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In 1970, I was 20 years old. From my cozy efficiency apartment in Shadyside, I sat as a spectator, watching but not personally affected by all the turmoil over the Vietnam War.
In my kitchen was the anti-war poster, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." My younger brother had been drafted into the Army but went to Germany. Boys from my rural high school had been cannon fodder and some were killed, but none I knew personally. I had bell-bottomed pants, even jeans I had hand-embroidered with peace symbols and butterflies. But that was about it.
Pittsburgh then had a public safety director, James Slusser, who, like many others in his position at the time, was terrified of how young people were behaving. Look at Chicago in 1968. Kent State in 1970. Four dead in O-hi-o.
At the Civic Arena here in Pittsburgh, riot police in blue helmets ringed the stage at a Janis Joplin concert, at one point cutting off the electricity, apparently frightened by the intensity of the music and the crowd. Janis came out, tiny and in black lace tights, and told us all to be cool and show them we could have a good time. The media had announced that if she cursed, as she had in another town, the show would be shut down and she would be arrested.
Walnut Street then was in its heyday -- funky little shops, cool bars like the Casbah where Joni Mitchell had performed, the Gazebo deli, the Shadyside Theater, the Raspberry Rhinoceros, our own liquor store and post office, the Loaves and Fishes coffee house supported by the esteemed Calvary Episcopal Church. Second-floor apartments above the shops were crammed with young people, throwing open their windows, music blasting. A strange sweet smell was in the air. Traffic would slow to a crawl, especially on weekends, with people from the suburbs trolling to get a look at some hippies. It was a "happening scene."
Riot police and snarling police dogs routinely patrolled Walnut Street. "Walk and talk" they would order, poking kids with billy clubs. "Walk and talk." A crusading district attorney raided the Shadyside Theater during a showing of "Fritz the Cat," an X-rated animated movie.
There were anti-war marches. It was rumored that the University of Pittsburgh installed its first mainframe computer way out in Harmarville to keep it safe from rioting students, even though there were never disturbances here as there were at Columbia and Berkeley.
I pretty much sailed by, as I had done when faced with strife most of my life. I also needed to protect myself as I was recovering from a lengthy near-fatal illness.
One sunny Saturday morning, I headed to the Shadyside Giant Eagle. It was located on South Highland Avenue where a chi chi furniture store is now. It was well-known that Saturday morning was a great time to cruise there (then an innocent term) to meet high-quality potential dates. In fact, I met the most wonderful man of my life there when he noted in line that we both had serving-for-one portions.
This particular morning I walked over with my French string shopping bag wearing my Papagallo shoes and a Lady Bug shirtwaist dress. My waist-length blond hair was tidily tied back with matching ribbons.
A larger-than-usual crowd was on the sidewalk in front of the store. They appeared to have signs; I was not wearing my glasses, of course. A woman I barely knew from my building grabbed my arm and said, "Sister (I am not making this up), join the fight!" A bag of Pillsbury flour was thrust into my arms.
Pillsbury? What had Pillsbury done? I knew about grapes and lettuce and Dupont chemicals, but Pillsbury?
I was caught in the middle of a mob shoving from all sides. One of my Papagallo shoes fell off. A sack of flour went flying over my head, smashing against the store wall, and then another. I was covered with the stuff. Then I heard sirens and screeching tires. Help had arrived ... I would be rescued.
Squinting, I saw blue helmets. Bullhorns blared. I was moved by the momentum of the group and somehow ended up in the back of a Pittsburgh police paddy wagon. My first thought: "My mother will kill me." My parents had told us all from a very early age not to call them if we ever got arrested.
The paddy wagon careened down Fifth Avenue, bumping over the then-cobblestoned streets. There must have been 20 sweating, flour-covered, yelling people stuffed into the van with me. I could not breathe. We were herded into the empty Civic Arena and I was handcuffed. Not the strips of plastic used now but metal ones.
Shoved into a sitting position on the ground we were told to not move, to keep our heads down and not talk. The healing stitches in my belly wrenched. I gasped. I was sure I was splitting open. They had not said no crying and I did, in buckets. Loud, heaving sobs, so upset I could not have spoken.
My fellow prisoners looked at me with disdain. Eventually, I was led to a table. A cop looked at me with loathing. The gusher tears had dribbled down my face and mixed with flour and runny mascara. I was a pasty mess, a crazed Kabuki.
I smiled and said, "Good morning, officer," as I had been taught by my parents. My flour mask cracked and crumbled onto my Lady Bug shirtwaist. "Always go to a policeman if you are lost or in trouble" my parents had drilled into us.
Well, this protector in blue started to swear at me. He called me a so-and-so hippie troublemaker, Communist, bra-burning slut, and he told me to go to Russia if I hated the United States so much. It did not help that I had lost my ID along with my French string marketing bag.
The officer wrote out a ticket and thrust it at me. Of course, I was still handcuffed and tried to politely point this out to him. Had he not noticed my good manners, my one Papagallo shoe or the sweet Lady Bug logo pin neatly affixed to my Peter Pan collar? I was far from letting my freak flag fly.
He glared at my long, stringy, pasty hair. My hair ribbons had been yanked out either during the melee or because the police thought I might hang myself.
How will I get home? I asked the copper. "Get your hippie freak friends to take you," he hollered.
I could never have imagined before that day that I would be cowering in fear like this in my beloved United States. It was then I realized that the cop was as scared of me as I was of him.
I somehow got back to my tidy little apartment in Shadyside. I dutifully sent in my $2 fine. This horrible thing was over.
Then, in 1982, I had been dumped by a long-time boyfriend and decided to join the Navy. The recruiters were delighted to have me, well-educated and polished. They promised I would be stationed on the coast of Spain. The uniforms were spiffy. A great place to meet men. I filled out reams of forms.
Then, one morning at work, the recruiter called me. "Susan, is there anything you forgot to tell us," he snapped. Clueless, I said of course not. An overdue library book perhaps?
"Well, lady" he said to me, "you are a convicted rioter from the '60s."
I did not point out to him it was the '70s, but at that point it was useless. Somewhere in the bowels of the FBI, I had one of those infamous dossiers J. Edgar Hoover had so loved to compile. The U.S. Navy wasn't about to let me in.
I called my Uncle Terry, an attorney and a captain in the Maryland National Guard. He swore he would never tell my parents and would get my "record" expunged. Ironically, his son, my cousin, now is an FBI agent posted in D.C. I have often been tempted to ask him to check if they still have a "jacket" on me. Actually, at this point in my life, I'd be kind of proud of it, even though I didn't earn it.
So, if during the G-20 summit you are Downtown, put your ID in your pocket along with some bus fare. Wear shoes that tie and be thankful it is not the '60s (or the '70s). Wear your glasses. Watch out for mobs.
<em>Susan Parker is a writer who lives in Ligonier (<a href="mailto:
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The same year you mention the Pirates won the World Series (yes, they've done that kiddies). I traveled from Shaler Township with my since deceased friend to celebrate. It was there I saw a middle-aged woman beaten and bloodied on her head for not moving fast enough for one of the cops in riot gear. I threw my beer bottle at him and scooted.
The Pittsburgh police seem incapable of understanding that they are of the working class. They, along with Screen Writers, firemen and millionaire ballplayers all are the only ent*ties in America who, seemingly, are allowed to unionize. I call these designer unions. And if the "Haves" didn't need them to put out the fires and protect them from the hoi polloi, they too would be broken, as were those of the working man.
After 9/11 and the run-up to the oil grab there were anti-oil grab protests in "The Burgh." I read from here how some sc*mbag pigs (for that is what these mindless humps who join police forces as an outlet for their bullying are) mixed in the crowd of protestors and spray mace in order to start the trouble that their comrades would presumably beat down.
For that matter, when the Burgh was flooded I went tripping with a VVAW buddy downtown, slogging through ankle deep water and was alarmed (but not bummed out) when, upon turning a corner, we were greeted by a phalanx of Darth Vader wanna-bes in full armadillo cover, faceless behind the sunscreen masks. It seems these Pittsburgh Pigs are like drunken frat boys lining up for a gangbang on a helpless freshman coed when it comes to the opportunity to gang up and beat down.
Now I read of the 30 or so who showed up in Lawrenceville and dared to attempt to ransack a group who only desire to provide support for those who LEGALLY seek to assemble and protest, without a warrant!
What does it say about America today that the right wing liars of the media and the corporations who control them can assemble in Bund Rallies fomenting racism and misguided hate for a democratically elected official (and even bring guns!) but those, more peaceful adherents are portrayed as terrorists for attempting to exercise their rights to assemble and protest?
Note to Pittsburgh City leaders;
Your town is shrinking, the young are leaving. Though removed for 29 years I'm always a Pittsburgher and I've followed your desperate scramble for tax money. With less upwardly mobile to tax you simply p**s off those who either wish to remain or have no alternative.
If you allow these Pigs out of the apartheid 50's to continue with their overbearing suffocation of free expression you will turn many middle of the roaders, old folks (like me) and ordinarily peaceful left leaning voters and taxpayers to turn on you. The most radical might even wig out to the point that the crazies of the right did (Richard Poplawski?).
You are not the 'Boys in Blue," sure as hell not a "Band of Brothers" and there will be no nobility in acting as you have in the past. Aren't snipers and spies enough? Does your pathetic existence rely on maintaining the woody that the billy club now represents?
The world will be watching.