Post-G20 Wrapup

I guess if Luke Ravenstahl can wait until the next official work week to talk about G20, then I can wait until the end of my G20 vacation from Cashiering to give up my feelings about a city's self-defense against unwanted visitors.

I'd like to compare our response to the G20 in Pittsburgh to Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, but I'm not really interested in such pop-adventure metaphors. Thursday's illegal meeting and march was akin to a Parade for Pedophiles, except if we had been pedophiles on parade, the media would have at least let the scared folks inside their homes know about our politics.

After I stayed up all night into Thursday morning, I was ready to crash by the end of the unpermitted march. So I had some more coffee and went back to Oakland, where I had the misfortune of running out of real energy before everyone decided to smash the state after 10:00.
My tattoo artist friend went to jail. She was doubled over coughing on CNN, running up Liberty Avenue with tear gas in her eyes. I later found out another friend and neighbor was arrested, but for not much more than failing to pay attention with riot cops a few feet away.

But now Pittsburgh's seekers of social justice (and property damage) have to apologize to the world for not putting on a big enough anti-capitalist/globalization/free-trade display to burn down our own town. I'm not certain that comparing Pittsburgh to other globalization-focus party host cities that have larger populations is fair. Pittsburgh, as far as I can tell, is fairly local in its allegiance. PrestoGeorge in the Strip took place of Starbucks, which was around for a minute but was deemed inappropriate in such an intimate, familiar setting. Pittsburgh has its chains, and I don't know what percentage of businesses in an average city of over 500k is local or independent, but it could be that we value the local and appreciated it before it became a bumper sticker.


This is where the assumptions jump out: While Pittsburgh is a good home for anarchists because of its cheap living and sometimes empty neighborhoods, greenscape and rich history in class struggle, it doesn't really breed anarchists like the hipper locales across the nation. I've never been anywhere else for an extended period of time, but we're small, we're aging/old, and we have a very large transient student population. We've started to attract new anarchists, but only because anarchists here are starting to advertise Pittsburgh for what it is: Cheaper than where you are now and not what it was 25 years ago.

Maybe other cities with higher cost of living and less winter allow for anarchists to do more romantic training exercises, like, oh, running successful bookstores that compete with real businesses. Or maybe they're forced into being more successful within a slightly more predatory market than the less ambitious, less pricey rustbelt in which we reside, work, and fuck shit up.

But since G20 was announced in May and every anarchist across the country with access to national news had time to save up or request paid time off or hop a train and hitchhike to visit our town and wade in the riot cop moat protecting this summit, I shouldn't even have to come up with excuses as to why Pittsburgh didn't destroy more buildings, businesses and cops.

We didn't have an Alexandros Grigoropoulos to spark stronger resistance and endless riots. I'm happy no one in Pittsburgh had to die to release our hatred for the state.
We aren't appealing to anarchists because we don't really have the best climate; I'm not sure if that's all we don't have going for us, but it has to be a step down from Oregon.
And as much as I can tell, most of our anarchists are pretty busy with other things, even if our infoshop can't legally call itself an infoshop because it would prevent us from donating to prisons.
So while the G20 inconvenienced us without allowing us to inconvenience it too much in return, we really just wanted to act like it wasn't here, even though the itchy pitching shoulder in all of us was covered in poison ivy this entire week.

I will apologize for Pittsburgh's inability to end capitalism before Halloween 2009, but only because I half-promised it to a fellow cashier at work. But I will not apologize for our efforts.
Where were you when cops were running my city? I thought this was about mutual aid?

Oh, you were on the internet talking shit and reading the news. (Which is exactly where I would have been if I didn't live here, minus the shit talking part--I can't make focused, logical points.)