While we saw yesterday that cops are willing to arrest spectators and bystanders, it woudl be difficult to get away with this on an every-day basis for the duration. We marched into a place that gave the cops a free "field of fire" to engage us with little fear of "collateral damage." Big Mistake! The police deployed a "deep pen" tactic to control exit-and possible search the exiting crowd for targetted individuals. Secondary barricades were set blocks away, with no indoor refuges or non-protestor crowds for hard-pressed activists to disappear into. We made that awful easy by accepting a route that ever went near such places. The route they offered was no doubt designed to lead us into a trap-and was in nearly the same place they had earlier bottled up the Still We Rise march ending. Finally,the tactic of using pens with no right to leave is intended to generate fear of mass arrest at every action, and even when not used the secondary traps have a "look what we can do" aspect to them, like when Sir Francis Drake showed captured Spanish fishermen rows of English cannon and sent them home to Spain durign the Armada buildup. These traps probably are a violation of the court orders to the NYPD concerning pens. They should be held in contempt for this and whoever gave the order could legally be tried and jailed for criminal contempt of court. In addition he could be held in jail for civil contempt until all arrestees from tonight are freed and closed pens abandoned. During Vietnam, the Vietcong used to advise their fighters to "grab uncle Sam by the belt." This meant to get so close to troops or their supporters that artillery and air power cannot be used. If they fought in empty terrain, bombs and heavy shells could obliterate them. Therefore, the key was to blend ino the populace so strategic bombing was impossible without obliterating villages, which bred more support from survivors and neighboring villages. In combat, the idea was to get so close to US troops that bombs or heavy shells woudl fall equally on Vietnamese and US forces. We need to grab the RNC and the corporations by the belt the same way. We need to stay out of narrow streets without cover and use streets that not only are wide but from which most or all exits lead to open restaurants, stores, etc. This makes it far more difficult to do any real mass arrests if they later choose to do so. ) The Mouse Bloc was a good example of this. An elepant can crush one mouse, or a cage full of mice. He cannot crush all of a torrent of mice crawling over him, however. Just like in Vietnam, we had and have the support of the general public. Each small group of protestors in the reconvened Mouse Bloc was big enough to prevent unsupported people from beign intimidated into silence but small enough that mass arrests would mean many mini-mass arrests netting a lot of bystanders. Earlier Broadway actions with larger groups were deemed worth the fallout from arresting bystanders. Blocked from using nets and pens in front of and ON those huge evening Broadway crowds, tehy had to engage us one-on-one,at a person to person level. Where I was, that de-escalated tensions rather than leading to the "rioting" the police radio reports claimed the cops feaed