man who's lied for the last four years and run his administration in unprecedented secrecy, to which he responded "Oh go ahead! We'll get bombed again”. So I said, well as long as you mention being bombed Bush led us into a wrong war against the wrong enemy, at which point a cop came up and pulled me away because "One-on-one isn't protest, it's harassment." 'Course it doesn't matter that the other guy started it, or that the cops wouldn't do anything when I was physically attacked.

When we got back around to 8th Ave and nearer the Garden, some other protest folks were walking up the avenue and saying to proceed with caution because the cops were being pretty rough on demonstrators up a block ahead. Well, we're not interested in being arrested so we continued across 35th St to walk down 9th Ave. At this point Jessica called to say that what she was seeing on TV was concerning her and she thought it would be better if we took the evening off.

As it happens, our main plan for the evening was to drive around the Pants on Fire mobile (pantsonfire.com). But this morning the mobile was impounded by the NYPD with a host of tickets about wrong lighting, hidden back windows, a lot of trumped up stuff.

So we're back at Matt's catching up on the Newshour and basically licking our wounds. It's gotten nasty on the streets. We're going to save our energy for the protest at the Garden tomorrow night during Bush's acceptance speech.

That's the report for now.