Pictures Of Mass Arrest At Fulton And Franklin

An antiwar march with over 2000 people started at Powell and Market at 5 and moved up the sidewalk to Civic Center (obeying all cross walk lights as there were hundreds of police acting aggressive in the street) As the crowd moved into Civic Center, people marched in the street around the Auditorium to prevent a disruption of the event and the police quickly moved in breaking the protest in half. The front half of the march was then boxed in near Fulton and Franklin by several hundred riot police. No order to disperse was given and about 50% of the crowd was on the sidewalk but just about everyone was not allowed to leave (including a journalists from a mainstream publication). The rest of the march then moved back to market as the police tried to drive away anyone watching. One or two people tried hiding into trees to prevent arrest, so the police brought in fire trucks to fish them out. But, with such a large group boxed in the protesters in the trees were able to climb back down into the crowd. The use of large fire engines to arrest political dissenters struck hollow the KRON propaganda that emergency vehicles were unable to do work due to protests (emergency vehicles have in fact been in use for days to arrest opponents of Bush and could have easily been used to do their real jobs). After about an hour, a MUNI came in and started to take people away. Even after several trips to jail with full buses, the size of the crowd was still large. In all several hundred people were arrested.

As of 8AM Saturday morning many protesters who were arrested twice are still in jail and will be held until Monday. The police have blocked of the jail windows to muffle sound but prisoners say they would love groups to come by to show support but it will require being very load for them to hear. We must show support for our political prisoners since soon we may all be locked up for our opposition to the Bush dictatorship.