by Laura Love
Just as the show was ending, someone shouted out, “Hey, you guys, listen—I just picked up a tweet from OSF [Occupy San Francisco] that said they’re calling off the bridge shutdown tomorrow.” What! I thought. What is he talking about. That can’t be right. There’s a whole apartment full of people here, (and presumably throughout the Bay Area) that came out specifically to do just that. The next day’s plans were so openly discussed that even the mainstream local news stations, like KRON and KTVU, had warned commuters to avoid the anticipated mess if they could. How now, could a message of such magnitude, ordering us to call off a major uprising, be reaching us by way of a flippant, eleventh-hour, 140-character tweet. Why not just tweet everything. Hey how about tweeting your best friend that his parents just died in a car crash. Why even bother with the formality of an email when you’ve got important news … that’s two steps more than you need. And direct messaging is time consuming. Just put it all out there on your feed. Let’s litter the airwaves with tweets like, “Dr. Mason frm Oncology @Mayo—Yup u got cancer. smh. Btw its pretty fast moving so u shld get up to date on wills, DNRs, powr of attorney etc”
I mean, what in Sam Hill was going on here? The room quickly erupted into a state of confusion as bewildered people, like me, hastily logged onto their accounts to make some sense out of the announcement. Speculation about the trustworthiness of the source began to abound as folks tried to glean who the person(s) behind OSF tweet was, and we wondered aloud amongst ourselves if we could reach him or her. It was baffling to me that no one in that room full of insiders seemed to be able to identify the real-life human being that had pushed the buttons to send that tweet. Someone else clicked onto a link sent in the body of a tweet that led us to a statement that had come, supposedly, from OSF, outlining the reasons why they (whoever they were) had decided to call off the bridge closure. The main reason cited was that the Port of San Francisco had just put out a press release announcing their own plan to preemptively close the Port of San Francisco the next day in order to encourage Occupiers to call off their action. Since the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the main routes in and out of the Port, OSF was now claiming victory, in the form of a one-day disruption of service in the commercial operations at the Port of San Francisco. It occurred to me momentarily that I may have been letting my frustration get the better of me when I vented, “I just flew here from fucking Hawaii to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge and now some voice from the clouds is saying we’ve won and it’s off? I mean … how can anyone call a one-day port closure “victory?” We gotta get out there tomorrow to show the world that We are the ones who decide when, how, and if business gets done in this country!” Some nearby heads nodded in approval, while others seemed anxious to distance themselves from my rant. Perhaps revealing that I’d just been vacationing in Hawaii hadn’t been the best strategy to win the hearts and minds of my mostly impoverished companions, some of whom were eating Top Ramen in styrofoam bowls as they sat on the floor. As I searched the room for consensus, I heard PunkBoy’s calm, rational voice in my ear, “Well, Sweetie, it is a victory of sorts that they’re freaked out enough to go as far as to shut themselves down for a day and I just don’t think we’d have the numbers to pull it off anyway. SFPD’s been saying they’ve got an army waiting to shut us down if we try to shut the bridge down, and we all know what that means. They’ll probably bring out the paddy wagons and the heavy artillery and if we don’t have thousands and thousands of protesters out, we’ll get creamed. We’d probably get creamed either way.” The only one in the room who seemed as crushed as I was Georgie, who seemed on the verge of tears. As the news sank in, he dejectedly offered, “Well, maybe Oakland’s got something big up it’s sleeve, or Blac Bloc, or something.” Laura Koch and I ended the night by making a plan to meet up with PunkBoy early in the morning to decide what to do.
We arrived back at his apartment at 6:00 a.m. May Day morning. We walked the many stairs to his door and knocked. No response. After a few more knocks, J’Tao’s face emerged, bed-headed bleary-eyed, from the cracked door. “Oh hey guys. Yeah, c’mon in … no one’s quite up yet.” We hung out as some began to stir within their sleeping bags or under bedding on the floor. An hour later, he and two other streamers crammed into Laura’s car to make an exploratory run across the Golden Gate Bridge. A block before we reached it, we saw a group of police standing around in their uniforms with their helmets on and their batons showing. At the entrance to the bridge stood dozens of riot cops, standing at the ready—waiting for our arrival. Very few cars crossed with us as we stared out at the hundreds of officers stationed along the entire span of the bridge. “Yup, they’re here …” observed PunkBoy,” there’s no sense in trying something cute.”
I agreed that it would be unwise to try to resurrect the plan, particularly since there was hardly any traffic on the route anyway, so we returned to PB’s place and gave the news to the others. Most everyone seemed to take it in stride, as they hopped onto their social media and began checking in with others to formulate a Plan B. After breakfast, Laura dropped me off in downtown San Francisco at Market Street before heading home to put in some billable hours, as a lawyer, for her employer. A large, friendly gathering of performance artists, dancers, musicians, and peaceful protesters was amassed there. Thousands of people mingled about on the blocked intersection, some with small children, others with signs, chalk, and washable paint, to decorate the entire area with temporary installments of colorful scenes bearing inspirational, revolutionary slogans. The sun shone brightly on us all as we cavorted under the watchful eye of the police, who were maintaining a fairly low profile while patrolling the perimeter. As disappointed as I was that we weren’t forcing the issue on the bridge, it was gratifying to see everyone enjoying themselves, unmolested, on that beautiful day. An hour or so in, I picked up a tweet from Occupy Oakland 3 saying that there was a skirmish at City Hall, and some had broken out windows and were engaged in a struggle with the OPD. I squinted to locate the nearest BART train to head over there quickly. Georgie, who was hovering near me, had just picked up the same tweet, and instantly recruited me to help him navigate the complexities of taking the BART to Oakland … and to pay his way there. “Is Oakfosho gonna be there? Are they going to arrest us? I left my gas mask at PunkBoy’s house … I’m hungry,” came the ceaseless prattle of poor, confused, curious, George, who never seemed bothered that I only occasionally answered his infinite array of questions. We got off the train at Twelfth and Broadway, just outside City Hall, and hit the ground running. Indeed, there was a smattering of broken glass evident on the front of the building, as well as a dozen or so police pacing the grounds, but other than that, nothing particularly urgent was afoot. If there had been a confrontation, it had all been resolved by the looks of it, and either the participants had fled or been arrested and were clean out of sight by then. George wailed piteously at my side as he took it all in. Not wanting to witness his disappointment bloom into a tantrum, I put on a brave face, hoping to mask my own feelings of doubt and despair. It looked as if the revolution I’d invested so much hope into might be dying. “Let’s get you something to eat. I bet that’ll cheer you up,” I proposed gaily to my forlorn little buddy with the hangdog face. His mood brightened considerably as he jumped up and down and pointed excitedly to a big fat corporate Burger King he’d been eyeing for awhile, right across the street. Minutes later we were sitting opposite each other, inhaling our Whoppers and fries, as I wondered where the revolution had gone.
Chapter 10
Occupy NATO—M20
May 18-21, 2012
Two weeks after an underwhelming May Day in the Bay Area, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Omak, Washington, to stay the night with friends in Seattle. The next morning, Friday, May 18, I hopped the new Sound Transit light rail link to the airport, and then settled in for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Chicago. I’d spent those intervening weeks at home, regrouping for the next action, while I planted my organic, open-pollinated, vegetabl
e garden in the warming spring sunshine. I hoped I wouldn’t be as plagued by pocket gophers as the year before, when I’d lost nearly all of my green beans and carrots, which were literally being yanked underground, (just like I’d seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons) the moment they were ripe and ready to eat. En route, I thought about all the daunting tweets and Facebook posts I’d been picking up, describing the formidable police response Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was planning to unleash on any misguided fool who dared think s/he could breeze in to Chicago and Occupy his NATO conference without an unpleasant consequence. Rahm, whose previous job title had been White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama, put the entire NATO Summit area in downtown Chicago, on highest threat alert status, and expressed his determination to thwart us in every way possible. He promised to hit us hard with everything at his disposal. It was widely publicized that he had spared no expense in outfitting his law enforcement professionals with lots of new gadgets, some of which were military grade weapons systems that were identical to those currently in use by US armed services in the Middle East. Rahm said he would stop at nothing to make sure the NATO Summit went off without a hitch. He had hurriedly enacted a law making it illegal to assemble within a certain distance from NATO events. Then came the assertions that he would scramble the Internet, deploy a massive, cooperative, interagency police force of thousands, close Chicago Transit Authority stops into the antiprotest zone, and use tear gas and other “nonlethal” weapons to disperse us if he deemed it appropriate. He also purchased an LRAD system(long-range acoustic device) for use by the CPD, which emitted an eardrum-splitting sound that could cause permanent hearing loss, and even possible organ damage, along with helicopters and tanks if necessary. He assured NATO participants, as well as the citizens of Chicago, that he was ready for us. It was dawning on me that the mayor, and the country at large, considered Occupy to be public enemy number one, and wanted to eradicate it at all costs. WBBM Newsradio Chicago was reporting that an email had been obtained from Milwaukee Red Cross volunteers, saying that the NATO summit “may create unrest of another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.” Although officials at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication said the directive did not come from them, a chapter spokesperson disagreed by stating, “Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service.” It felt for all the world like I was preparing to go into combat—the only difference being, our side was unarmed. I thought there was supposed to be a thing called the Posse Comitatus Act that limited the government’s ability to use the military as a police force against its citizens. I was so concerned about the blurred lines between the military and the police, that I did some research, and indeed, the law does exist, and it’s been in place since 1878. I googled the statute, which also yielded me discouraging revelations that certain politicians around the country were pushing hard to alter it, or do away with it altogether. John Warner, R-VA, chairman of the Armed Services Committee under George W. Bush, had signaled his desire to change the law as an impediment to effective policing. Former Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita called Posse Comitatus “a very archaic statute that hampers the president’s ability to respond to a crisis.” I guess, technically speaking, the mayor wasn’t planning to turn the army on us, he was turning the police into a domestic army … to turn on us.
Though I was apprehensive about going, I needed to feel like I was doing something to counter the doubling down on dissenters that I was seeing everywhere I traveled. The language coming from politicians and corporate mouthpieces was alarming to me. New York City billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg had recently been quoted as saying, “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” I’d also read a request from Oakland police officers, who told local newspapers that they needed additional funds to purchase a bigger arsenal to respond to counter threats like the, “IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and pipe bombs that were coming out of the Occupy Movement.” I’d never seen so much as a firecracker being thrown at any of the demonstrations I attended—broken windows, yes, graffiti, yes … an overturned garbage can set alight … yes … even plastic water bottles being thrown on one occasion—but IEDs? Pipe bombs? No. Another recent development I noted, was the growing emergence of partnerships and alliances between municipal police departments and military contractors, (like Halliburton and Bechtel), resulting in disappearing distinctions between cops and soldiers. Fox News, (which we all called Faux News), Rush Limbaugh, and others of that ilk, were representing people like me to be the pitiful remnants of a dying fad—a bunch of lunatic, fringe, lazy, homeless, stinky hippies that belonged in mental institutions, rather than sullying city streets. Conservative on-air personalities such as Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter were doing their utmost to convince their viewers that America was fed up with our inane rot, and had had it up to here with our rants about police states and corporate greed. According to them, we were little more than outliers on a perfect bell shaped curve. The Heartland Corporation had bought and placed a number of billboards around Chicago, before NATO, showing images of infamous villains Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski. The captions read: STILL BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING? SO DO THEY. The comparison of environmental activism to mental illness, and the association with convicted murderers had infuriated so many, that the outcry prompted Heartland to remove them shortly after installation.
My friends Ellen and Barbara, whom I’d met ten years earlier at one of my Chicago concerts, had offered to pick me up at O’Hare airport, as well as to put me up at their house in Algonquin, (a suburb about forty-five minutes from the city) while I was Occupying NATO. That seemed like a great option to me, so I said yes, and prepared to stay with them. But just before I left Seattle, I picked up a handful of messages from event organizers, saying that Mayor Emanuel’s promises to severely restrict access to areas near the conference should be taken seriously; therefore, it would be wise to seek lodging within the city limits, for fear that some of us would find it difficult to re-enter if we left. Could they just do that? Could mayors and other politicians invent laws on the spot that closed off large areas of a city (or country) to people who planned to assemble to protest their government’s nefarious activities? What if you happened to live in one of those cordoned off areas, and all of a sudden, you had no public transportation to and from your home, nor could you log onto the Internet, or make calls from your cell phone, even in the case of emergencies? What if, in order to be allowed into your neighborhood, you’d be asked to produce copious documentation proving that you did indeed reside there, which may or may not suffice to convince the police to let you in … especially if you looked “suspicious” to them in any way. What if you’d forgotten your ID, or had none with the current address on it? Would you not, then, be able to reach your children to escort them off the school bus, or get into an apartment where you were pet sitting? Was this an acceptable trade-off for whatever security and safety assurances you’d been given?
Fortunately, Ellen and Barbara took my change of plans in stride, and in their kindness, even purchased a tent, along with a sleeping bag, which they placed in my hands as soon as they greeted me at O’Hare airport’s, Vestibule 3H. I’d learned online at Occupy Chicago.org, that a downtown church, St. James Cathedral, had generously offered to let us stay on their property as a place of refuge and shelter from police brutality. We arrived at 65 E. Huron, where the church was located, and Ellen escorted me, sleeping bag, tent, and all, through the open door. It was a grand old house of worship, possessing rich stained glass windows and antique oak pews. Ellen and I saw that the church was about a third full, perhaps a hundred fifty people, and everyone was listening to a speaker at a podium on the altar. Relief washed over me as I took in the scene of my temporary home. We were walking toward the aisle to sit and listen to the speaker when two women intercepted us. One sa
id, “Excuse me, who are you?” as she eyed my sleeping bag suspiciously. Though I was taken aback by her clipped tone, I could understand why Occupy Chicago would exercise caution to ensure that I wasn’t a cop, or an agent provocateur, or something equally offensive. After all, having just landed, I was still clean, coiffed, crisp, and dressed fairly conservatively. And, at fifty-two, I was well past the age of many of my fellow revolutionaries. “We’re here with the Occupy Movement, and I saw your offer to house us, so I was planning on staying here for the next three days.” The woman’s eyebrows shot up as she tried to contain her hostility. She then turned to her frosty colleague who said, “This is a private meeting ma’am, you aren’t allowed to join this group.” Startled, I looked at the other woman and said, cleverly, “Ummmmmmmm, really? Uh, are you sure? I mean, ‘cause like, we were told by Occupy Chicago, on their website … that we could stay here during NATO … so, like, what exactly is this meeting.” The first woman snapped, “It’s a private meeting and that’s all I can say.” I didn’t know what to say next, so my friend, Ellen, queried, “What exactly is this meeting, and who are these people?” The woman began to reiterate, “It’s private …” when her colleague interrupted, “It’s Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you aren’t here for that meeting, you should go, or maybe, I could take you downstairs to the office and you can ask them all your questions.” That didn’t sound very encouraging to me, however, I still believed we were in the right place. I could imagine that, in a large city like Chicago, there could possibly be 150 alcoholic Occupiers who’d called a special AA meeting for themselves, as well as for the benefit of visiting alcoholic Occupiers.