Reply #23: Found out exactly what happened finally. [View All]

[recoveringrepublican]

It's hard to explain how they have the barricades set up, but it makes it hard to know what is happening to protesters on the other end of the sidewalk.

Last week Baywalk was allowing us to walk around the barricades on their property as long as we didn't carry signs. The teen (his name is Joe btw) thought it would be the same thing, so he ventured to walk around the barricade and was arrested with no warning by police or security that he was no longer allowed on Baywalk property. Mike then rushed to defend him when they took his camera and arrested him. The rest of us realized what was going on and many of us went down to see what was happening. There was a group of peace activist unrelated to our group in the area for a Hiroshima memorial who were also down there. About 10 of our members (I had left before this happened) linked arms and started chanting. Then the Hiroshima group started pushing some of our members back to the sidewalk!!! WTF!? Here is the article today from St. Pete times. Ohh and Channel 10 had a headline like "ANGRY PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE"....sigh,

http://www.stpetetimes.com/2005/08/08/Southpinellas/Despite_arrests__prot.shtml

ST. PETERSBURG - Despite the arrests of six anti-war protesters outside BayWalk, members of the group vowed Sunday to return next weekend.

"We've been doing this for 21/2 years," said Marianne Huber, whose husband, Chris Ernesto, was one of those arrested. "We're not going to let this stop us.

"We will be back every Saturday as a peaceful anti-war protest group."


"The only time I really felt scared was when they took out the pepper spray," said Likins, of St. Petersburg. "I didn't really feel empowered. I thought it was something I needed to do."