March 22, 2003:

We knew it had gone bad when they separated us from the cameras.

Police in riot gear, like medieval knights, armored head to foot. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, it's impossible to tell. Ten cops for every demonstrator: we're that outnumbered.

They form a baton-wielding wedge, elbow to elbow, stabbing forward with their sticks as if they were spears. The camera crews retreat, bullied backward, looking behind themselves, worried that if they trip they'll be trampled. In the distance there are students with picket signs, retreating, holding their faces, routed by tear gas. Then the cameras are gone, hidden from us by the shops on Telegraph Avenue. Now it's going to be our turn.

We're cordoned in the far corner of People's Park. Before us are an army of blue uniforms, soldiers in a street battle we didn't want and hadn't prepared for. We're students, professors, parents, community members, many dressed for the warm weather, shorts or skirts, t-shirts. We're so unprepared that many are wearing their contact lenses: very bad when the gas arrives. We'd come to demonstrate peacefully, picketing the closure of the Park to the homeless people who lived there. The police attack came without warning, pushing us with sticks, choking, eyes burned by tear gas, into a compact group of about fifty wedged against chainlink fences at one corner of the block. With the blue mass behind us there's no escape.

There's a quick discussion. Those of us who are capable of climbing the fence choose not to. There are children and frail-looking old people in this group, and the cops intend no mercy. Those of us with heavier clothes try to shield the others. The officers are getting their riot-control guns ready.

With a bang and a crackling sound, scores of tough wooden pellets slam into us with enough force to break an elbow or a wrist if you're unlucky enough. There are gasps of surprise from those who've never experienced this pain. We try to link arms, our backs to the blue army. Bang! The pellets slam us again and again, while we choke and cry from tear gas and pain. There are children shivering in fear, old people cursing in anger. With no cameras there to stop them they fire again and again, maliciously, until we're bloody and torn and exhausted.

You no longer remember how it ended. If you ever knew. In time you're sitting in the Berkeley BART station, arms around your trembling Korean girlfriend, thin and frail, whose glasses are broken, whose hair is bloody, and whose naked legs, exposed beneath summer shorts, are a mass of blue and black welts that will still be visible weeks later.

Our tax dollars at work.