Then the protestors stop. They are early for their 4 p.m. protest at Boston Common, a voice says over the megaphone.
“Sit down,” the voice cries. “We’re holding the bridge.”
Some students collapse onto the pavement while others walk back and forth across the the length of the bridge.
A group of percussionists from MIT, wearing white jumpsuits, beats a complex rhythm on a full complement of real instruments as news and police helicopters circle overhead.
Then suddenly students are dancing in the middle of the bridge, bobbing and swaying and cheering with the drums above the still-frozen river.
Into Boston
People are pressed to their Back Bay windows as the protesters march down Mass. Ave. to Boylston St. At Newbury St., three people blow kisses from a third-floor apartment building.
Protesters wielding paper mache masks and puppets dance and sway to the drumming of Harvard and MIT musicians at the heart of the parade.
Heading up Beacon Hill, the protestors stop in front of the statehouse and shake their signs at its dome before moving on toward Government Center.
At the corner of Beacon and Bowdoin St. the Suffolk County Serrif stands with a paddy wagon ready. Half a block away, white-haired Southport resident Ralph White stands on the corner and makes broad thumbs-down motions at the passing protestors.
Someone tries to engage him in argument and jabs him in the shoulder. White lunges at him and the two scuffle into the middle of the street until six police officers dive through the crowd and pull them forcibly apart. White strains under the grasp of a burly officer, gritting his teeth and bobbing his head furiously toward the other man. Then he collapses into the officer’s arms, exhausted. Sirens wail; police vehicles surround the intersection in an instant.
The police steps up its forces at Government Center, where the protestors are quickly gathering to rest. A row of eight officers with face shield and beat sticks stands at attention before the John F. Kennedy building.
Near the street, speakers rally to attention beside a bookselling table offering war- and protest-relevant works. Down in the plaza, some protesters are lying on the spring-wet brick, resting before the next stage of the march, which will take them back to Copley Square.
Marquand Professor of English Peter Sacks stands in front of a small enclave of pro-war counter-protestors waving American flags, his hands in the pockets of his black overcoat, and shakes his head. Soon, he joins in chant.
“U-S-A, U-S-A,” he says, raising two fingers above his head.
At the lowest level of the plaza, students are paper-mache figures are still dancing to the beat of drums. But now they are bobbing and and weaving figures of skeletons among each other, swaying back and forth in the throes of mock battle.
—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.