The G20 summit convened Friday, Sept. 25, in Pittsburgh, drawing thousands of protesters, including a group of Binghamton University students.

The G20 summit is an annual meeting of international representatives who discuss key issues related to global economic stability.

Mari Pfingston-Bigelow, a senior environmental and social justice major, made the trip to Pittsburgh for the protest with four other undergraduates, one graduate student, a medic and a student not affiliated with the University.

The group participated in “permitted” and “unpermitted” protests, speaking out against the conference of finance ministers and central bank governors of the 19 countries and the European Union that make up the G20.

“I attended [the protests] because I think there are huge problems within capitalism,” said Pfingston-Bigelow. “I think the system of capitalism inherently exploits most people and benefits very few.”

The summit assembled to discuss the implementation of financial reforms to avoid a future economic crisis. Though the protests were predicted to be peaceful, many turned violent.

Pfingston-Bigelow was among the many protesters that came in close contact with the police. Riot cops ordered people to evacuate the streets, spraying the crowds with tear gas, she said.

According to Pfingston-Bigelow, many University of Pittsburgh students were involved in the protests.

“There were Pitt students watching the protest from a stairwell and there was tear gas being thrown by the cops into the stairwell,” she said. “There were cops at the top of the stairwell that wouldn’t let them go up, and cops at the bottom that wouldn’t let them go down. A lot of students were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Gabriel Piser, a student in the BU philosophy interpretation and culture Ph.D. program, provided medical care and first aid to individuals at the protest.

“In addition to offering sunscreen, water and general wellness support to people at the larger marches, I treated activists, journalists and community members who had been injured by police crowd control agents (pepper spray, less-lethal munitions, tear gas),” he said.

Piser was arrested Friday night and detained for over 17 hours, enduring 40-degree weather and rain for a portion of his confinement.

“I am charged with two misdemeanors: failure to disperse and disorderly conduct,” he said.

Professor Patrick Regan, a professor in the political science department at BU, said that he does not think the police would describe their treatment of the protesters as violent.

“They [the police] would call that crime control, or maintaining stability, with the means available to them to control the demonstration,” he said. “From their perspective, they had 20 of the most important national leaders to protect and they weren’t going to let 5,000 or so students threaten the safety of those 20 leaders.”

Regan considers the right to protest valuable.

“The right to protest is really important to us and should be to all people,” he said. “Were they effective? They might have been effective [just] by being proponents of what they were protesting.”

However, Pfingston-Bigelow expressed a disheartened view of the effectiveness of the protests.

“I think it was effective for … the people that have become motivated and inspired by the protest, but I don’t think it will influence the members of the G20,” she said. “It’s not in political leaders’ interest to abolish the G20 because the G20 continues on their system of global capitalism and that’s what they want for the world.”

She also articulated an advocacy of big mobilization events and awareness of both local and global issues.

“A big mobilization like that is a great thing to take part in,” she said, “but it’s also a little disheartening to see that things like that don’t happen as often, or just coming back to a community like BU and a lot of people don’t know what G20 is.”