Ride a bike in Manhattan on Fridays, get arrested

Vince at NJ IndyMedia brings us this story of a group of Critical Mass bike riders who got together in Manhattan yesterday, read the First Amendment out loud, and then started a bike ride. Guess what happened? The police cordoned off the area with orange fencing and arrested them. Seriously. Herded them up like cattle. Here's the story. Guess they should have gone the pious route and read from The Bible. Then they would have been prominently featured on CNN and FOX as "Terri's Angels."

UPDATE: Check out this first-person account of what happened on Dark Days Ahead in this post titled They Fought the Law and the Law Won. An excerpt from what's in the post (and in the comments here - I thought this would make it easier to promote this to the front page):

Here's the scoop: walking through the park at about 7 p.m., I saw a number of police striding by, and didn't think much of it (other than that I shouldn't be afraid to stop singing my Lauryn Hill just because the police were walking by). Then I heard the bullhorn. The NYPD had a van parked at the northeast corner of Union Square that loudly proclaimed from a recording something along the lines of "If you choose to ride, you will be arrested and your bicycle will be confiscated. Processions that obstruct traffic without permits are not permitted. There is no permit for a procession tonight." Repeat. A lot.

Can you say police state?