New York Times: Headline News (1)

My father had been walking back to the hotel from the library when he saw the cops trotting in formation. They were trotting up the middle of the Avenue, heading North, towards some kind of crowd that was on the Avenue. Why were all these people out in the middle of the road? The cops appeared to get some kind of signal; the spun around and trotted back to the South. The crowd of people was walking off the Avenue, following the rest of the crowd onto 43rd Street.

The crowd was a protest march, protesting the murder of Matt Shepard, a gentleman who had made the mistake of being homosexual in Wyoming. This struck my father as the sort of situation which indeed warranted protesting, so he joined in. But he didn't get to join in for long. 43rd Street was a trap. Cops moved in to block the march at the end of the block. The whole march was bottled into one long block. People could walk through buildings or back up to get out--but doing so in an organized matter, keeping the march going, this would not be so easy. So the march became a standing protest. My father stuck around for a while, then walked through a building, onto another sidestreet. Then he looped around to see the front of the blocked march from the police point of view.

A line of cops watched the protesters. Protesters yelled. They held up video cameras, perhaps to discourage police brutality. The police called out, encouraging the protestors to disperse--the police would not try to arrest people walking away. But the protesters wanted to maintain co-ordination, and did not disperse. After a while, the mounted police moved in.

Their horses reared up, perhaps in fear, perhaps because their riders hoped to instill fear. The horses walked into the crowd. Because the crowd was deep, my father couldn't confirm that people were being stepped on--but at the same time, he couldn't see how the horses could possibly move through the crowd without stepping on people. Then the horses stopped. An uneasy detente held.

And it was still holding when my father figured to hell with it and walked the rest of the way back to the hotel.

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