The evening of Tuesday, August 30, as the RNC delegates were wining, dining and partying at the posh restaurants and trendy clubs in Times Square, a small group of protesters began marching on the sidewalk towards 48th St. and Broadway. It was a peaceful demonstration denouncing the Bush agenda, the unfair policies of the U.S. government, the police state in which we now all live, and a call to end the war in Iraq.

One of the protesters was grabbed by a number of uniformed and plain clothes policemen, and violently thrown on the back of a car. A woman who happened to be at the scene, not part of the contingent but nevertheless carrying a sign ("TODAY THE REAL TEST OF POWER IS NOT TO MAKE WAR BUT TO PREVENT IT"), was pushed with brutal force by a policeman wearing a gray suit (seen in the above pictures). This came as a result of asking him why the young man was being treated in such a manner for doing nothing more than exercising his freedom of speech. She fell on her back onto the street and hit her head on the asphalt. She was unconscious for a while, and when she finally came around, was unable to get up.

The police did nothing to assist this woman, to check the condition she was in, although witnesses repeatedly requested that an ambulance be called. A street medic came to her aid; only much later did a NYFD truck and ambulance did arrive at the scene. Needless to say, a multitude of police vehicles had appeared within seconds.

I was assaulted also as I was walking between the protesters and the barricades, trying to document the incident, something that the authorities have very little tolerance for, especially for those of us wearing press credentials of independent media and doing our jobs of presenting the reality of the times we live in.