Stephanie Adair, John Clendaniel, and Jonah McAllister-Erickson

On Saturday, August 20th the Pittsburgh Organizing Group (POG) called for a counter-recruitment demonstration with the goal of shutting down the army's recruitment offices. At 10:30am over 100 people gathered in a grassy area in front of the Carnegie Museum, about five blocks from the recruitment center. One of the event organizers made an announcement through a bullhorn that, the recruiters had closed down the station in anticipation of the planned demonstration. As the crowd's cheers died down, he called out again, stating his desire to go down and see for himself if this was true, which was met by louder cries of agreement.

POG lead the demonstration, carrying their "SHUT DOWN RECRUITMENT" banner onto the street against opposing traffic. The march took up the two left lanes of the street and cars merged into the right lanes to let the demonstration through. A couple of blocks down a public transit bus, heading up the furthest left-hand lane to make its stops, came to a halt when it encountered the march. The POG activists at the front moved the procession into the middle two lanes and gestured to the driver for him to proceed. Unsure at first, he drove ahead and tooted his horn in thanks. Passing under a pedestrian bridge, a tour of about twenty new Pitt students and their parents could be seen stopped on the bridge and pressed up against the windows, watching the demonstration march on.

As the demonstration approached the recruitment center, activists from POG spoke into a bullhorn, calling for everyone to go back onto the sidewalk. Once everyone had reached the sidewalk in front of their destination, people from POG began to make short speeches. The speeches coming to a close, a demonstrator taped a sign on the door of the recruitment center, which read "No Lies Told Today, Recruitment Center Has Been Shut Down". A freelance reporter working for FOX News pushed his was through the crowd and was aggressively filming the demonstration, attempting to unmask and film the face of one of the demonstrators. The masked demonstrator then allegedly pushed the camera away. At this point, the reporter for the Tribune Review started yelling for the police, who swept into the demonstration swinging retractable batons and randomly pepper-spraying protestors and bystanders alike.

Among those pepper-sprayed were seven-year-old Caitlin Eirene who was sitting on the shoulders of her father, Vincent. With no one standing between Vincent and the officer who fired the pepper spray from about ten feet away, he was hit directly in his chest, the liquid pooling on the ground. His daughter, who was undoubtedly visible to the police, was severely affected by the pepper spray. At the POG press conference held at the Thomas Merton Center on August 22nd she was still very traumatized by the events and unable to watch the videos shown when the lights were turned out. Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy defended the police action in a telephone discussion with one Banshee contributor, saying that Caitlin's father "should pick his friends more carefully."

A couple of storefronts down the street, Rebecca Reid and her 3-year-old daughter Chenoa Eirene on her back were affected by police pepper spray as well. The other demonstrators around them did their best to protect them from being hurt in the chaos and eventually helped usher them out of the crowd and into safety.

Meanwhile, the police had singled out 3 demonstrators and dragged them out into the middle of the street. The masked demonstrator who had taped up the sign was pepper-sprayed in his eyes by police, and threatened with a taser, held inches from his face.

A 23 year old woman, De'Anna Caligiuri was a victim of some of the most the most brutal police repression. An officer lifted her glasses and pepper-sprayed her directly in her eyes, pushing her onto the ground. Three large male police officers held her to the ground, jumping off when Officer Samuel Muoio tasered her, shooting two barbed metal darts into her thigh which then conducted 50,000 volts of electricity throughout her entire body. (Video footage of this as well as other incidents can be viewed online at www.pittsburgh.indymedia.org) Afterwards, the police handcuffed and arrested Ms. Caligiuri, shutting her up in the back of an unventilated van for forty-five minutes. Two days later, at the press conference she described the tasering which "seemed to last an eternity" as the most painful thing that she has ever experienced. While inside the van, she said that with her hands cuffed behind her, she was unable to wipe mucus, sweat or tears from her face, and felt as if she were suffocating. She was hospitalized while under arrest and has now recovered.

After this group of arrests, Ed Bortz, a leading Green Party activist, and Edith Wilson of Conscience-a Pittsburgh-area group for conscientious objectors and supporters-formed a silent vigil in solidarity with the arrestees. Several other demonstrators joined them lining up along the edge of the sidewalk in front of the military recruitment center.

A short-time later, the organizers from POG called for demonstrators to march down the sidewalk back to the museum where they had originally met and disperse from there. The majority of the people from POG had started to leave, crossing South Bouquet St. and continuing past the Pitt Law School. Those involved in the silent solidarity vigil continued to stand on the edge of the sidewalk. With the majority of the demonstrators several blocks away, the police brought in a canine unit and began threatening people with the police dog. POG members began yelling for a "meet-up" and many who had moved away rushed back to the recruitment center. The police had also brought in an empty public transit bus, possibly planning to do a mass arrest, but did not do so, perhaps because the crowd was too large when protestors returned.

At one point, the police dog began lunging at a man who was sitting peacefully on the sidewalk. A 68-year-old woman, Carol Wiedmann, in the crowd began arguing with the police, asking them to prevent the dog from biting him. Instead, they picked him up, handcuffed him, and ordered Ms. Wiedmann to leave. As she turned to do so, the dog lunged and bit her in the back of her upper thigh (this was also captured by Indymedia on video). Twenty minutes later Ms. Wiedmann was taken off "to make a complaint" and the police arrested her. She was put into the back of another unventilated police van in the 92º weather for forty-five minutes before being taken to the hospital in handcuffs for treatment. The police would not allow other demonstrators to collect her information in order to alert her family to the situation. The police dog also snapped at another demonstrator who was covering the event with a video camera, missing his leg and tearing his shorts.

Throughout the entire ordeal, the police never made a general announcement declaring the gathering illegal or calling for the crowd to disperse. The same officer who had tasered Ms. Caligiuri proceeded to taser another demonstrator. Cameramen covering the event from the NBC and ABC affiliates expressed sympathy toward the demonstrators and were scheduling follow-up interviews with individuals from POG. However, following the event the media quickly grew more hostile, and the cameramen and reporters who had covered the demonstration were not the ones sent by their news agencies to cover the press conference. As of this writing, all four people who were arrested have been released on bail. Two people who were taken to jail were released without charges being filed. POG is urging everyone who was present at the demonstration to file complaints with the Citizen Police Review Board in order to get a public hearing.

Green Party candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh Titus North, attended the press conference in solidarity with anti-war protestors subjected to pepper-spray, tasers and police dogs. Afterwards he commented, "To put it in perspective, star athletes like [Texas Rangers'] pitcher Kenny Rogers routinely knock cameras out of the hands of reporters. Would that justify the police dispersing his teammates, pepper-spraying their daughters, attacking their mothers with dogs, and tasering their girlfriends? Of course not. Why then should we condone just such an over-reaction by police when a demonstrator does the same thing?"

The following Saturday POG held another highly successful protest in front of the recruitment center with 115 people counted in attendance. This time there were ACLU legal observers across the street. There was no violence and the mood of the demonstration was lightened when one protester was seen walking the sidewalk dressed as a baker with "Pastries for Peaceful Police".

John Clendaniel, 22 years old, University of Pittsburgh, member of Solidarity and involved in Pitt Against War.

Jonah McAllister-Erickson, 26 years old, University of Pittsburgh, member of Solidarity, involved in Pitt Against War and the IWW.