G20, day 1

At the moment I am drinking coffee and writing from the safety of a Squirrel Hill Coffee shop. It ha been pretty busy this morning, since reports from all over town are that no one is working. Campus is dead "like a Sunday morning," and this is my favorite of all- from WPXI "Police communications center says city is so quiet the mid-morning media briefing is canceled." Buses still seem to be running fine, but most protests aren't scheduled until later this afternoon.

Delegates have arrived without much going on. There has been some sense from the ACLU that the city has over reacted, and squashed peaceful protests. My sense from Squirrel Hill is that in general people are more scared then interesting in 'joining the dialogue.' A few minutes ago, the Coalition of Anarchists launched a march to 'disrupt the summit.' Sigh. They are lead by a banner that says No Boarders, No Banks. There are TONS of cops around, so I wonder how far they'll make it.

3:30- The illegal protest has reached a stand off at Penn and 32nd. Police are threatening to escalate, in an effort to disperse. Live feed suggests there are equal numbers of spectators and protestors, and not as many of them as there are police.

As the day wraps up, the work leaders are in Phipps Conservatory, and most of the protesters are off the streets. Reporters think maybe 6,000 people were here protesting, hardly what we might have expected based on London or Seattle. They've also only arrested 15 people. When 50,000 people marched in Seattle, they arrested 6,000 people. Matt and I went out to eat, and saw people from other marchs (Free Tibet, Anti-Ethiopia, Oxfam) taking in the city. The smaller demonstrations were mostly squashed out of the news by the big, vague protest. It wasn't very violent- but they kept interviewing college kids who would say "it's our right to demonstrate- why are they doing this?" which was sort of expasperating. If these kids were really anti-big business, then they shouldn't be disrupting traffic in front of all these small businesses. Sigh. Could have been worse. The big (stupid, lame and disruptive) stuff is planned for tomorrow- we'll see how that goes. All is well here- let's just hope the world leaders are having a productive evening.