It's unusually long. We normally try to avoid posting videos more than a few minutes long, but in the end, it was left at its full length, because it really shows how things were with the strike, right from the start. Yes, there were quiet moments, but there was an awful lot of this level of noise and disruption - and this was before they brought in the bull horn!
For some background, after this happened, the Artspace and SAIL boards put up these signs all round the high rise.
This video shows how the picketers responded to them.
They even taunted and mocked a security guard for doing his job, then tried to prevent him from doing it later on.
There was something that caught my attention late in the video, and I wanted to double check before I commented on it.
At about 34:45 into the video, a vehicle is allowed to pass unobstructed into the parking lot.
After it goes by, you can hear the following, from Local 47 chair, Deb Arcand, directed at the driver (who couldn't possibly hear it):
"You better be nice to us, because if you're not nice to us, the next time, we're not going to let you go in...
That's the way it goes. Those are the NEW rules."
What I had to double check was if the vehicle was the one I thought it was, and it was.
Some weeks later, that vehicle was vandalised during the night. It's windshield, which just happened to have been newly replaced, was smashed, and the passenger side was damaged, as if it had been keyed.
The vandalism was not caught on the regular Artspace security cameras. Due to the strike, the angle of the camera was changed to record the entry of the parking lot, rather than this section of the parking lot.
So we have no idea who did it.
No other vehicles had been damaged that night.
Update: Sept. 30
It has been pointed out that the above statement could be misinterpreted.
So I will repeat, again. We have no idea who vandalized that vehicle. The point was that this is because the security camera was moved due to the picketer actions. Otherwise, that vehicle would have been within view of the camera.
A few days after that vehicle was vandalized, another was entered and rifled though, with nothing stolen but some loose change and a package of gum. There was no break-in damage because the owners were not aware that a broken lock was not manually locked. The guess is that whoever did it went from vehicle to vehicle, testing doors, until one was found that was unlocked.
Again, this would have been caught by the building security camera, had it not been adjusted to cover the picketers.
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