The motorcades are rolling towards the airport, the world is departing from Pittsburgh. Yes, the G20 is over. But since Wednesday, those men and women from the twenty most powerful nations in the world were sitting down together in our state-of-the-art convention center to discuss the economy, climate change and other pressing global issues.

I was not allowed in to get a first-hand view any of that.

But what I did get to see was what was going on in the streets of Pittsburgh. I got to see the crowd chanting for peace, for justice and in resistance to the Conference’s existence. I saw and heard messages from all across the board, and witnessed people who fully embraced the idea of a peaceable protest as well as those who were ready and willing to become violent if need be.

Luckily, I avoided the worst of it. There was a huge confrontation in the Strip District where a group of anarchists fought the police to the point that they were tear gassed and arrests were made. It was still a far cry from the riots that overtook Seattle and London when they hosted the conference, but more than enough to make those around the city nervous. In fact, that may have set the police on edge, because they went after another protest group in Oakland, who, according to a young man I spoke with earlier today, were not violent and did not disobey the police order. The protest, held near the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, was visited by police who proceeded to gas and pepper-spray people trying to walk to their dorms and may have even thrown gas canisters into the dorms of people watching from their windows and balconies.

Since I was not in Oakland I can’t fully report on that, but I can tell you what I saw downtown on Thursday and what I saw on Friday during The People’s March to the G20. And what I saw was the exercising of a fundamental American right: the right to protest and petition the government for change.

Photo by Ashly Nagrant

I think it’s something we still take for granted, but not without reason. During the eight years of the Bush administration, the idea was spread that people who protested, those who shouted anti-war and anti-corporate slogans, were somehow anti-American. It was considered “un-patriotic” to march and cry out for more aid to the poor on the streets and less money to now half-forgotten wars. And of course, the Patriot Act managed to work as a weapon of fear, allowing people who dissented to be labeled as possible threats, even terrorists.

And while the Patriot Act was renewed, a very questionable choice by President Obama, there’s no longer the same culture of fear or of government conformity. And of course, we still do have that fundamental right, while many other countries do not.

One of the marches I witnessed on Thursday was the Free Tibet march. People marched together, screaming “China lies people die!” “Shame on the Chinese Government! Liar, Liar Chinese Government!” If they were to protest this way in Tibet, they would have been shut down, arrested, even beaten. Foreign journalists are not allowed to cover the situation in Tibet unless they have a government guide with them. These are people who, in their own country, literally have no voice. In fact, in their eyes, they don’t even have a country anymore. They were gathered to send a message to the assembly and especially to President Obama, whose name they chanted, begging for change and freedom.

Photo by Ashly Nagrant

Less than 100 yards from this, I was witness to several young men attempting to antagonize police officers, yelling that we “live in a fascist state.”

I am a fan of protest. I fully believe in freedom of speech. But at the same time, I wanted to point those young men in the direction of the Tibetan protesters and say “Why don’t you go ask THEM what it feels like to live in a fascist nation?”

And that’s part of how I’ve come out of this: I feel like while a lot of the protests were very worthwhile, including marches to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, cries for health care reform, screaming for the preservation of our freedom of speech and fighting for a change to our environmental and climate policies. But at the same time, the violence and hyperbole were upsetting.

Those young men I saw screaming on Thursday as well as the assembled group of anarchists in the march on Friday, they had a right to speak and something to say. However, I can’t say I entirely sympathized with their situation. No, we do not have pure freedom of speech in this country. Yes, there are still situations where censorship and media bias are troubling and, as I’ve already made clear, I’m not wild about the Patriot Act. But we are far from a fascist nation. Though, I’m sure if I tried to argue that with one of them, I’d simply be told I didn’t understand and that the “wool had been pulled over [my] eyes.” And I felt that they were belittling the people there from countries that do utterly restrict freedom of speech and control information via limiting internet access and controlling the press.

However, as someone pointed out to me, so long as we have those extremists as watchdogs, odds are we WON’T become a fascist nation. Not that I believe we have that to worry about in the next four years…but after that, who knows?

I guess the real question is, did those policy makers who were locked away in the convention center hear the cries? Did it change their minds? Or is resistance and protest no longer even recognized by them as anything more than a minor annoyance? Can we change the world through events such as this one? Even better: Can we, in fact, change the world?

I don’t know. But I have photographic evidence that even if the fight is futile, there are more than enough people willing to keep fighting.

I wrote the bulk of this article on Friday evening. I figured with the world leaders gone, it was safe to assume that nothing more was going to happen.

I was obviously wrong.

On Saturday night the Pitt campus was under fire from police. What was upsetting about this was that many of the people caught in the crossfire were not protesters. They were civilians: people attempting to return to their dorms, people walking from bar to bar. Basically, students living their very normal and harmless student lives. These people were in many ways needlessly caught up in the struggle. There is a video showing police trapping students on a stairway near Posvar Hall and spraying them with tear gas and mace. They then had officers stationed at the top motioning for the students to go down, and officers at the bottom ordering them to go up. They literally could not move. One girl finally began to scream, “I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding,” and even then the police did nothing.

I understand the necessity of police action when there is violence. But when the action goes so far as to purposely attack those who are observing or documenting the event, it has gone too far. As a child and grandchild of police officers, this upsets me to no end.

I discussed with my father my feelings on much of this. There were certainly cops who, having been given tons of new “toys” in the form of riot gear and non-lethal weapons, were looking for a chance to use them. While I was raised to believe that the police are there to protect and serve, and while there are many, many officers out there who still live by those ideals, at the same time there are many people drawn to the profession who are more concerned with the power the position seems to carry. They want to feel powerful and in charge, and that is the sort of thing that leads to cracking down on people on a college campus just trying to get back to their rooms to get out of the way.

And as I am watching videos of the mess in South Oakland, I am seeing areas I walked regularly on my way to classes, places I stood with my friends and laughed, places where I have stumbled drunkenly once or twice, and it is this horrifying juxtaposition of recognizing the places but also feeling they are alien because of the screaming, the panic and the numerous people in black riot gear.

But for others, this may be their first exposure, their first view of Pittsburgh. And is this really the message we want to send the world? We have fantastic universities…where the police will come after you for daring to be outside on a Friday night.