2004-09-07 - 12:02 a.m.
So I survived the week okay without getting arrested, but whew, I am breathing a sigh of relief now that those damn republicans have left the city.
My week was exhausting and emotionally draining. Knowing that so many people I know (and many that I didn’t, but it doesn’t matter) were arrested in these stupid, random sweeps and being held in a chemical filled pier on the west side (it had been abandoned for several years because of asbestos and other nasty things) was really upsetting. As was knowing that the rich and the powerful fortified inside Madison Square Garden blabbed on about how they’ve made the country safer since September 11th while people loose their jobs, housing and health care (oh, wait, they never had that to begin with), and everyone cheers and talks about how “wonderful” the spectacle is. It does not make my faith in humanity grow.
However, before I get bogged down with negativity, I really want to put out there that it was an inspiring, energy filled week. Thursday, the last day of the convention, was my most intense day. I was wearing one of my “GOP Out of NYC” shirts and heading to the Indymedia center to pick up copies of their paper to distribute when a white family got on the train wearing “GOP” and “Republican National Convention 2004” shirts. They sat right next to me and talked about how much “personality” people in NYC have while I glared at them icily. When it came time for me to get off I walked to the doors, turned around to face them and said, “I hope you know Bush screwed over New York real bad,” and stomped off the train. A small gesture, but hey, I’m going to give them a proper NYC welcome, which is none (actually, that’s not true, just don’t be a fucking asshole conservative, ya hear?). Later, I went to the Artists and Activists United For Peace march up in Harlem and bonded with an elderly African-American woman about our love for Democracy Now (kick ass radio show on WBAI hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales). It was strange, thinking about how Harlem is usually such a heavily policed (or racially profiled) community in many ways and at this march the police presence was so thin compared to the other marches I had been on. To me this said that the authorities didn’t care what we did, as long as we stayed away from the republicans (you didn’t see any delegates wandering around 125th street, now did you?).
Later on Thursday I met up with Eric D. and Lauren and we tried to figure out what the hell to do while Bush spoke. We wandered around the “leftist soup” in Union Square, avoiding sectarian paper sellers (the RCP seemed to be out in droves, ugh) and then decided to make our way to 8th ave where a permitted protest was occurring (the way dissent was getting policed was pretty ridiculous, but anyways...). So as we were herded into a protest pen we saw these people with huge signs yelling at everyone else. One of the signs read “White racists against Bush.” Um, What? Apparently it’s this super right wing group called Protest Warrior who wanted to bring concealed weapons to the protests (!!!). Needless to say, we did NOT want to be in the same pen as them. So we tried to get up closer but no dice. So we walked around and came back to the pen behind the right wing crazies that was pretty much empty except for a group sitting in a circle, playing cards and chanting “Who’s cage? Our Cage!” We weren’t sure what to do, so Eric D. suggested a theater game where two people think of an action and the other person has to guess what it is by doing random actions while the others indicate if they are getting warmer by clapping faster. However, we stopped that after Lauren and I tried to make Eric do can can kicks in the middle of 8th ave and he crumpled to a ball on the ground in embarrassment as Lauren and I proceeded to demonstrate said kicks.
So... there we were. Horrible shit was going down (metaphorically via the words being spoken a few blocks away inside Madison Square Garden and actually too in Iraq, and all over the world and inside the US thanks to the Bush administration) and we felt like our dissent wasn’t really being heard. So Eric took a piece of chalk out of his bag and we drew a hopscotch on 8th ave and proceeded to play. However, our game kept getting interrupted by cops roaring through in vans and on scooters (hey! I thought this was our cage!) and we realized hop scotch is pretty damn boring. So we spiced it up by making a rule that you either had to read from a book (Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements by John D.W. Downing) or say a slogan (and say it backwards coming back) while hopping. People looked at us. They asked if they could play. If we were doing a reading. A performance. It was amazing. After the permit for the demo ran out and police presence intensified to a scary degree without anything actually going down people marched down 8th ave chanting “No More Bush!” in an impromptu parade. We walked to Union Square and sat on a bench, taking in the leftist soup still swirling around, holding on to the last few moments of this crazy week. Then we said our goodbyes, got on the subway and went home.
Of course, it’s not over. People who got arrested still gotta lot of crap to deal with. Bush’s policies continue to screw everyone over (question for everyone: how can people say they like Bush’s health care policies when his policy is to give everyone nothing? I really don’t get it), and we all know Kerry won’t fix shit (that doesn’t mean y’all can’t vote though, if ya ain’t registered, go do it NOW). I want to think about ways we can keep organizing, keep using the energy of this week and all the preparation and scheming and talking and organizing and network, community and relationship building that went into it to realize that better world. I’ve been listening to NPR again and reading the New York Times and I feel like such a hater. I am really unhappy with how the most of the rest of the country seems to be oblivious (thanks to the mainstream media) to how bad things are and how many “regular” people disagree with Bush, I hate how conservative our culture is, I want it to change. I don’t want to spend my time being a hater. I don’t want this bile to shut me down.
One thing I was thinking about a lot when Amy Goodman interviewed two delegates from Wisconsin (and granted there’s a lot of fucking rad radicals from WI, so no Midwest comments pa-leese) and they were talking about how they believed that our culture needs more “morals” and they like “moral” things. To me this was such an indication of how whiteness works- whiteness seeing itself as good, perfect, moral, when really “moral” white people perpetuate some of the most violent crimes and systems in history (the occupation of Iraq being an obvious one, but also chattel slavery as a historical example) and I am thinking about how the “moral” heterosexual family is such a site that is rife with sexual and psychological abuse and violence. It makes me so mad. I am thinking about how the United States is really made up of a majority of people who fall outside of the mainstream (or what is made to seem like the mainstream) in one way or another: people of color, queers, immigrants, feminists, artists, radicals, poor and working people, freaks, trannies, disabled folks, people who don’t speak English... this is our country! (I in no way want to suggest that these things are equal to each other or that this is a complete list, I am just thinking about how the margins of “morality” as defined by the white, Christian right are pretty damn small) I want us to take the culture back! To create something new! Together! Something that respects everyone for who they are! And recognizes the differing histories that brought us together and the powers we hold within those. I guess this past week was a pretty good continuation of this kind of work, but we’ve got so far to go and that just overwhelms me. Every empire falls, right? But when...
