Nights in Tents

by Laura Love

  “Come on over here ladies—it’s my birthday,” hollered one.

  “Uh oh.” Audra said, quietly.

  I walked toward them, smiling, as Audra shadowed me.

  “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” I said to the hollerer. “Do you know where Saint Sabina’s church is?”

  “Awww yeah, it’s right over there,” answered the birthday boy, pointing, helpfully.

  “Thank you so much. You have a great birthday.”

  “Thank you,“ the young man replied, respectfully, bowing slightly and tipping his dark green Kangol cap to us.

  A hundred yards later we stood directly in front of one of the large wooden entrance doors to Saint Sabina’s Church. A man that Audra knew from her long bus ride from L.A. was already there, enjoying a cigarette at the curb. Audra threw her arms around his neck and scolded him for allowing them to be separated. Her relief, however, at reuniting with her friend in this strange and foreboding place was almost palpable. I tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside the cavernous, dimly lit church gym were a dozen or so bedraggled, scruffy human beings, lying on the ancient varnished wood floor, all along the walls of the hot room. One or two industrial fans blew at full blast, providing some modicum of relief from the hot, stale air.

  Home. A kid who introduced himself as Franklin approached me with a clipboard, and asked for my name and contact information. He said that he was in charge of keeping track of everyone, and making sure we got onto his list, so I happily complied with his request. No sooner had I finished, when he began regaling me with stories of the physical ailments he was afflicted with, which included, but were not limited to; vomiting, nausea, and excessive mucous discharge. He surmised that all of these problems had been caused, and/or exacerbated, by the medication he was taking to prevent him from contracting HIV-from a total stranger he’d slept with the week prior. A sizeable cold sore was blooming underneath the peach fuzz of his upper lip, as he explained how the man had only revealed his HIV-positive status to Franklin, after they’d had sex. “I mean—I didn’t ask—we were both kinda in a hurry, and neither one of us talked much—but still …” he trailed off. Franklin informed me that there was now a course of medication, similar to the “morning after pill,” that had a 50% efficacy rate for preventing HIV transmission after unprotected sex. Apparently, though, for the highest chance of success, the medication was to be taken no longer than seventy-two hours after the encounter, which troubled him, as it had been at least a week after the tryst before he’d been able to afford the drugs. He was twenty years old, short haired, zaftig, and clearly concerned, as he worried aloud about his chances of remaining healthy. “I don’t know if I should even bother taking the meds. I mean—I gotta take them for a whole month and every time I do, I end up puking in a trash can somewhere and I don’t even see it coming. It’s like—what would you do if you were me?” I was unnerved, and even recoiling a little bit, at his willingness to divulge the most intimate, even somewhat disgusting, details of his life, however, I did notice how his graphic banter had taken the edge off the hunger that had crept up on me earlier. “What are the odds you’ll stay HIV negative if you keep the meds up?” I asked. “The doctor said it’s like … 10% or something, since I didn’t start taking them right away,” Franklin answered. “Well, it’s certainly a personal decision,” I stalled, not really having a definitive answer. “But people are living nearly normal life spans, in good health, many years after diagnosis,” I offered. “I do think I’d consider abandoning the procedure if it was me, since you feel so awful and the drugs have so many horrible side effects.” Franklin’s face immediately registered relief that someone had given him, what he interpreted as, some sort of permission, to abandon the drug regimen that was making him so miserable. His brow unfurrowed all the way, and he declared us to be a team, which I had no particular objection to, other than being tired and hoping my hunger would remain at bay. I helped him to greet and check people in that night before going to bed, and the next morning I assisted him in waking people up. We’d been kindly informed by Father Pfleger himself, the night before, that we were welcome to sleep at his church, but we were to be out by 8:00 a.m., and could not return until 8:00 p.m.—a small price to pay for all the comforts Saint Sabina’s represented, compared to sleeping outside, under a bridge somewhere, in downtown Chicago. I thanked him, and said how much I appreciated the accommodations. With my own private tent and a gym mat Franklin scored me from the basement, I was the envy of all the squatters at the church—the 1% of the 99% as it were. No one seemed to hold my relative riches against me however, since I was older than everyone there, and the kids understood how a fossil like me might need a little extra comfort. In fact, some of them began asking me questions, as if I were the den mother, and I quickly came to enjoy that role. “Is there gonna be a bus to pick us up tomorrow?” “Is there anyplace to store our gear?” “Can you get Wi-Fi?” “Is somebody gonna feed us?” The next morning as Franklin and I gently woke people up with phrases like, “Good morning, sweetie … it’s 7:25 and you’ve got about half an hour before we have to leave,” or, “Rise and shine, Valentine.” Sleepy, blinky, Occupiers mumbled, “Okay,” and “Thanks,” back at me. There were times when I half expected them to call me “Mom,” which would have made me smile. One couple was nestled together, deep in slumber inside a double sleeping bag. When I touched the young woman’s shoulder, she began to stir, and a tiny puppy wriggled out of the bag. It had slept pressed against her stomach all night, and nearly fell over backwards while yawning expansively at me, and wagging its curly little tail. The two humans told me it was female, and that they’d found her on the roadside as they hitchhiked to Chicago to Occupy NATO. They tumbled out of their bedding, and reached down into a backpack for some puppy chow they’d bought somewhere along the way. By eight o’clock, we all stood outside the church in the morning sun, hoping that the ride another camper had spoken of would be coming soon. “I dunno,” one kid said, “yesterday at the Convergence we waited hella long, and the bus never came.” That was all I needed to hear to convince me that I should hoof the half block to bus seventy-nine, and transfer to the Red line to reach the Convergence Center on Wellington Avenue. “Hey guys, I think that the Walgreens by the bus stop sells CTA transit passes for like, three bucks, that covers the whole day on buses and trains. I’m not going to take the chance of missing any marches waiting here for a free bus that might not ever come. If anyone wants to follow me to the Walgreens, that’s cool.” Suddenly, I found myself standing in the middle of a dozen panic-stricken youths, who wanted to kill the messenger who’d just delivered this abysmal news. “How’m I ‘sposed to come up with three fuckin’ dollars,” one barefoot brown girl, with an adorable short afro, no shoes, and a leather halter top wailed. Another, with freckles and long red hair, let out a woe-filled gasp, and buried her face in the crook of her arm so that none of us would see her beginning to weep. Then Franklin and a cute gay boy who’d showed up late the night before, named Von, looked pleadingly at each other, desperately hoping that the other could produce the unimaginable sum I’d quoted, to ride public transportation into town. “I guess I’ll just have to walk to the Convergence,” Von whispered to Franklin, who said, “Yeah, me too.” I didn’t know Chicago at all, but judging by the time it took us to get to Saint Sabina’s on the train and bus, it had to be at least fifteen miles away, if not more. Though I had previously considered myself to be of limited funds, I could see that I, who possessed not only a credit card, a checking account, and about a hundred twenty dollars cash, may as well have been Bill Gates to them. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and began doing the math to figure how much it would take to buy the most desperate among us, two-, or three-day CTA passes. I came up with around thirty bucks, and tried not to start a riot as I quietly offered to purchase them for the neediest kids. By then it was approaching nine o’clock, so we walked to Walgreen’s and got in line at the counter to buy the passes. As I waited there with everyone,
I speculated that, since it was getting late, we might be better off to head directly downtown and meet up with marchers, rather than go all the way to the Convergence and then ride back into town for the planned Mental Health Clinic Solidarity march, to support patients who were protesting the recent shutdown of the clinic due to a “lack of city funds.” I didn’t want to miss anything, but quickly realized the blunder, when my suggestion was met with sideways glances and anguished faces. The mysterious reaction resolved itself when someone sheepishly said, “Well, yeah but we’re starving and none of us has any money to eat. They’re feeding us on Wellington, so we gotta go there first.” My general lack of awareness made me feel like an idiot, as I compared mine to Mitt Romney’s latest remarks. “Oh yes, I just love Nascar … I don’t attend much, but I’ve got several friends who own teams.” It had amazed me that those words could come out of his mouth, right on the heels of his declaration weeks before, when he’d said, “I just love American cars. My wife has a couple of Cadillacs that she just loves, too.” This was apparently the best he could do to right the ship after it surfaced that the Romneys had a vehicle elevator installed in their garage for easier management of their personal fleet. My suggestion to forego the visit to the Convergence because of time constraints was almost as out of touch as Mitt’s latest remarks. It disturbed me to note how quickly a few years of comfort and good fortune had made me forget how hard it was to live in this country without money. At the time of Mitt’s Nascar statement, I had shaken my head in disbelief that anyone could be so clueless about the hard realities facing millions of Americans every day. Those comments, along with daily revelations of Mitt’s unscrupulous leadership at Bain Capital, incensed me to the point that I’d begun sending out a rash of snarky tweets, with rants like, “Romney” unscrambled is “R Money.” Even though I held little sympathy for Mitt, it wasn’t particularly difficult for me to understand how he’d come to be so ignorant about a huge segment of the population, but my own lack of sensitivity frustrated me. I, like many of them, grew up poor, and knew on a visceral level what is was like to yearn for things I needed or wanted, yet had no means of acquiring—save stealing, or some other illegal pursuit. Those were the realities that had inspired me to get out into the streets and “Raise a Ruckus” in the first place, yet, here I was, oblivious to their circumstances. I might as well just pack my dog into a crate, put him on the roof of my Cadillac, and go on home.

  And so it was, that it began to sink in that many of the activists I hung with were without even the slightest margin of protection against calamity in their own lives. Despite that, they’d somehow gotten themselves to this place, by hook or crook, to oppose the excesses that threatened to steal their futures. They wanted to gain some control over their destinies, and they’d heard that one of the most important actions in a participatory democracy is just showing up, so that’s what they did. They’d taken it to heart and showed up, even though they didn’t have any idea how they were going to feed or shelter themselves once they got there. They’d jumped off the cliff and begun building their wings on the way down. For them, social justice wasn’t a lofty ideal to aspire to—their lives depended on it.

  “Why don’t you guys go grab some snacks to tide us over till we get to the Convergence, and I’ll wait in line for the passes,” I said, pushing a twenty at them. Relief dominated their faces as they thanked me, before darting off into Walgreen’s aisles in search of something edible to mollify their discomfort. Soon they were inhaling fistfuls of chips, popcorn, and candy aboard the seventy-nine bus that carried us to our Red line station. The sight of them devouring their food like vagabonds in a Dickens novel compelled a middle aged black woman sitting nearby to take pity on them and ask if anyone wanted to finish the barbecue potato chips she had in her purse. They pounced on the offer, swiftly accepting the half-full bag from her hands. It was painful to watch them forcing themselves to slow down long enough to divide portions equally on the way to the church on Wellington Avenue. The woman asked if we were locals, or if we were just in town for the NATO protests (how did she know?). I remained silent, as I listened to them launch into colorful stories about their former lives in the cities and towns they came from. One thing they had in common though, was that all of them had left their homes and/or low-paying service jobs to roam the country and join up with other revolutionaries to act on their conclusions that things had gotten so bad, they had no recourse but to abandon their worlds, and get out in the streets to try to change things. As we arrived at our Red line station stop, the kind woman told us that she agreed things had gotten really bad, “especially on the South Side.” Then she told us that she supported us and hoped we wouldn’t get arrested. As we poured off the bus and onto the sidewalk, she hollered that God would be with us.

  First we rode the Red line, then transferred to the Brown line, eventually arriving at our final destination, 615 W. Wellington, where the Convergence was located. People milled about inside and out, as we entered the building and took in the rows of boxed cereal, bags of bagels, cream cheese, butter, coffee, tea, jams, and other breakfast foods displayed on the tables before us. I worried that my crew may have filled up on junk, but saw otherwise as they loaded their plates with nutritious fare. A wide opening into the kitchen allowed me to see the hive of volunteers who were rushing about, scrambling eggs, slicing fruit, frying bacon, flipping hotcakes, and washing mountains of dishes. Nearly everyone I struck up conversations with had ridden into the city on any one of a number of free buses that were still arriving from around the country. A few people were still curled up in the corner of the dining room, after arriving late the night before with no lodging lined up. The church leaders had relaxed their rule at the last possible moment, and graciously allowed them to to bed down there, when it became apparent they had no other safe choices. Spirits were lifted to dizzying heights, as the hungry began to feel full, the tired began to feel rested, and the smokers among us began to share tobacco and weed. The sun was shining, the weather was warm, but not too hot yet, and life was good. I mingled contentedly with folks, forging new friendships, for about an hour before starting to walk with them to a Brown line stop that would connect us with Occupy Chicago members who were protesting the closure of vital mental health clinics that were said to be indispensable to those who used them throughout the city. I was excited at the prospect of getting to meet some of the people that I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off as I’d watched, on an OccupyChi livestream months earlier. Somehow, patients had managed to organize and bring attention to the issue, in spite of their challenges, and even chained themselves inside one particular clinic for several days before being forcibly evicted. I found it difficult to leave my home during that time, as I nervously observed vulnerable clients, whose heartbreaking stand was being documented by a handful of individuals who were on their side. Many of the unlikely activists who had come into my living room, via Ustream, were also elderly and physically disabled, in addition to having manageable mental health concerns.

  I followed the procession of demonstrators, since I didn’t know which Brown line stop to get off on, but to my pleasure, we ended up directly in front of the same clinic the patients had locked themselves inside of a few months ago. We teamed up with those already in position, and found spots to listen to a few short speeches before we embarked. I found it fairly easy to distinguish the client activists from others on hand, because of their endearing, idiocentric mannerisms. The most visually arresting was a tall, dark black man, who was dressed only in white hospital sheets, pinned and draped upon him to look like a robe and veil, along with leather thong sandals. His hands trembled as he clutched a brass topped staff in one hand, and a weighty Bible in the other. A nearby friend called the man “Cowboy,” despite his distinctly non-Western garb. He seemed at ease, though shaky and physically fragile, as he stood on unsteady legs and gazed serenely through slightly haywire glasses. He asked if any of us were wondering why he was dressed that way. I was eager t
o validate his wardrobe choices, but not sure whether it was a rhetorical question. And if it hadn’t been, I certainly didn’t want to give an answer that would push him over the edge, since I knew from his own admission, that the clinic’s closing had deprived him of the care he relied heavily upon to function. As I deliberated my response, he moved on to explain that he had purposely outfitted himself to look like Moses as he parted the Red Sea and led his people to the promised land. He said that he, like Moses, would lead us on the march to show people how desperately they needed these facilities to stay open. He spoke eloquently about the false economy of closing places like this in Chicago, which had the potential to throw patients dangerously off-kilter, and could unintentionally cost the system much more than it saved, in the form of increased emergency room visits and elevated crime rates from those, who, with clinics like these, found their lives manageable and even enjoyable. Cowboy Moses argued that he had been able to live independently for years, with minimal assistance from this newly closed clinic, which Mayor Emanuel contended was too costly to continue operating. His sweetness and vulnerability drew me in, and made me want to make everything better for him. I wanted to defend him against the Mayor and the other city officials that had taken away his lifeline. I also wanted to get my hands on the nearest sledgehammer and bash the doors to the shuttered clinic wide open for all to enjoy and get their equilibrium back. It was approaching ninety degrees outside as I strained to hear Moses’ waning voice above the din of traffic and passers by. Something on the periphery caught my eye, and I looked across the street to see a large number of police officers gathering, with helmets, shields, zip-tie cuffs, and batons, which seemed uncalled for, given that we were perhaps only two hundred peaceful protesters. Sure, some of us had signs saying things like MAYOR EMANUEL KEEP OUR CLINICS OPEN, but the amount of cops seemed a bit heavy-handed. Similarly incongruous, was the helicopter that had begun to hover overhead and monitor our movements. Moses was completely hoarse by this time, so he wrapped up his speech and began leading us up the street, toward a large city park, that was to be our lunch stop before marching on to Rahm’s house.