A guy who is providing housing for me while in Pittsburgh played an audio recording of various scare tactics regarding G-20 protestors. Some of that involved the claim that protestors are storing human waste to be used for throwing at police during protests. Two men who looked to be in their e

A perhaps random thought that crossed my mind as an African - American man walked pass me is that this type of protest action would register on a somewhat higher key in the collective psyche of Pittsburghers and Americans in general if hundreds or several thousand people of color took to the streets.

Regarding the issue of race, I encountered two young men who told me that they would never go to the Hill District due to its high crime rate. I didn't experience problems when I was there yesterday. An idea is that the Black folk in the Hill District right now won't express hostility to a skinny white guy on a bicycle, given that they right now may tend to think I am there as some sort of liberal do-gooder--despite the local buzz about rowdy protestors bent on breaking people's windows.

This idea about how race pertains to protests is something I thought about amidst the mostly white and mostly male young adults in the streets dressed in black and behaving confrontationally toward police. Am I reading into things to think that things would be different if they were mostly people of color ?

Though it's not clear whether any of the G-20 officials are paying attention to this protest,let alone the question about the extent to which any of them care about the issues , well, an idea is that these G-20-related events have value for common people in the sense of being opportunities with activists and other concerned citizens to form working relationships.

As I crossed one of the several yellow steel bridges here in Pittsburgh, I noticed the drastically reduced presence of autos. A person would perhaps think this is Carfree day in Pittsburgh or a North American version of Ciclovia, (well, not quite), were it not for helicopters flying overhead, National Guard personnel, cops on motorcycles, and the occasional dark sedan with opaque windows racing through the streets.

Across the Allegheny River, it seemed like a usual autumn day with nice weather, except that many people have today and tomorrow off from work, unable to travel easily to and from downtown. People relaxed in parks in an area across the river called the North Side. Two people I spoke with on the street during the small protest against the US backing of the Ethiopian dictatorship told me they were dissappointed about the lack of "action." They also said that some Pittsburghers want to " beat up the hippies," as they tell it.

Protestestors cried out "America, land of the free, home of the brave" and asked onlookers or anyone else who might be watching and listening in other parts of the world, why the US government is backing the Ethiopian dictatorship.