What happened in New York.

• Author: Starhawk
• Position: Politics and War - Peace march permit denial, February 15-16, 2003

The weekend of February 15-16, 2003 marks an historic, global uprising for peace. The number of marches is uncounted: the number of marchers estimated in the range of 10 million. There were marches and vigils and protests in national capitals and small towns, in the heartlands of Middle America and in small Pacific islands, in the freezing cold of Alberta and in the heat of an Australian summer. Palestinians and Israelis marched together in Tel Aviv.

In the US, everyone from Republicans to socialists to anarcho-punks shared the streets. And most of these hundreds of events apparently took place with fairly minimal governmental repression.

New York was an exception.

New York, the largest city in the country that presumably shines as a beacon of global democracy, refused to grant the organizers of the protest a permit for a march. Only a stationary rally was allowed.

The denial of the march was only one feature in a campaign of harassment that included the circulation of a rumor on the day before the rally that the event had been canceled, a Code Orange terrorist alert that stationed military guards in the subways armed with automatic rifles, the denial of permission to rent portable toilets for the masses expected at the rally, the mysterious rerouting of subways and buses on the morning of the rally, the cut-off of the phones in the United for Peace and Justice office during the rally, and a repressive, heavy-handed and sometimes brutal police presence that penned the official rally behind barricades and prevented thousands from even getting there.

New York has the largest police force in the world: 40,000 strong.

When they decide to control public space, they have enormous resources with which to do so, and generally succeed.

But not Saturday, February 15, 2003. On Saturday something like 60 different feeder marches started from various points in the city to march to the rally. Many of them intended to stay within the law by marching on the sidewalk--an activity that does not require a permit.

Some took the streets.

Taking the streets was, technically, an act of civil disobedience, a conscious breaking of a law that is unjust or unfairly applied. In this case, many of us felt that the law preventing us from marching as a unified whole was violating our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

And that if we did not defend our public and political space at this crucial moment, that space would rapidly be taken away.

The Performing Arts March and the Labor March...