A "Oakland Unites for First Amendment Rights" rally has been scheduled tomorrow on the corner of Forbes and Bigelow. This is the approximate location of where the Battle of Oakland began on Friday night. You can see the flyer for yourself here, but it's scheduled to kick off at 5:30 p.m., and activities will include petition signing, reconciling, and peacefully dispersing. How sad that the college kids are the ones acting like the grown-ups. 

The rally is being hosted by Pitt's ACLU, the Black Action Society, the Merton Center, the anti-violence group One HOOD, and some others as well. 

"We need to know who gave unconstitutional orders to the police and why," Pitt ACLU President Genevieve Redd said in an accompanying statement. 

Students have also launced a Web site, www.WhatHappenedAtPitt.com, for people to discuss and post information on the G-20 and post-G20 incidents. It's worth a look.

As a side note, I'd just point out that -- what with the profusion of Youtube videos and all -- this may really be the first crowd-sourced media event in city history. We've had bloggers for awhile now, of course, and on a couple occasions they've broken stories. But those were individuals, working in relative isolation. What's happening here seems like a more open-source phenomenon ... perhaps the first grassroots citizen-journalism model we've seen in town. Unless someone can think of another? 

Last night, the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh -- the union for newsroom employees at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- sent out a statement saying it was "deeply disturbed" by police actions in Oakland last Friday night. It calls for a "full independent investigation" into the night's events, and asks for charges to be dropped against those who were caught up in the police dragnet.

Among those arrested was a Guild member, P-G reporter Sadie Gurman (though the statement doesn't mention her by name).

The statement is printed below.

The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents reporters, photographers, copy editors and artists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is deeply disturbed by the indiscriminate and inappropriate arrests of more than 100 protesters, bystanders and journalists on the night of Friday, Sept. 25 in Oakland.

Most disturbing is that many of those arrested were attempting to lawfully exercise their First Amendment rights of peaceful assembly and of press freedom, rights that are essential to the survival of democracy. Others were bystanders who found themselves caught between lines of police ordering them to disperse and then blocking their dispersal until they were arrested.

We recognize that the police, especially in situations such as this, have an extremely difficult job. But that fact does not give anyone the right to disregard the First Amendment.

The Newspaper Guild calls on the City of Pittsburgh to drop all charges against those who were lawfully exercising their rights as citizens and journalists, and those who were nonviolently attempting to comply with police orders but were taken to jail anyway.

Further, we call on the city to launch a full and independent investigation into the events that led to these arrests to ensure that such a debacle does not happen again in the name of law enforcement.

Lots of arts events were derailed by last week's G-20 summit. Among the smaller-scale independent productions that by necessity went head-to-head with road closures, protests and general discombobulation, one that deserves a broader audience is this original new opera by Frank Ferraro and Steve Pellegrino.

Not that this evocation of a man's experiences with early-onset Parkinson's disease was attended all that badly, even all the way out in Fox Chapel, on the Shadyside Academy campus. In fact, the Saturday-night show I saw, the third of three scheduled, drew a couple hundred folks.

But Ferraro, Pellegrino and their cast and crew are talented pros who earned applause for a sophisticated exploration of what's too often movie-of-the-week territory.

Writer and artist Ferraro and composer and performer Pellegrino collaborated on the book and music for the show, based on Ferraro's experiences and the stories of others. It's mostly a series of musical vignettes, with live music and dance.

It's not even really all that "small": True to their claims to opera, the show boasts a 14-piece orchestra and members of the Renaissance City Choir, plus actors Brian Czarniecki and Adrienne Wehr and dancers Jamie Erin Murphy and Renee Smith. Pellegrino's score is artful and lyrical, the songs (with words by Ferraro) covering a range of styles from cabaret to rhythm and blues.

But a real sense of Ferraro's witty, idiosyncratic approach can come only from seeing the show in person. The production boasted what might be music-theater's only cowboy song sung by a lead performer (Czarniecki) with his butt to the audience and his head deep inside a washing machine. (A video camera within beams his harshly lit mug to the crowd on a screen above.) The show is often humorous, frequently surprising, and moving and hopeful but never maudlin.

While the offbeat style won't surprise anyone who knows experimental-theater veteran Pellegrino's work, it can be a weakness as well as a strength. One scene, built around the song "Godspeed, The World is a Monkey," finds singer Pellegrino repeatedly leaving and returning to the stage, while dancers dance, singers sing and Czarniecki pops up with what look like traffic cones on his hands. (There's a story behind the number – it has to do with Ferraro offending a TV news reporter with a comment about a lab-animal research subject – but even though I knew the story I still couldn't make heads or tails of scene or song.)

Nonetheless, I'd call (gravity + grace) accessible. Ferraro wisely anchors the show with three straightforward monologues delivered by Wehr in the voices of caregivers, not to mention Czarniecki's empathetic Everyman turn. And the the singers, under the direction of Andres Cladera, are integrated seamlessly to provide some beyond-beautiful musical moments.

Ferrarro and Pellegrino hope to take their show on the road. But we should hope they stage it in Pittsburgh again.

Some visiting activists who kept a low profile during the G-20 will have their say publicly after all.

The Permaculture Demonstration Bus is a Montana-based outfit whose Skills for the New Millenium Tour (www.permibus.org) has been circling the nation since February 2008. Organizers Delyla Wilson and Stan Wilson demonstrate sustainable-living skills, including on-board gardening and composting. There's also a photo display about large-scale sustainable farming practices.

The bus hit town last Tuesday, but the Wilsons say they were subject to police surveillance that began minutes after the converted school bus pulled into its local host's North Point Breeze driveway. Last year, before the Republican National Convention, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, they say, police impounded the bus for several days but never gave a good reason or charged them with a crime.

In Pittsburgh, neighbors told them a helicopter hovered over the Point Breeze property for more than an hour the night the bus arrived. (They were not staying on the bus at the time.) And that night and the two nights following, police cars sat within sight of the bus on the street for long periods.

Wanting to avoid another impoundment, the Wilsons kept the bus parked for the whole G-20, though they did participate in some protest marches. (Delyla Wilson is a street medic for activists.)

But the Wilsons say you can tour the bus this Wed., Sept. 30. It will be parked on the main green of the Carnegie Mellon campus from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tours are free.

I note that in an earlier blog post here, someone posted a link to this Youtube video last night. It's a 30-second spot -- with fairly polished production values -- that accuses mayoral candidate Dok Harris of spending the G-20 at a high-end spa in Bedford. It ends with a faux campaign logo that reads "Dok W. Bush for Bedford ... Go to the Spa!"

The same Youtube account -- "Dok W. Bush" -- has a couple video segments that mock some of Harris' campaign appearances. And then a 10-second spot that cryptically asks "Who is Alejandro Sparras? And what does he have to do with Dok Harris? Find out soon."

Sounds ominous, but a few seconds of googling suggests that "Alejandro Sparras" is Harris' role-playing persona. You may recall that Harris' fondess for role-playing games earned him the attention of blogger Matt Hogue a few months ago, and in fact while the video was posted on Youtube just seven hours ago as I write this (a bit before 7 a.m.), Hogue's blog already has the Bedford video on his site. Hogue, of course, supports Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, and his blog was also the first stop for videos attacking rival Patrick Dowd in the spring primary this year.

I'll get the Harris camp's response to the Bedford allegation as soon as I can. (They appear to be aware of the attacks: "Dok W. Harris" complains of efforts by the Harris camp to take down other videos, and the same commenter who posted on this blog yesterday originally linked to a video that has been taken down "due to a copyright claim by Harris for Pittsburgh.")

In the meantime, I fully admit this is speculation, but this just feels like an attack by Team Ravenstahl. The maximal snarkiness ... the high-end production ... the early appearance on Hogue's site ... it all fits.

UPDATE: Spoke with Harris this morning about the video. He acknowledges that, yes, he was at the Bedford spa during the G-20. Like a lot of Pittsburghers, he says, he realized that G-20 Pittsburgh was not going to be a place where he could get much done ... so he scheduled a break for himself months ago. 

" I live on Fifth Avenue, not far from our offices [in Oakland]. I was right in the epicenter of where things were going down. While being trapped in my apartment is a good idea, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to interface with anyone [druing the summit]." Harris has raised questions about Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's willingness to host the summit: "We have thousands of police defending a ghost town, and a child on the North Side is killed on his couch." But once the summit came to town, "What am I going to do? Throw a rock?"

So Harris says he used some membership-reward points on his credit card and went to the spa. The plan was to "do some research and debate prep, and relax before October wacky season starts and I'm getting only a couple hours of sleep a night.

"I did not, however, get a massage," Harris adds, "and I'm sorry I didn't." 

And who might have authored the video? "I don't know, but Karl Rove is unemployed right now," Harris says. "I'm waiting to see the next one: 'Dok Harris is fat. He's no good at sports. He was involved in theater.' I think you're going to hear a lot about what a nerd I am. And I am an enormous nerd." The "Alejandro Sparras" character, he says, dates back to the late 1990s.

"On a certain level, I'm kind of flattered to be the number-one threat in this campaign," Harris adds. "And 'Dok W. Bush' is pretty funny."

Let's see if I can post this before Bram does. It's a statement from mayoral candidate Kevin Acklin about how the city handled security during the G-20 summit ... and after. Among other things it reflects, I think, the politically dicey nature of this stuff. Those in the blogosphere who are predicting this will be a political disaster for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, in fact, ought to keep a couple points in mind. 

Even if the police DID overreact to security threats, even if they DID go overboard in their handling of protesters and students ... there are plenty of constituencies in town where that wouldn't exactly hurt the mayor. One of the areas where Acklin is running hardest, actulaly, is in the city's South Hills ... which more than a few cops call home. 

Besides, Luke Ravenstahl just held a press conference today defending the city's performance -- even boasting that the city had "sent a message" to out-of-town anarchists. In attendance, and showing support for the mayor, were luminaries like the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the Allegheny Conference, and US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan. More on this later.

UPDATE: The campaign of Dok Harris has also issued a statement prior to a press conference later in the week. Building off an earlier campaign gambit -- in which Harris launched a Web site for people to grouse about the dislocations caused by the G-20 -- the release argues that "Pittsburgh spent $18 million last week to protedt a ghost town, and then forgot about our neighborhoods. We spent $18 million to keep foreign dignitaris safe on our streets, but in a North Side neighborhood near where I grew up, a 5-year-old boy was murdered, sleeping in his own home ... We have to wonder what our leader's priorities are when this continues." 

Anyway, with that, Acklin's statement:

I would first like to thank all of the uniformed men and women who came to Pittsburgh last week to help keep us safe during the G-20 conference. I come from a family of public safety workers, and my brother, who is a state trooper, was among the thousands of police officers who came to Pittsburgh to provide security last week. I would also like to thank President Obama for showcasing our city. The positive attention that was brought to our city is an asset for us all, and I am hopeful that we can convert that attention into good-paying jobs for our workers.

In two areas, however, I have concerns about decisions that will have a lasting impact on our city's affairs. First, the decision to shut down the downtown business district was incredibly short-sighted. I spoke against this plan last week when it was first announced, and after speaking with Pittsburgh business leaders last week, over the weekend, and again today, I am convinced that the economic damage done to our local business community was both unfair and unnecessary. The G20 could have been an incredible opportunity for local small businesses and employees who are struggling in this economy, but effectively shuttering downtown only made matters worse for all of them. Those two (or three) days of lost income could, and should, have been avoided.

There have also been some questions raised about deployment, especially in Oakland, of the police force last week. I want to say unequivocally that our uniformed men and women performed admirably last week, and they have my full support. However, there is a growing concern in our community that leadership on Grant Street made some tactical decisions that were not conducive to protecting the public's safety.

If I were Mayor, I would launch a blue ribbon commission to audit all aspects of the city's performance during the G20, so that we may learn from this experience, and to make sure we are ready the next time Pittsburgh has a chance to step up on the world stage.

An apology for last week; the G-20 ate our homework here in the CP music department and we did not provide you with an MP3 Monday. We're back on track now, though, and what better way to start the week than with a song called "Animals" by a band called Drugdealer, from an EP called TITS, eh?

Frequent CP contributor Manny Theiner gave the loud, fast, mathcore-ish band his attention last spring when the EP was released. Now give a listen: download "Animals" here.

Cheers!

Going into the G-20, there was a lot of concern that anarchists might ruin a once-in-a-lifetime photo op. The "Black Bloc," civic leaders feared, might  give the city a black eye while global leaders looked on.

It didn't turn out that way. But it's still possible the POLICE might smudge the city's G-20 halo ... largely as a result of confrontations with students in Oakland on Friday night. Just as the city has sent a message to global leaders during the G20, it's also sent a message to lefty groups and people all over the world. THAT message has been bouncing around via e-mail and social media, and it is much less upbeat.

For example, a group opposed to police suveillance tactics directed me to this site, with more Oakland footage. Another lefty group, World Can't Wait, has posted its own critiques, and is circulating a petition that demands, among other things, a "thorough investigation of methods employed by law enforcement, and directed by Homeland Security and Chief of Police, including the crowd control methods and mass arrests."

Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan is making her own appeal. And Alternet, a story-sharing site dedicated to left-of-center views, has a brief blog post of its own with video. 

ADDED: Oh, and I almost forgot this dispatch, from Democracy Now. 

And this is just a smattering of the stuff bouncing around outside town. It doesn't count the numerous e-mails coming in from locals and parents of college students ("I was afraid that my son, a student at Carnegie Mellon University, would be at risk of trauma due to the violence surrounding the G20 ... I listened and watched in horror as University of Pittsburgh studented describ[ed] and recorded the horrible behavior of the police officers.")

Not that I expect our business leaders to take the champagne off the ice or anything. Hell, if you're a business leader looking for a place to locate a new factory, you might LIKE the idea that Pittsburgh is a city willing to push around college kids and demonstrators when they get uppity. 

Then again, think of the bad press! Even The New York Times -- who previously had been content to tell us how great, like, Brillobox is -- has noted the events. And I get the feeling local media is going to view the next Bureau of Police press release with a bit more caution, given that Post-Gazette reporter Sadie Gurman was among those taken into custody by police. 

So with any luck, we'll soon be seeing the tourism office and the Allegheny Conference out in the streets opposing the tactics -- and demanding liberty, justice, and better PR for all. 

Despite dire warnings and hype from the hysterical mainstream media, tonight's "Go Pitt! Fuck the Police" rally proceeded with little incident.

More than 75 students showed up at Schenley Plaza, site of a confrontation with police in which more than 100 were arrested last night. Tonight, however, the students played with a hackeysack and talked easily. A score of police were scattered around the plaza -- with a fire department pumper truck parked nearby, and another a couple blocks away, near Soldiers and Sailors. But the officers kept their distance, and none of the high-tech hardware used on previous nights was visible.

Eventually, the students began marching up Forbes to the chant "No justice/no peace/Fuck the police." (There were a series of other chants as well, none of which were particularly respectful of the police bureau.) By the time they reached Pitt's Law Department, about two blocks away, they were joined by at least a half-dozen undercover police. The cops' presence was detected almost instantaneously. They were built like police, for one thing. One was wearing leather gloves, and could be seen fingering a gas canister. And one of them was wearing a Penn State hat. That's not even trying, fellas.

Perhaps the high point of the whole march, in fact, came when the demonstrators circled back around 5th Avenue, standing near Soldiers and Sailors. They began chanting "hey hey, ho ho, undercovers in the back have got to go," jeering at two of the most obvious officers, as if in a primitive shaming ritual. 

The only moment of tension came when the protesters returned to the law building, where a tiny police substation is tucked away beneath a staircase. As the protesters chanted, police in riot gear emerged from Pitt Police vans and looked menacing. But the protesters soon departed and returned to Schenley Plaza, where the evening resumed the somewhat festive air it had before the march. The police eventually left, and a handful of protesters pledged to march to Allegheny County Jail, where some students from the previous day's events are still being held

Not surprisingly, several demonstrators had been involved in the previous days' altercations with police. They had several theories about what took place, but my wife just yelled at me for typing so late at night. So for now, I'll just say this: One problem is that the G-20 security strategy -- police showing up in overwhelming numbers, with lots of scary equipment -- may have backfired here. Instead of intimidating people into going home, it drew out the curious ... who ended up being caught in the ensuing chaos. 

Earlier today, I posted the demonstrators' account of last night's altercation with police in Oakland. What follows is the Bureau of Police account, released a short time ago. But before I paste it , I'll just draw your attention to the release's assertion that university police sent out a warning message "informing [students] of a pending G20 planned disturbance tonight; to be careful and exercise good judgment." As I noted in an update to my previous post, the same warning has gone out this afternoon. 

Oakland (Schenley Plaza) Disturbance

On Friday, September 25th, 2009 at approximately 8:45PM, Mobile Field Force Units were notified that a large crowd was beginning to converge on the Schenley Plaza in Oakland.

Through Intelligence it was learned that an un-sanctioned and un-permitted assembly was being planned in the Schenley Plaza area of Oakland. Notification of this un-sanctioned and un-permitted assembly was being distributed and monitored via Twitter and other social networking sites and a flyer was posted and distributed in various areas that indicated the actual meeting point to be Schenley Plaza at 10:00PM.

Further information was received throughout the day that individuals were purchasing numerous BIC lighters and asking if lighter fluid could be purchased. There is nothing to link the purchase of lighters to any activity, however the concerns of the PBP was heightened by the request for lighter fluid.

Because of the prior night's activity in Oakland, Mobile Field Force (MFF) presence was assembled at the ready to act swiftly and effectively to remove any violators conducting themselves in an unlawful manner. It was reported by the MFF stationed in Schenley Plaza that the crowd was becoming defiant and throwing things at the officers. Additional Mobile Field Forces were summoned.

At 7:20PM, Chief Delaney of the University of Pittsburgh Police sent two Emergency Notification System alerts (ENS) reaching out to the 51,000 Pitt students informing them of a pending G20 planned disturbance tonight; to be careful and exercise good judgment.

The second notification was sent at 10:04PM advising students that conditions of the activity may be deteriorating and students are advised to remain in residence.

The MFF Commander gave the Order to Disperse at 10:42PM. Orders for dispersal were given numerous times. The sound emitted from the LRAD (Long Range Accoustical Device) along with smoke was deployed in efforts to disperse the disorderly crowd, estimated at 1000. All who did not comply with the lawful order to disperse were taken into custody and arrested. A total of 110 individuals were transported to the SCI (State Correctional Institution) for processing.

There were no reported injuries to demonstrators and no property damage was reported during this incident.

Two police officers were treated by EMS for minor injury: one for a dislocated shoulder and one for heat exhaustion.

Information of those arrested is not available at this time.