by Laura Love
Sadly, our leader was physically unable to march more than a few feet at a time, very slowly, before stopping to rest, so there were several awkward moments when all of us realized we’d be on the two-mile journey to the park for hours if we allowed Moses to stay at the helm. Respectfully, many among us began to ease up on him, some patting him on the back, even bowing their heads or thanking him as they excused themselves to scuttle past him. I stayed with him until the crowd was blocks ahead of us, before asking if he would be okay if I followed suit. “Oh yes, Ma’am, I don’t need no help,“ he assured me. Reluctantly, I began trotting to catch up with the group. so that I wouldn’t lose my way to the park.
I arrived, tired and thirsty, to a lush green opening, which was halfway between our starting point and the Mayor’s house. Like magic, a rusty old pickup truck pulled up to the park entrance and began unloading huge coolers, which they placed onto metal folding tables they’d also brought for the occasion. Like a well-rehearsed squadron, they quickly set up two feeding stations, which they furnished with paper plates, plastic utensils, condiments, beverages, and garden fresh organic greens and grains. Tabouleh, quinoa, homemade dressings, and an abundance of produce, fed those who came from the mental health clinic, as well as the several hundred more that were already on site for the Mayor’s March. As I glanced toward the edges of the park, I could see almost as many police, standing with their hands on their batons, as there were marchers. I looked skyward and saw that the law enforcement helicopter was still with us as well. Then, I looked out into the throng of people gathered at the park, and noted that Moses, inexplicably, was already there, sitting comfortably in the shade on a lawn chair, as he held court for his many friends and admirers. How in the world had he gotten to the park before me, and how come there wasn’t a drop of sweat on his brow, I wondered. And where did the chair come from? Nice touch. Get down witchyo’ bad self, Sir Moses. Contemporary music began to play from a sound system that had also magically appeared, followed by political speakers, who outlined abuses foisted on us by city leaders and the megarich in recent years.
Shortly after the lunch break, we were underway to Rahm’s house, rested, refueled and ready to rock. We trekked for half an hour, until we stood directly in front of a light-colored, two-story Victorian, with a nice front porch and a decidedly Midwestern feel. Many of the people marching looked like locals and young professionals. They wore clean clothes, were freshly showered, and had combed, blow-dried hair. The signs they were carrying were mostly asking the the mayor to do such things as, open the mental health clinics back up, funnel more money into education, employment, and social programs, and decrease spending on jails and policing. There was one in particular, however, that caught my eye. It was easily eight feet long, and required two people to hold it upright. The bearers took special care to position themselves right on the Mayor’s lawn, with the message, RAHM IS A [BLEEP] [BLEEP] UNION BUSTING PRICK.
Oh, I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of that, was my first thought. My second was surprise that a man as wealthy, controversial, and high profile as Mayor Emanuel, lived in such an accessible place. I’d expected him to inhabit a giant castle that was completely surrounded by iron gates and guards and the like. The neighborhood certainly was well-to-do and close to downtown. And its lovely, old, well-kept homes did have lots of appeal—but for God’s sake, his nearest neighbors were only a few feet away. If his windows were open, they could hear the toilet flush. Some of them were sitting on porch swings, gawking at us like we were from Mars. Sheesh, this must be some prized block. The battalion of cops who’d followed us all the way from the park did exercise some restraint by staying on the fringes of our protest, which I took as a good sign. Maybe it was to spare rich people the ugliness of a violent outbreak next to their homes. Most of us stayed on the street and curb, however there were those brazen few (like the sign bearers) who’d pushed the issue by encroaching onto his lawn.
From Rahm’s house, we walked and walked and walked and walked until my feet were blistered and bleeding. We ended up somewhere downtown, but by then, I could walk no further. I would limp a few steps and have to stop and lean against some structure to get relief. I fell far behind the rest of the group, and wondered how I’d make it back to a train stop, until a kind man on a bicycle noticed me struggling and approached me. The short but muscular man was returning from fishing on Lake Michigan somewhere, as evidenced by the silver pole protruding from a panier attached to the front fork. “How was the fishing?” I asked, trying to affect a smile.
“Better than the walking, I’d say,” he answered, affably. Then I looked down the street he came from, and saw a tall, slender woman, with similarly coffee-colored skin, a pleasant, engaging, countenance, and a silver fishing pole, identical to his, tucked in to her bike bag. “Ooooh, shoot, you look like you in a world a hurt, chile … ,” she opined, sympathetically. “How far you trying to go?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. I just need to get on the nearest bus or train that can take me to Saint Sabina’s.”
“Oh, honey, that’s a least half a mile away. You ain’t never gonna get that far on them feet. Why don’t you let my husband ride you there on the back of his bike. It ain’t no limo, but it’ll get you there better than trying to walk.”
“I don’t know …” I replied, I’m sure I weigh a lot more than he does.”
“Yeah, but my man is strong girl. He ain’t gonna let you fall. We been married twelve years and he ain’ never let me down yet,” she said, winking at him, coyly.
I was touched by the kindness of the two strangers, but hesitant to hoist myself up onto his saddle. Before I knew it, they were both gently supporting me and lifting me onto the seat. In no time, we were underway, him pedaling, me leaning heavily on him as we glided smoothly to our destination. A few minutes later, they helped me down at the train stop and watched as I took off my shoes, which were too painful to wear. The husband then reached into his handlebar basket, dug around, and produced a pair of black rubber flip-flops, which he extended to me. “You need these more than I do, so take them, Ma’am …” he sweetly ordered, as I shook my head in disbelief at their unflagging generosity.
“I don’t know how I can ever thank you two enough for saving me, today,” I choked out. “I didn’t know how I was ever going to make it back.”
“You just heal them feet up and stay out there and keep marching to get a little justice for us, honey. We lost our house too, and we see what Occupy’s been trying to do, and we appreciate it.” My train arrived, and I hobbled onto it, wearing his flip-flops, holding my old shoes, and waving back at them as we pulled away. Sitting on the hard plastic seat, I pulled my throbbing feet up to my chest so I could examine the wounds. All of my toes sported blisters of varying sizes, but the most ghastly sight was the oozing discoloration and bruising under both of my big toes. I nearly gagged when the nail covering the mess pulled off easily, with a light tug from my sweaty fingers. Later that night, as I lay in my tent, talking with Franklin and Von who were stretched out beside me, I wondered if my infirmities would repair themselves enough for me to participate fully in the next day’s NATO protest.
Tens of thousands of raucous, fired up, Occupy NATO protesters greeted us the next morning in Chicago’s Millenium Park. The infusion of energy coursed through me like current through a copper wire, as I jumped, enthusiastically, into the gathering with both feet. An enormous concrete amphitheater stage provided the platform for a dozen speakers, who educated us about the kinds of activities we should be monitoring closely around the NATO conference. They warned of the dangers we all faced, as international leaders assembled together behind closed doors to make deals and forge unholy alliances with each other, that would ultimately lead to future wars, increasing economic inequality, and the continuing degradation of the environment. Many contended that these types of collaborations would create unbreachable cabals that threatened to make our planet a generally unlivable place, designed to furthe
r accommodate corporate interests, and serve only the super wealthy few at the very top. Their conclusions were that we had to watch such organizations as NATO, the G8, the WTO, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the IMF, the NSA, and myriad others, with utmost diligence as they continued to exceed themselves in running over us and stealing the world’s resources, which, by the way, included our labor.
I mostly stood in place to see the stage, but found that my feet still hurt badly when I tried to take more than a few steps. My anxiety began to mount, as speakers wrapped up, and we were given the overview of the day’s events. Our next move was to be a medium distance hike to the closest point we were permitted to get to the actual NATO Summit, over a mile away. I was certain that I couldn’t make it, so I sent out an APB on Twitter and Facebook, asking if anyone could help me figure out a plan. Once again, my friend Ellen came to the rescue, and quickly texted me the location of a nearby bike rental shop that could help me out. I hailed a cab that was traveling a few feet from where I stood, and struck up a conversation with my driver, who, as it turns out, was from the West Bank of the Gaza Strip. As we chatted, he told me he was surprised I knew so much about a region that he said most Americans ignored. He gave me his full support of the Occupy Movement, which he credited for bringing attention to the conflicts he said were raging in his homeland. His accent was thick and hard for me to understand, but much better than my Arabic, as he said, “Every person I pick up from Occupy … knows something about my country. I am very … impressed by this. So, I tell you a story now—if you let me.”
“Please do …” I encouraged.
He went on to describe the horrors of daily existence for most Palestinians in his Israeli-occupied and controlled homeland. He called the Israelis “barbarians,” who stole Palestinian land, and murdered their children with impunity. “They act like the Nazis treated them—however,” he blurted, stabbing the air with his finger, interrupting his own train of thought, “each person have the ability to think for himself. I tell you, I can say 100% that I know, myself, that there are good people there too. I have friend … who is Palestinian, like me, who go to door of Russian family, who are Jewish, and who have come to my country to live and settle on my friend’s land. My friend—he knocked on the door and told the Russian man that this house was the house he grew up in! It was his family’s home! The Jewish man and his wife, who have lived there for many years by that time—they say, ‘No, this cannot be your house. We were told that we can move here to this place with our family, from Russia. We have been told that the houses here have been built here just for us … and that No people will be displaced. We made sure to ask them and they guarantee us.’”
“My friend, he say, ‘Yes, this was my house and it was taken from my family by the Jews. I can tell you that upstairs in the closet, there is a cat drawn onto the wall, which my daughter has done, when she was very young … and in the bathroom is a crack on the floor which looks like a fish … and in the back yard are two olive trees, which have carved stones at their base.’”
The cabbie became more and more animated as his story unfolded, “Finally, the Russian man—the Jew—he says to my friend, ‘Okay, okay, I believe you. Everything you have said about this property is true, so you must be telling the truth. And so, we have no choice but to tell you how sorry we are about what you have suffered and what has happened to you. My wife and I feel responsible for your loss. Our children are now grown, as are yours, and you say you are now alone, because your wife has died. Please accept our offer for you to live here with us. We will share this house. We insist.’”
My mouth was agape with incredulity when he finished talking, such that I scarcely noticed we’d been sitting in front of the bike rental place for a few minutes with the meter ticking. “So … my friend—he thinks about it, and he agrees to stay with the couple and they have lived together as very good friends ever since then. I get letters from him … still. This is a very good story.”
“That is the best story I’ve heard in … forever!” I exclaimed. The tale was so uplifting my heart was pounding in my chest, as I clasped his hand to hold and shake it before I left. I stood outside the passenger side, digging in my pocket for cab fare, as he leaned over and touched the window. “‘This ride is very short … you don’t have to pay me. Please tell your friends about my friend though. He has taught me that not all Jews are bad. They are brainwashed too—and everyone can decide for himself, what they are going to do in this world.”
My head was still abuzz with his happy ending as I pedaled away from the rental shop, back to Millenium Park, for the march to NATO. The bike was a little too tall, but it had been the closest they had to my size, so I settled for it. My crotch, having been inactive for much longer, was far less tender than my feet, so the occasional landing on the bar wasn’t nearly as painful as walking. Thousands of us proceeded to within a mile of the international summit, where a stage had been set up to contain the long line of military veterans who had traveled here from across America, to deliver short speeches, before returning their medals of honor at the NATO Summit. To a person, they expressed disillusionment, sorrow, anger, and betrayal for the lies they said their government had told them, in order to coerce them into fighting an unjust war under a false pretext. Every branch of the armed services was represented by the young men and women in uniform, who stood waiting patiently for their turn at the podium. One spoke of being “robbed of his humanity,” after being forced, once in Iraq, to wage a brutal war against civilians. He recalled being told he’d be fighting a “vicious enemy,” and that he would be “welcomed” by Iraqis as a protector and liberator. Instead, he had found himself thrusting his gun into the faces of terrified old men, women, and children, who had had nothing to do with 9/11, or Al Qaeda. The awards, which he referred to as, “meaningless trinkets,” had left him “broken and hollow,” as he struggled to make sense of the whole affair and regain his balance. Another spoke of being told by his government that he was in Afghanistan to “save their women from the horrors of the Muslim religion,” but once there, saw how woefully underconcerned our government was about the welfare and safety of our own service women, who he professed to have repeatedly witnessed being sexually assaulted by enlisted men—some even from his own unit. He said he grieved every day for all these women, as well as for countless Iraqis and Afghan citizens who lost their lives in the “pointless” wars. A Syrian-American woman who was Muslim, and also a US Army soldier, described her feeling of shame after having signed up to “serve her country,” post 911, only to discover that the reasons she was given were, “all a bunch of made up lies.” She contended that she had “only wanted to do (her) patriotic duty,” and was even willing to die for our freedom. “And now I feel deceived and tricked—I can hardly bear to face my own family after what I’ve done,” she lamented. One of the last to speak was Scott Olsen, the veteran Marine from Oakland, California, who’d been lucky enough to survive two tours of duty in Iraq, only to be critically injured by aggressive OPD cops, who’d split his head wide open when they intentionally lobbed a tear gas canister at him and his colleagues, while he was protesting with Veterans Against the War at an Occupy Oakland rally. The device had exploded against his skull, resulting in a near-fatal fracture, which had caused him serious brain damage that required months of intensive rehabilitation as he relearned to walk and talk again. I noticed a handful of police officers in riot gear, (some who were likely former soldiers) surreptitiously wiping away tears with black-gloved hands, under their light blue riot helmet shields. They were visibly moved by Olsen’s frailty and halting speech, as he recalled aloud his orders to “eliminate the enemy, wherever he found him.” “Once I got there, I couldn’t find any ‘enemies’ to eliminate,” he reflected. “All I found were frightened people—who just wanted to live their lives and be left in peace, like you or me, or anyone else.” Then he, like all those before him, turned his back to face the mile of road which separated us like a moat from the co
nference itself, and hurled the hardware with all his might toward it, leaving it lying impotently on the ground with the others—despised by their owners—in the middle of the heavily guarded, closed avenue.
No sooner had the last bauble hit the pavement, when the glut of omnipresent, heavily armored police, began feverishly erecting barricades and shoving people away from the collapsible stage, while simultaneously broadcasting harsh orders to disperse. A couple dozen protesters, dressed in black, began pressing forward, storming the stage area, ignoring the dispersal order, and trying to get into the newly decreed “No Protest Zone.” Fearing for my safety, I stopped filming and jammed my cell phone into a zipped pocket, just before being smashed between my bicycle and the row of metal stanchions police were erecting. Cops began yelling obscenities at startled Occupiers, who began screaming to be released from the enclosure. Many other protesters, who had managed to wind up outside the crush, began fleeing hysterically from the scene, which cleared a passageway for me to see city buses, loaded with law enforcement personnel, rolling onto a side street. As soon as officers exited the coaches, the drivers remained with the vehicles, which had been appropriated by the city of Chicago to serve as overflow paddy wagons and processing stations for arrestees. I overheard one of the cops relaying that he was, “securing the area to move some heavy artillery into the theater of operations,” over his police radio. Once again, I was struck by the use of military terminology, which seemed to be becoming more commonplace, as I eavesdropped on radio communications between cops across the nation. I was getting used to hearing words like, “deploy,” and “neutralize,” when I joined a political action and tried to exercise my right to peacefully assemble in protest of my government’s activities. I hoped the “artillery” he was referring to might simply mean one of the two LRAD (long range acoustic device) units that the Chicago Police Chief had shown off to a news crew the week prior, and not a Howitzer or live cannon of some kind. I could live without my hearing, but a direct missile hit would be hard to recover from. At the LRAD demonstration, given to the local ABC affiliate on the South Shore Beach of Lake Michigan, the CPD announced they’d purchased the pair of twenty-thousand-dollar apparatus, as a “communication tool,” to help project the directives they anticipated needing to give to the crowds who were planning to Occupy NATO. The anchorman referred to it as merely “a modern day bullhorn,” which would be used solely to give “fair warning” and “clear messages” to help avoid “breakdowns in communication” that past protesters had experienced in being able to hear orders to disperse during political protests held years earlier. He said that many participants had claimed they “just wanted to go home,” but had been caught off guard when they discovered they could not do so, after failing to catch the underamplified police command. Though he did mention that the machines were capable of emitting “high-pitched alarm tones which are not fun for the ear,” he assured the viewing public that there was no intent to use them in that way on antiNATO activists.