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Editor’s note: 

Four young Berkeley residents traveled to Genoa to participate peacefully in the demonstrations. Below is a report from one of them, Nathalie Miller ,19, a sophomore at Harvard and graduate of College Preparatory School. With her are her sister, Gabby,16, a junior at Berkeley High School; her brother, Teddy, 22, a junior at UC Berkeley and their friend, Julian Fulton, also a junior at UC Berkeley. This was submitted by Tom Miller, Nathalie’s father.  

By Nathalie Miller 

Special to the Daily Planet 

...We are a colorful party in the street, a carnaval with theater, pink fairies and radical cheerleaders, clowns and music, a creative, magical and confrontational dance that takes decisions in a horizontal manner through affinity groups. We want to reduce aggressiveness to the minimum with imagination, samba, art, playing with space, to create a relaxed atmosphere with good vibes.” 

The pink and silver march: face paint, fairy wings, red foam noses, a man in a tight pink dress. A sect of the demonstration far from the usual chants and claps. We are enveloped this morning by the brilliantly costumed wacky.  

Spirits are high, songs are belted out. The good cheer reflects the vibe of the carnaval-like manifestation on opening night. 

We finally find a kiosk that isn’t boarded up and I duck in to buy a newspaper. We cross the street and Teddy immediately boosts Gabby up onto a shed next to an Italian bank. She relays down to us from her vantage point.  

“The police blockaded that entire street with their vans,” she says, pointing north. Teddy and Julian clamber up beside her, but there’s barely any space for Gabby anymore so I stay down on the sidewalk. I walk over to the corner, lean on the street light, facing in the opposite direction of the police barricades. I freeze. 

There’s a sea of protesters, sidewalk to sidewalk, flowing towards us. But not the colorful fairies and clowns we began the morning with. Black. From head to toe, every last one of them is draped in black hoods, scarves, clothing. They carry a single sign with them, held by those at the front: SMASH. The letter A is encircled, the symbol for anarchy. 

Then they see the Italian bank. A wave of black crashes against the building, which for some reason seems to be the only one that isn’t boarded up.  

Shovels, lead pipes, and sticks pound against the glass until the glass splinters and begins to shatter. “Teddy!” I yell. “We have to go!” 

But the three of them are on the other side of the bank’s corner. They are still watching the police blockade. Balanced on the shed, they can’t turn and see the anarchy that’s exploding on the opposite side of the building. It’s not until a boy, masked and armed with a metal rod, attacks the window directly beneath them that they realize we are in a dangerous spot. They quickly climb down, we scuttle about fifteen feet away. More hands have joined the effort against the bank. 

“You should be ashamed of yourselves!” I yell. “What good does that do?”  

Nobody even turns in my direction. The focus is on the window, which has completely given way now. Some dip into the bank. Moments later, a phone is ripped out of the jack and thrown onto the sidewalk. Others busy themselves by violently pushing photographers, who have swarmed the corner like paparazzi around a star, away from the shattering, the spray-painting, and the burning. I notice one man strutting around, dressed not in black but in jeans with a matching denim vest. With a flick of a hand, he moves the anarchists away from the window front. With another, he calls them back to continue their smashing. He’s clearly in charge of the army, but should the police intervene he would blend into the crowd of the regularly dressed protesters. He shouts something in Italian at the destructive bunch and marches swiftly off, in the opposite direction than the sea of black has flowed. 

By this point, I am hysterically talking to myself. “Stop it! Please stop! This is just making bad publicity for the protests! Why are they doing this? Shame!” There are sirens blaring, and helicopters jetting around above us. Phone booths are broken, recycling bins overturned. The police have started to make their way, arms linked, towards the intersection. Two fires burn in the street. And there’s black all around. 

“Let’s go,” someone tells me. “Let’s find the pink silver march. If they want to do this it’s on their backs, not ours.” 

But I’ve been babbling incoherently for the past five minutes asking questions that I don’t know the answers to. So before we leave I walk up to a masked man who is raising his fist and cheering for the guy who just tossed a pile of papers out of the bank window. I place my hand on his shoulder. “Excuse me, do you speak English?” 

“Yes.” He has a thick accent. Scottish? 

“Can you explain something to me, please?” I wish my stupid voice would go back to normal because, although I sound it, I’m not scared. My voice just has the irritating habit of trembling when I get emotional. “Why are these men breaking windows? I just don’t understand. What do they think are helping?” 

He is clearly cross with me. “Well, I don’t know. You can ask them. They speak English too.”  

“You don’t know? But you just raised your hand for them. You are cheering for what they’re doing.” 

He turns, for the first time, to look at me. All I can see of him is the pale skin surrounding his eyes. The rest is curtained in black. “Look. I don’t really want to talk to you or talk to anybody about this, okay?” 

“All right,” I say, pulling my hand back from his arm. 

We have to run now because tear gas is being thrown. Metal balls the size of apricots sail by, trailing whispy smoke in their wake. I’ve lost Teddy, Julian, and Gabby. Whistles, sirens, glass shattering, helicopters, smoke, and thousands of running footsteps. I glance behind me and realize that, although I thought I was chasing them, I’m actually ahead of my crowd. 

Still running, Teddy takes the handkerchief from around his face and tosses it to me. I fumble to tie it on as we race to a side street. My left eye has begun to sting. A camera man taps Julian and leans over, eyes swollen and rimmed with red. Julian pours some of our water into the man’s palm. “Grazi.” 

Around us people pant for breath, peering around the corner to see if it’s safe to emerge. Beneath the smoke, black from the fires, white from the tear gas, I spy something glittering: a decorated cardboard fairy wing, torn and trampled. 

Nathalie Miller - Genoa