"What the caterpillar calls the end of life, wise men call a butterfly."

Here's a blog entry from someone arrested as part of the Critical Mass bike ride through NYC. This bike ride has been going on for years... monthly... and this is the first time they *arrested* people and hauled them in for booking!:

"After taking some pictures of Critical Mass riders getting arrested, I turned to walk away and suddenly was in cuffs, one of the 264 cyclists and random passers-by arrested Friday night. Rather than writing us summonses for the offenses we were charged with, which were violations (on par with a traffic ticket or an open container), not even misdemeanors, the cops decided to teach us a lesson by hauling us over to a bus depot-turned-holding cell where we got to sleep in cages on diesel-sludge-covered concrete. (Many people reported chemical burns from contact with the floor.) I got to spend 16 hours there, then ride a corrections bus downtown to Central Booking for the full handcuff/search/mugshot/prints treatment, in shackles all the way, and spent another 14 hours there while the cops, who were either intentionally stalling on Bloomberg's orders or staggeringly incompetent, took 14 more hours to write us all the same desk-appearance tickets they could have given out at the scene. There were still at least 50 people in there when I got out at 2:30 a.m. Monday (and spent another hour waiting on line to get my keys, phone, camera, and pen from the property clerk; I don't get my bike back until the trial).

Thirty hours of my life are gone because Bloomberg felt like going on a power trip (it's said he personally ordered the massive arrests), and I still feel phantom handcuffs on my wrists, the way amputees report feeling phantom limbs. Critical Mass has gone down every month for years, with typically no interference (and often even assistance) by the police. On Friday they suddenly decided to start making arrests without warning, penning people in and arresting entire blocks' worth of people, including hapless tourists and people getting off work who just happened to be in the area watching. And they couldn't have been bothered to clean the diesel sludge off the floor of the holding pens where they made us sleep? Someone will pay."

There's a lot more, but I think you get the gist of the post. The Man is back to take you away. It's been a long time since 1967. Too bad nothing's changed - except the size of the deficit.