Tammy Alonso's Blog

Left of Centre

Notes from the G-20

Pittsburgh was given the chance to shine on an international stage during the recent G-20 Summit, and I think we did a pretty good job. Although the weather could have been a bit more cooperative at times, the city, its people and their hospitality were given rave reviews by attendees, journalists and tourists alike. Even some of the protesters praised the relatively restrained—for the most part—behavior on the part of security forces assembled from members of police departments nationwide.

The summit kicked off last Thursday evening with a reception amongst the beautiful foliage and flowers of Phipps Conservatory, an historic Victorian-era greenhouse and botanical gardens recognized as “one of the greenest gardens in the world” and chosen, in part, by the White House as a symbol of the environmental sustainability the President wanted to stress during the meetings with other world leaders. While the leaders themselves sat down to a working dinner there at Phipps, First Lady Michelle Obama led the spouses north to a special dinner of their own hosted by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, at Rosemont, the Fox Chapel estate/farm owned by the Heinz family.

Friday morning, as delegates sat down to debates and meetings at Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Mrs. Obama and the spouses were treated to a tour of the city’s Creative and Performing Arts School featuring a performance by students accompanied by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, country singer Trisha Yearwood and singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, followed by a luncheon and tour of the Andy Warhol Museum. But not before Mrs. Obama and her security detail paid a surprise return visit to local eatery Pamela’s Diner where she and her then-candidate husband so enjoyed the pancakes they had during a campaign stop last year, they not only invited the co-owners to whip them up for a Memorial Day breakfast at the White House earlier this year but recommended them to a still-unnamed Summit delegate who special-ordered them for his own Friday morning breakfast while here in the city.

Of course, no G-20 gathering would be complete without the protests, but Pittsburgh saw far fewer problems and far less damage than has been reported by other areas hosting such events, a fact some have attributed to the completely different tack employed by law enforcement during the Summit. Unlike London earlier this year where protesters were cordoned off into pens, a circumstance that would appeal to no one, police officials here decided to let the people march, so long as they remained peaceful and did not stray too close to where any dignitaries happened to be at the time.

In fact, Friday saw a huge, permitted “People’s March” attended by several thousand that wound through the streets of the city from the Oakland neighborhood in the East End, through the downtown area where delegates were meeting just blocks away, and across the Allegheny River to the North Side of Pittsburgh. Police lined both sides of the route most of the way, but marchers simply walked by them. It really was a sight to behold—thousands of individuals being permitted to peacefully speak out on behalf of dozens of causes and march past watchful law enforcement personnel within mere blocks of some of the most powerful people in the world, without incident.

This is one of the things that should make our country proud—that we have the strength to allow those with different opinions from our own to stand up and speak out, and that we have the ability to listen, hear what they have to say and possibly learn from them, bettering ourselves and our nation in the process.

We here in Pittsburgh had the opportunity to show the best of ourselves and our country to the world for two short days. I hope we did a good job.