Protester to protester, the sentiment was this: "Congratulations!" There were handshakes and high-fives and compliments like, "You looked great naked."
Two distinct groups of young men and women who protested the coming Republican National Convention in New York on Thursday -- one blocked traffic naked, the other rappelled down the front of the Plaza Hotel and draped its facade with an anti-Bush banner -- found themselves outside the heavily guarded Manhattan Criminal Court at the same time on Friday.
They seemed like brothers and sisters in arms. Pleasantries were exchanged. But their stories were vastly different. The group of rappellers, called Operation Sibyl -- in ancient Greece, a sibyl was a fortune teller -- but also known as the Plaza Four, said they had had a tough 25 hours in jail before they were arraigned on felony and misdemeanor charges of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal trespass. Judge Gerald Harris released them on their own recognizance despite the US$2,000 in bail that the prosecutors had requested from each.
The other group, Act Up, blocked traffic, naked, on Eighth Avenue in front of Madison Square Garden, the convention site. They were arrested on misdemeanor charges and given desk appearance tickets. A majority of them escaped jail time and seemed ecstatic about being pictured on the cover of the Daily News and inside other papers on Friday.
"We were so excited," said Kaytee Riek, 20, a public health student from Washington who wants more financing for the global AIDS crisis.
But one downside saw one woman getting an early morning e-mail message from her parents expressing their anger about seeing her naked on television.
The difference between the charges faced by the Act Up members and those faced by the Operation Sibyl protesters comes down to this -- the police said an officer had been injured on the Plaza's roof while trying to arrest the rappellers.
According to a March 10 New York Police Department document outlining legal guidelines for the convention, under certain circumstances officers are instructed to consider charging protesters with second-degree assault if any officers are injured while trying to make arrests.
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