My friend Chris took some amazing pictures of the whole fiasco, many I believe for the Pitt News.

My experiences were probably the same as most of yours. I came down to Schenely Plaza Thursday evening, by myself, to see if I could get a story on the events unfolding for my newspaper class. After running from a tear gas canister, armed cops on horses, etc., I decided that I got enough for 250 words.

What surprised me, from what I saw, is that most of the crowd was simply students standing around watching. I can't call what they were doing protesting, more like spectators of the protest, tourists with cameras. Of course there were a few black-clad anarchists but even they were just standing around, at least when I was there. So I'm not entirely sure what incited the tear gas.

Some friends and I did go down to Forbes around 12:30 that night, after we saw some armor-plated FBI humvee things pass their house. (Oh hey! welcome to the neighborhood!) We saw Subway's windows busted in, and Pamela's, which made us sad... even though by the spider web patterned cracks on their windows, we couldn't tell whether the damage was caused by rocks or rubber bullets...

I live in Shadyside though, so after I left my friend's house that night, I stayed in the calm sanctuary that is not Oakland and let the real news people risk their necks. Which! By the way, that newspaper class I mentioned earlier, it's taught by one of the editors of the Post Gazette, Tim Martin, and a reporter named Sadie Gurman often comes in and teaches with him. Well, she was arrested last night, with her credentials around her neck, while she was reporting on the protest in Oakland. And left in jail until 9:00 am.

So I guess it seems the anarchists got what they wanted: lack of laws, but I don't know if their protesting helped bring that about as much as the cops' disregard.