Friday, March 5, 2010

Thoughts on the NYC march to Defend Public Education

by Jody Ballew

On March 4th, 2010, students and workers in NYC gathered to march in protest of coming MTA layoffs, CUNY budget cuts, public school closings, and a larger working class crisis after a year of record profits and bailouts for Wall Street.  Below is my reflection on the march in Manhattan written immediately after I got home.  Of course, I could add my own endless analysis and complication of my own thoughts, but somehow the version below expressed my raw mood well.  


experienced crowd control first hand tonight. it is sickening and analyzable against crowd movements and the anger and agitation that accumulates (somewhat by design) as a march progresses.  we were penned into enclosed areas multiple times: the cops actually ordered people to "get in the pen".  the cops taunted us.  one cop in a suit commented to my face, "this shit is annoying me, i might have to smack somebody soon."  we marched from patterson's office all the way to the Fashion Institute where the MTA hearings are being held again tonight.  These MTA hearings are a joke to absorb the anger from the lay off of 1100 employees.  the lay offs are coming.  the guy who spoke at the end of the march on behalf of the angry transit workers was a cop.  a cop as liaison between workers and bosses.  this was an angry protest. cuny students, jobless grad students, angry kids from high schools that are slated to be closed, laid off teachers and professors, transit workers facing unemployment, and a ton of communists and socialists who were surely agitating the crowd big time.  i saw a guy who was literally wrestling with a cop at one point and the crowd surged towards him and started screaming at this line of cops.  strangely when he got pulled back by the crowd the cops let him go.  this guy was furious and very huge.  if people hadn't pulled him back, he would have been creamed.   this was a very angry protest.  it was horrifying the way the cops controlled our movements.  there were 2 moments when i thought some guys would try to overturn the metal barricades.  when i left, some of the protesters were getting ready to go into the mta hearings.  the crowd control is complete, but the cops are not fearless.  i don't know about the rest of the country, but there are a lot of very angry people in this town.  


people are rip roaring mad.  is there a way to process all these actions, energy, and anger into real political change?