Wednesday, September 1st was a day of recovery for many of the activists who had descended upon Manhattan, and I suspect the NYPD was also a bit restive. After spending twelve hours on the streets photographing in 90 degree heat, I had no energy to get up six hours later to photograph the "pink slip line" that was scheduled to wrap around Madison Square Garden at 8 AM, symbolically representing the millions of people who have lost their jobs during the Bush administration. Instead, I stayed uptown, working on blogs and uploading pictures to the web. It was not until [View Full Entry]

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After the Man in Black Bloc at Sotheby's auction house, I headed downtown to the 42nd Street Library at Bryant Park, (site of library lions made infamous (to me) in "Ghostbusters"). A vigil was supposed to take place on the steps, and I figured it might be a good photo op. The police were blocking the top of the stairs, and so the typical standoff was taking place between nonviolent protesters and (momentarily) nonviolent protesters. But when the protesters called for a march, they were met at the end of the block by a squad of police officers and told [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, August 31st, was a day of civil disobedience entitled "A31" by activists. A31 proved to be the most active day for the NYPD as they struggled to maintain control over the city and the activists struggled to disrupt business as usual. ' And while the story of civil disobedience in the streets was appealing, I was also interested in documenting the story of less risk-averse but equally motivated activists. To wit, I decided to check out "The Stroller Brigade," a march of liberal parents with babies past Madison Square Garden. The march was supposed to kick off at at Madison [View Full Entry]

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I don't like to fall more than a day behind in my blogging, but sometimes it's inevitable. I came up here to New York with my friend Tom, and by Tuesday evening the two of us barely even had the energy left to say, "Dude, I'm beat!" Every day feels like a marathon, and by Tuesday night I was dragging after four days on the streets. I'm sure the cops and the protesters are just as beat, but for me there added burdens of carrying around a bag of cameras, keeping my eyes peeled, navigating the unknown streets of New York, [View Full Entry]

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Yup, there are more pictures to be seen at my website, http://www.WesCheney.com Just look for the top portfolio link on the left, "Volume 2: Wes @ RNC in NYC."  I'll be uploading more images later today. In Peace, Wes   [View Full Entry]

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Monday was a day for another march, this time unpermitted. I joined the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign for a permitted rally at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations. The rally started off with promise and vigor, with each speaker taking no more than a minute at the microphone. But it was at some point after Nicole from the Deaf and Blind Committee for Human Rights "spoke" through an interpreter (don't ask me how Nicole was able to see her hands in order to speak in sign language) that I realized that brevity in speakers could easily be [View Full Entry]

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Friends, I've gotten my film processed and printed, and the prints scanned and uploaded to my website: www.WesCheney.com Tomrrow I'll be uploading a blog on my experiences on 10/30; In Peace, Wes [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was the big march.  My friends headed off early to Washington Square, while I stayed behind at the apartment which was so graciously opened up to us on the Upper East Side.  After several cups of coffee I finished my blog and headed downtown to the Fifteenth Street Friends Meeting.  There I joined with Quakers from as far away as Minnesota Mexico in the centering silence of a Meeting for Worship before lining up in the courtyard and marching out into the streets under a banner proclaiming "Speak Truth to Power."  All told, there were probably 150 Friends and at [View Full Entry]

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"Dude, you're on TV!" Thus said my fellow protestor Tom as we watched CNN Headline News at close to midnight. For a few fleeting seconds my face and wide-brimmed Tillie hat stoud head and shoulders above a crowd of thousands of people participating in the Pro-Choice March across the Brooklyn Bridge. The footage must have been taken early in the day, because by the end of the day I was considerably less enthusiatic after spending 12 hours on my feet in 90 degree heat with a camera bag over my shoulder, at which point my clothes were entirely soaked through with [View Full Entry]

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I left Newport News this morning on the Amtrak train to New York City, and along the way I read several chapters in "Lies My Teacher Told Me," by my Vermont homeboy James Loewen, which follows up quite nicely on a conversation I was having with my boss Mary. Yesterday she half rhetorically asked, "Why don't more Americans know about the terrible atrocities our goverment has done?" I replied, ''Education. Or a lack thereof." My homeboy James Loewen offered up a quote by Helen Keller that extrapolated upon the American tradition of willful ignorance. Helen Keller pointed out,[/p [View Full Entry]

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