So, I went to a
riot today.
I didn't plan to attend a riot, or rather, I didn't know it was a riot when I planned to attend. There was some sort of rally down on the commons that my housemate was going to, and since he was driving, I decided to tag along and do some browsing.
We got there and there was someone on the little sheltered stage thing talking about the inadvisability of reelecting Bush to an audience which seemed in little need of convincing. Just as I was about to go check out the stores, though, all of a sudden these people behind me started screaming and when I looked there were a bunch of guys in Halloween makeup just randomly beating people up. They'd tackle people to the ground, pile on and just wail on them, it was batshit insane.
Me and my friends ran back to our car and got out of there, so I don't know how it ended - I mean, fuck, I'm not even sure it has ended yet, I can still hear a bunch of sirens downtown. Tell the truth, I don't really have any clue how it started, either. I mean, it could be political, but if you live in Ithaca you learn to either ignore or embrace the halfassed liberalism pretty quickly, and our extremists tend to be of the crunchy hippie variety, not known for violence outside of Earthbound.
I'm pretty sure it's not just some bunch of drunk townie teenagers getting a jump on Mischief Night - I think I recognized one of them as living on my hall freshman year, and we saw two or three people in the same makeup in residential neighborhoods on the way back up the hill. Pretty much the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that it was all staged as some sort of guerrilla theater, but maybe I shouldn't put too much emphasis on the "reasonable" here. GTA:SA comes out tomorrow, maybe it's some sort of cosmic force reminding the consumer populace that random violence is not, in fact, all that cool. Who knows?
So, all in all, kind of thrilling, kind of scary, a lot of baffling. I'm not sure what to make of it, guess I'll have to wait for the papers tomorrow.