Consequence

by Steve Masover

  “Who’s involved in that?”

  “A lot of small players from all over. Affinity groups, each one sends a representative to a spokescouncil—same model as antinuke organizing in the eighties.”

  “Sectarians?”

  “Only to the extent that the Trotskyists show up for pretty much everything. The bigger distraction is a nonprofit, Global Justice. The woman who runs the organization is something of a control freak.”

  Brendan nodded. “Allison and Nora were telling me about her. Meg something or other?”

  “Meg Wyneken. Allison can’t stand her. Meg’s trying to hold the reins, but the scale of the thing will keep it relatively decentralized.” Christopher paused while a delivery truck rumbled by. “Point is, the police are going to put fences around Moscone, trot out the horses and the motorcycles, the whole containment scene. Like the economic summits, the G8 or WTO. Like they did here, for that matter, during the Democratic Convention in ’84.”

  “I was still an innocent in the suburbs of Baltimore then,” Brendan said.

  “An innocent?” Christopher asked, throwing Brendan a dubious look. “In any case, somebody’ll try to bust through, there’ll be skirmishing—”

  “And that’s what the news is going to show.”

  “As always. Kids fighting cops, never mind the point of the protest. We need a message we control and that media can’t ignore, to keep the coverage political.”

  “Hence a banner on the bridge.”

  “A banner as big as a billboard. And they can’t ignore us if we shut down the main artery into the city.”

  Brendan took a hit of coffee from his to-go cup. “Allison started to tell me about this carpool thing.”

  “Fifteen vehicles aligning into rows just past the toll plaza, three deep by the time we get to Treasure Island,” Christopher said. He drew a diagram in the air as they walked. “The front rank is the biggest cars we can muster. They stop, the buffer cars stop behind them. Our merry pranksters jump out of the first row and form a human blockade in front of the buffer rows. The front cars split. The buffers are masquerading as commuters, but the point is to form a cushion against drivers who are tempted to try something stupid.”

  Brendan thought for a moment, nodding. “So nobody’s car gets impounded, and nobody gets run over.”

  “It’s basically what people did in ’89 on the Golden Gate Bridge. An ACT UP spin-off organized it. They called themselves ‘Stop AIDS Now or Else.’”

  “I remember that,” Brendan said. “When we were in college. They stopped traffic for nearly an hour, right?”

  “And got massive press. National.”

  “Okay, so what about the banner?”

  “We’re going to have a van out front, maybe two. The climbers, the banner, bikes to get the climbers off the bridge if the cops are slow enough showing up. That’d make it harder to press heavy charges.”

  “And Marty’s a climber? With that pile of gauze taped to his head?”

  “The stitches’ll be out by then,” Christopher said. “There’s a lot of safety gear involved. Harnesses, carabiners, belay devices. That’s where the tower crew is today, out bouldering for practice.” He paused. “It seems plausible when Marty tells it.”

  “Allison said nobody knows what’s on the banner yet.”

  “Not yet.” They were stopped at a light.

  “Does that worry you?”

  “Hell yes, it worries me.”

  Brendan polished off his coffee and sank the cup into a trash can. The signal turned green. “And this is totally underground? No connection to public organizing?”

  “If we planned this thing in an open meeting, the cops would catch on and stop it.”

  They took the next block in silence. “What if you buy cars that’re ready for the junkyard?” Brendan asked. “Cheap. Barely enough juice left to wheeze onto the bridge. You could add half an hour to clearing the road, then just let the cops keep ’em.”

  Christopher looked over, surprised. In fact, he found himself a little irritated. It had taken him weeks to dream up a scenario that would require tow trucks to clear the road, and a lot of wrangling to convince the others to try to make it work. Brendan had been their best tactician from way back, and he apparently hadn’t lost his edge. “We’d make a lot of annoyed commuters angrier,” he said, floating Nora’s initial objection to see what Brendan would make of it.

  “True, but you’re playing to media, not to drivers on the bridge.”

  “That’s pretty much what we decided,” Christopher said. Brendan’s argument was the one he had advanced. “I had the same thought as we started planning this thing, so we’re checking out whether we can make it happen. Eddie Bourgeaut is scouring Mendocino County for wrecks.”

  “That’s perfect! Everybody along those twisty little roads has a rustbucket parked out back. How’s Eddie doing? I saw he’s still got a room upstairs but nobody said anything.”

  “Same as ever,” Christopher said. “Happy to stir up trouble so long as he can wake up in the woods. Still renting us the building for next to nothing.”

  “That remains the luckiest break ever.”

  “Like Dickens. Our whole scene happens because some flower child inherited real estate.”

  —

  The march was still pouring into Civic Center as Brendan and Christopher arrived. Traffic had been diverted, and a flatbed truck with a sound system was parked between the domed edifice of City Hall and a sea of protesters. A twelve-foot puppet of Mahatma Gandhi towered over the throng, waving a hand-lettered sign: “Victory by Violence is Defeat.”

  Brendan spotted the others first. “Allison and Jonah,” he said, pointing across the lawn.

  “Good eye. There’s Zac too, by the guy with the Bush mask.”

  Allison was speaking with a young woman of ambiguous ethnicity, coppery brown skin stretched taut over high cheekbones, epicanthic folds hooding dark, sardonic eyes. Allison crossed her arms, frowning at the well-groomed grass. Jonah was watching the crowd.

  “Who’s Allison talking to?” Brendan asked.

  “Leona Kim, last year’s student body president at SF State. She turned out thousands of students at the antiwar demos. Also my colleague at the Reporter since late last year, on the distribution crew.”

  They worked their way over, past a cluster of protesters wearing leather and kaffiyehs. Several were hawking newspapers for the Revolutionary Communist Party while a woman bristling with spiked wristbands shrieked into a bullhorn.

  “Serious turnout,” Christopher said when they reached the others. Allison looked up and gave a satisfied nod. A dozen musicians in fluorescent colors blared a rough polka for tuba, trumpet, and snare drum a few yards off, competing with the polemic droning from the sound truck.

  “Whassup, Christopheles?” Leona said. Christopher self-consciously bumped her proffered fist.

  “Leona, this is our old friend and comrade, Brendan. Brendan, Leona.”

  “How was the march?” Brendan asked.

  “Impressive,” Allison said. “Dolores Park was wall-to-wall, I’d put the crowd at twenty, twenty-five thousand.”

  “Zac’s speech went okay?”

  “He riled ’em up,” Leona said. “Zac was on fire.”

  “Only a fraction of the people were paying attention,” Allison added. “As usual. You guys should have come out for it.”

  “I was listening,” Jonah said.

  Brendan laughed. “But you’ve got a dog in the fight. If Zac messed up, the whole collective would be humiliated.”

  Jonah looked at him distrustfully. “It’s not like that.”

  “He’s teasing you, Jonah,” Christopher said.

  “So Leona just shared some surprising news,” Allison said.

  Christopher heard a strain in her voice. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I ain’t seein’ the surprise in it,” Leona said. “Meg hired me on at Global Justice.”

  “Really?” Christopher
looked to Allison, but she was staring at the grass again. “I know you’ve been sitting in on that weasel’s meetings, but you’d work for her?”

  “Y’all really got to go frothy at the mouth over her? It ain’t nothin’. Meg got her steering committee. Now she needs Youth Outreach and Street Protest Coordination.” Leona enunciated her duties precisely. “Who else she gonna find fits the job?”

  Christopher sighed. Leona was right. Meg was just following her flip-charted logic, the nonprofit Left’s perennial script. Control the committees, rope in media, then line up activists hungry for exposure they couldn’t generate without a seasoned organization’s infrastructure. “Fair enough,” he said. “I can see where you fit into the Red Queen’s plan. She wants Global Justice to hold all the cards when the GeneSynth protest goes down. What I don’t get is why you’d shill for her.”

  “Shill? Be careful, Christopheles. You know how desperate Little Miss Wyneken is to dye-versify that hippie haven, an’ if I’m already organizing ’gainst GMOs, might as well have a desk and a paycheck.”

  Zac sauntered over, costumed in a credible imitation of John Lennon’s satin coat from the Sgt. Pepper’s album cover, complete with daisies for epaulets. “Hey guys, what do you think?”

  “Pretty good,” Christopher said, grateful for the interruption. “Not like February before the war, but still. We heard you were awesome at the park.”

  “It went okay. Don’t look now,” Zac said to Brendan, tilting his head back toward the group he’d just left. “That guy in the silver tank top? Gideon Freedman from Queers Against Occupation. He thinks you’re a babe.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Brendan reddened. “You know, last February is not what I’d aspire to,” he said, replying to Christopher. “Eleven million peaceniks who couldn’t stop Bush from bombing Baghdad?”

  Allison looked up, eyes flashing. “What would you aspire to?” she asked. “Are you going to judge the worth of a struggle by how the government responds to it?”

  Brendan raised his hands in mock surrender. “Not the worth,” Brendan said. “Maybe the efficacy.”

  “That’s it,” Leona said, nodding agreement with Brendan. “Power don’t give a damn how many freaks are shakin’ signs on th’ other side of the fence. Makin’ eleven million happen was huge, but it ain’t real ’til we move that muscle to where decisions get made.”

  Allison shook her head. “Turning out eleven million people—eleven million—moves muscle to exactly where decisions get made. We did our part. We created enormous space for insider dissent. It’s the media that failed, and Congress failed harder.”

  For a moment Brendan looked as if he would say something more, but he didn’t.

  “The argument is infinite and circular,” Christopher said. “Nobody knows what’s going to work until it does.” He wondered whether Allison was really annoyed with Brendan, or just on edge after hearing about Leona’s new employment. He wouldn’t mind if she kept a wary distance from her former lover. But he’d be an idiot to get between them.

  “Look,” Jonah said, pointing toward the back of the plaza.

  Several hundred demonstrators were milling around the steps of the public library. Most were dressed in dark clothes and wore bandannas or ski masks. A formation of riot police by the Asian Art Museum, and another in front of the Civic Auditorium, were positioned to cover a charge in either direction.

  “Black bloc,” Christopher said. “The young’uns are getting bored with speech making.”

  “Any bets the cops are going to overreact?” Zac asked. “I don’t think they’ll stand for a replay of last year.”

  The anarchists were splitting into two groups, and beginning to slip around the library’s north and south façades. “Clever,” Brendan said. “Scramble the cops, then join back up. Odds on the Burger King across the plaza?”

  “Plate glass ain’t got a chance,” Leona said.

  Christopher nodded. “Should we watch?”

  “Sure,” Brendan said, “if we don’t get too close.”

  “Me too,” Jonah said.

  Allison shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not, Mom?”

  “We’re here to make a political point, not to break windows and provoke the police.”

  “But Chris and Brendan are going—”

  Allison cast a baleful eye on each of the bad examples in turn. “Chris and Brendan are beyond being influenced by confrontation for its own sake. You’re not. And I don’t want you to get hurt. You never know how that kind of breakaway is going to end.”

  “That’s totally unfair—”

  “I ain’t gettin’ near that foolishness,” Leona said. “That ain’t what today’s about.”

  “I’m going to pass too, Jonah,” Zac said. “The black bloc kids are stuck in an endless loop. A girl can only take so much samsāra.”

  —

  On the far side of the library, the breakaway crowd pressed toward barriers set up to protect the chain store’s windows. Motorcycle cops from the tac squad formed a rolling guard on either side.

  “No easy wins for the forces of chaos,” Christopher said as they neared UN Plaza.

  Brendan nodded. “Looks pretty locked down. The cops have seen this movie a few times before.”

  Revving their engines, the motorcycles fell back as the anarchists surged against the barricade. Police on the other side stood with helmet shields down and batons held ready. An aggressive few feinted in the direction of masked rabble-rousers, but most of the riot cops gave no sign where they might strike, or when.

  From the middle of the crowd, a stubby red cylinder arced over the police line and slammed into the restaurant window. A cheer erupted, and the police took a choreographed step closer to the barrier. The window remained intact; if the glass had cracked, damage was too slight to make out from a distance.

  “What was that?” Brendan asked.

  “Coke can?”

  A woman beside Christopher snorted dismissively. “Typical,” she said.

  Christopher looked over. Fifty-something, he guessed. She wore an embroidered blue peasant blouse over black spandex, and pink running shoes piped in silver. An armful of library books, Jodi Picoult’s Second Glance topping the stack. “What’s typical?” Christopher asked.

  “These peace-and-love people lobbing rocks and bottles as if they’ve never heard of a brain concussion.”

  Christopher nodded, but he didn’t reply.

  “The cops ought to beat some sense into them.”

  He looked to Brendan, who elbowed him gently, egging him on. “Do you really think so?” Christopher asked the woman.

  “They’re asking for it. I went out with one of those types once. On and on about Vietnam and the draft, but he really just wanted to break things. His mother should have spanked him when she had the chance.”

  Christopher stared, incredulous. “Seriously?” he asked. “They’re kids, and they’re pissed off. Busting windows may not be effective politics, but it’s what happens when government lies and kills and makes itself unaccountable.”

  She turned to face him, hardening her expression. “That’s just the kind of thing he used to say. The boyfriend. And you know what? That’s why the police are licensed to carry guns and you’re not. We vote in this country, we don’t govern by riot.”

  Christopher shook his head sadly. “People don’t riot unless and until elections aren’t working. And governance has always been messy in this country, ever since the Boston Tea Party.” He turned back to the confrontation at the barricade, but the woman wasn’t finished.

  “Show me one of these bandanna-wearing buffoons who can even spell governance. The minute they finish their temper tantrum they’ll hire lawyers to whine about free speech rights. That’s as far as they can imagine when it comes to governance.”

  He turned toward her once more, giving her library books a significant glance. “This crowd is past spelling. They’re here because they’ve conclu
ded that statist governance is broken. I bet you could find a dozen in that crowd who’ve read every word Peter Kropotkin wrote.”

  “Who cares? I never even heard of him.”

  “Kropotkin was a Russian prince,” Christopher said, wondering what the average Jodi Picoult fan thought of titled nobility.

  The woman didn’t even slow down. “What do these hooligans care about Russian princes?”

  “They’re not hooligans,” Christopher said. “They’re anarchists, and I’d wager most of them have read more political philosophy than you’re holding in that stack of library books. In addition to being a prince, Kropotkin was an intellectual—”

  “Oh, please—”

  “—and an anarchist,” Christopher continued. “Your categories are way off target. You don’t want to assume people are ignorant or unthinking just because they’ve come to different conclusions than you have.”

  The tac squad wheeled around to cut off the crowd’s retreat. A formation of riot police approached the breakaway, from the street side of UN Plaza.

  Brendan edged nearer, and Christopher followed, happy to step away from a pointless encounter. A shrill whistle sounded. “You think they have undercovers in there?” Christopher asked.

  “Hell yes. But what’re the chances they saw anything? By the way, you better hope your friend with the pink shoes isn’t caught behind any bridge blockades.”

  Christopher laughed. He realized his hands were balled into fists. Self-consciously, he unclenched. The far edge of the crowd began to fray. “It’s over once they get mobile,” he said.

  The mob accelerated toward Market Street. A phalanx of riot police remained behind the barriers, guarding against a sudden about-face. The tac squad eased their motorbikes into a single file escort, rolling along both sidewalks, between the marchers and anything worth breaking.

  “Looks like Burger King gets a pass,” Brendan said.