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The media reports continue to show people with bandanas covering their faces, but in fact bandana faces were an extremely small minority. It was a march of ordinary people, and, well, ordinary white people when you got right down to it. I pondered this with Miranda, a Yogi For Peace. I think, I said kind of gingerly as
another speaker sped through a 2-minute message and an 8-bar chant, the people who are most likely to suffer losses first are not here today. For that reason, I did not join in the 8 bars of Hell No, when asked Are You Gonna Go?
There’s very little question in my mind: we are not going under any circumstances.
Within a few minutes I’m asked if I’m Gonna Fight. I’m sposed to say Damn Right, but I thought we were not supposed to fight. I open my mouth and close it again, then look at my shoes.
These are the other things I noted:
- the bart cars from fremont and unpleasanton are long and empty.
the bart cars from richmond and pittsburg/bay point are short and crammed, jammed, squished and layered with people.
if you wanted to dismantle the dissenting public, you would simply run these trains to a stadium run by people trained in the Skool of the Amerikkkas.
- the role of technology and instantaneous communication changes the scope of this demonstration, but also acts as a looming indictment. I cannot reach blair because the cellular service at the foot of embarcadero is maxing out.
- Instead, I wander from special interest group to special interest group because they contain my friends: women in black, americorps, transgendered punks, two families with mocha bags, and on and on. I wish I had had some connection to the Psychoanalysts Against Instability, but it only took a few seconds reflection to realize I’d have a hard time blending in. If only I’d found some Quakers. We could have shut up together.
- god almighty people move slowly when in a group.
I did not receive the instructions about demonstrations, but I would at least think we’d move at a leisurely pace, if the idea was to move. When we assemble to be still, people are constantly on the move: lateral, diagonal, getting up and down, bag crinkling, sniffing, coughing, pulling out eyebrows. Here when the flood of humanity toward a physical destination is the impressive bit… I’m stepping on heels.
Sorry.
Sorry again.
Fuck I’m sorry.
- I am beyond belief.
I still want to perform direct action through the casting of intelligent votes, but my choices continue to narrow. I asked Miranda if maybe we were spinning our wheels by standing out in the street like this. Maybe we should dig up the street, which is an imprecise metaphor for total revolution. Is this revolutionary? Miranda said that revolutionary doesn’t mean anything anymore, now that it’s used to describe how toothpaste works.
- For every sign, I wanted to start a conversation. Not practical.
- My eyes jiggled at the collision of Not In My Name signs with No Blood for Oil signs.
- Something mildly inappropriate at the block of greens stumping their gubanatorial candidate with their greeny green signs. Everyone else appeared to be identifying with the Human Race, with some points of individual concern.
- A guy in a Diet Pepsi jacket handing out a cheat sheet for indicting us policies
Dude. Your jacket. I. You. Never mind.
- Another guy in a Zabar’s hat. My mind attempts to make a political statement out of it: autonomic demonstration response
- Stop Our Crazed Government. Take Back Our USA.
- PEACE: Live In It Or Rest In It
- Oregonians for Sanity
- Bush: Inspect Yourself!
- War Is *So* Last Century
- Blow It Out Your Ass, Bush
- No War Go Giants
Upon arrival in Civic Center Plaza, I assume the leisurely pace I had been craving. Back into BART and back to Jingletown, I coerce MZ into burning some fossil fuels in order to connect me with a roast turkey and cranberry sandwich from the tiny alameedy place. It’s the last day of daylight saving, but I spend it dozing on the couch surfing for news reports but in the end permitting a program on Pan Am Flight 103 to spin it’s dramatic timeline into my twilight.
My fall melancholy has officially returned. |
