Protesters, prayer, pepper spray
Junior Justin Shenk prays amidst pepper spray at inauguration protests last Thursday in this photo which was printed in USA Today. .
Approximately 10 EMU students who attended protests surrounding the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., last Thursday, returned with a better understanding of what pepper spray looks, smells, and feels like.
Some 10,000 protesters carrying anti-war and anti-Bush signs thronged otherwise empty city streets trying to get close to the inauguration parade route. Tensions built as impossibly large crowds grew impatient with the slow-moving security checkpoints. The checkpoints were the only way through the eight-foot metal-grid fences stretching for miles around the parade.
EMU students at one checkpoint witnessed protesters trying to tear down the fence. Occasionally, a section of the fence crashed down, whereupon protesters cheered and quickly retreated as riot police in black padded vests and riot helmets rushed to repair the fence, adding plastic straps to make it stronger.
As protesters grew bolder and continued to tear down sections of the fence, riot police shot pepper spray out of large spray guns. The streams of spray were so large that some distant spectators initially thought the police were shooting water with fire hoses.
Justin Shenk, a sociology and JPCS major, said he came to the protests primarily as an observer, and what he saw upset him: a security checkpoint operating too slowly to let a significant portion of the crowd into the parade grounds, juvenile anarchists acting antagonistically toward the security personnel, and riot police using pepper spray against the protesters indiscriminately.
"I think what I thought to myself was," Shenk said, "Somebody has to show [the riot police] that we are not just a mob. We are a group of individuals with families. I am a son, I am a brother. I am going to recognize your humanity by doing no harm to you, and I am going to kneel here, taking as much spray as you dare to give, until you recognize ours.'"
As Shenk knelt down 4 feet from the fence, a policeman in front him soaked his upper torso and face with a foamy shower of pepper spray. Overwhelmed by the massive quantities of powerful irritant, Shenk spit up globs of mucus. Friends poured water over his face and swabbed his eyes.
Approximately 30 people followed Shenk's example and knelt down in front of the fence. Photographs of the event appeared in the print version of USA Today and on the New York Times web page. The Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed Shenk and ran a story the next day with the headline, "Under pepper spray, a Pa. student praying alone stirs a wider protest."
Looking back, Shenk said, "Perhaps I was naive to think that the riot police would conduct themselves professionally. When taunted, I expected them to remain stiff and resolute, but very often they replied maliciously, jeering and goading the protesters. It was almost as if they were looking for a fight, yearning for one."
To further secure the checkpoint area, some 60 riot police arrived from the nearest street corner. They came unannounced, silently, and in clear formation, perhaps six rows of 10 marching down the middle of the street. Soon they regrouped to form a longer double line with one end at the checkpoint. The two lines were back-to-back, facing opposite sides of the street.
Again without obvious signal, they began stepping forward and shouting "BACK!" in unison, until all the protesters were forced off the street and onto the sidewalk, leaving a large clear area in front of the checkpoint. In that way the police exercised machine-like control over the milling crowd, say the EMU protesters.
As the parade ended and the frustrated protesters disbursed, one peculiar scene typified the prevailing combative mood. An apparently pro-life young man stood in the street shouting through a megaphone and pointing to a banner that read, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Soon a small crowd gathered around him, chanting, "Not your body - not your choice." The man persisted by trying to engage his insulters in conversation by shouting through the megaphone.
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