It’s been such a hard couple of weeks, even here in my
relatively un-police-terrorized neighborhood. My city was one of the ones with
the curfews, with the police brutality toward protesters, with the military
occupation. We’ve had so many victories, too, but I still really struggle to
put the experience into words. Mostly I’ve just been repeating it over and
over, like I did that time in the Nineties when my house burned down. Only
everything is burning down and building up all at the same time.
On Saturday the 30th, Sweetie an I were in
a big protest (I’m so fucking SICK of the phrase “peaceful protest” because of
its respectability politics implications, but it did start out that way.) and
we got separated from our friends (twenty- somethings who referred to us as “protest
moms”) just before the first fire started. (“Tear gas is an accelerant,” my
young friend later pointed out, not sure it wasn’t the police who set their own
car ablaze.) My friends were boxed in by the police and I was just outside the
crowd. Sweetie, panicking because she struggles with wearing a mask for very
long, had gone to get the car. I stood there feeling like the very epitome of a
dumb white lady, filming and sobbing, while my stuck-in-the-crowd friends
texted periodic updates so I’d know they were alive.
My friend in the crowd texted “Walk, don’t run, north.”
I followed her instructions and picked a place for Sweetie to meet me with the
car. I sat in some grass on a quiet corner, took off my mask to breathe a
little better, and snapped a selfie, mostly so I would know I was alive. My regular
check-in-buddy, my extremely mild-mannered neighbor in charge of feeding the
cats if Sweetie and I ever get hurt or arrested, had never received this
upsetting of updates. I hoped I wasn’t scaring her. I wanted to text Quarantine
Crush but I knew that made no sense. I was relieved when his facebook reactions
showed me he was out there rooting for me.
Sweetie and I were waiting in the car when our friends
finally unstuck themselves from the crowd and started making their way towards
us. They texted that they were almost run over by a police car in an intersection.
(They later clarified that it was THREE police cars that went ahead and drove
into the crossing protesters. May Heather Heyer haunt those police bitterly for
the rest of their lives.) I got out of the car and waked toward my friends and
though our county was still in the red zone, quarantine-wise, we definitely did
hugging.
Though it was the police and not the protesters instigating
and cultivating the violence and fear, our mayor put our town on curfew after
that day. I did activism from home most of that time, but many people I cared
about were still out in the now-also-military-occupied streets. I joined the
protest watch group on Facebook, so I knew when my friends had to close the
windows of their homes to keep the teargas out. I knew when the police were
dropping teargas bombs from helicopters. Like everyone else with a heart, mine
was petrified, breaking, and proud all at once. I took roll calls every morning
so I’d know my friends had survived. So far, they have.
One night, after days and nights of terror, once I
finished posting my phone number for the however manyth time in case there were
emergencies in the night, I RSVPed yes to Quarantine Crush and Adorable Co-Host’s
poetry reading, figuring I needed any comfort I could get. Figuring that things
were now so life-or-death (I know! They seemed super life-or-death before!) that
heartbreak and longing couldn’t possibly be factors any more.
Oh, Adorable Co-Host. Perhaps the person who hung up
on me because I was talking too much about U.S. imperialism after 9/11 wasn’t
the person to go to for comfort in this particular week. I feel like an actual
crazy person for having thought so.
There were many signs in the pre-Zoom-reading chitchat
that should have told me I’d better log out. Someone said “I’m glad *theyre*
protesting.” (Emphasis mine.) The apparent queen of this almost-all-white
reading piped up in favor of “states’ rights” as if we were in Civil war times.
A white guy (possibly the one who said “We’re all in cages now” a few weeks
before) used the phrase “identity politics.” I really should have logged out.
“Since we’re not gonna get abolition,” began Up-To-That
-Point-Adorable Cohost, “One way to compromise with the police would be…” I tried
to push back, but he switched into lecture mode:
“I mean, the police do good things too, like control crowds…”
I stayed for a little while. I read a nice
post-protest poem and a not-nice letter to city council. I felt so jagged and
broken that it felt like I was shouting Sweetie’s house down. (There was a weather-related
power outage at my place, so I camped out with her for a bit.) I heard what the
readers had to say, and it was good, as much as I could hear through my humming
panic and boiling blood.
Right now, I’m so angry with myself for whatever in my
heart and not-okay mind made it seem like this reading would be a place of comfort.
I’m so angry at myself for mistaking facebook friends, twenty-years ago friends,
for people who would really care about a city so far away, about me.
In the grand scheme of things, micro-abandonments by
white and/or not-sufficiently courageous friends, don’t matter so much. I know
that. What matters is that the Minneapolis City Council is in favor of defunding
the police, that my city, through the efforts of so, SO many may have a chance
at defunding as well.
Please, no matter who you are or where you are, go
beyond your usual roles. Use every platform you have, not to make a cozy space
for hand-wringing moderates, but to work for real change. Sheltering-in-place
is not an excuse for sitting by the sidelines, especially not online. Write to
your mayor, your city council, your governor, your friends. Please.
