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Sunday, Apr. 13, 2003 / 5:01 p.m. ~Empowered - A Fantastic Weekend, and a Sunburn as Souvenir~ This is my first time online since I checked email briefly after work on Friday. It feels like months have passed since then. I locked this up for a bit, but I didn't have email addresses for eveyone who links to me, so that didn't work so well. I sort of assumed everybody is having their email routed through Diaryland, i.e. [email protected], but alas, they are not, and so the shackles come off. If ever I lock this again, and you want to read, please drop me a line at [email protected], and I'll gladly send you the password. I'm only trying to keep one or two people out, and unfortunately the only way to block one or two is to shut it down altogether, not my favorite solution. LiveJournal offers a 'friends only' option, wherein one can click a checkbox and have that entry viewable to people listed on her 'friends list'. Andrew is not that far advanced in his Diaryland options. Enough of that. This has been an amazing weekend. Truly, truly amazing. Going back to Friday, I felt sick throughout the day, nauseous, dizzy, lightheaded, weak, like I was 'coming down with something', but I told myself it must be psychosomatic, and I believe it was. I came really close to canceling the trip, calling the organizer and saying I'd been feeling sick, couldn't make it, use the money I'd already paid (!) to subsidize someone who can't afford it, I'll just eat the cost, but I bucked up after work, I came home and showered and washed up, as if I were getting ready for bed, packed a couple things in my pack, chose some CDs, grabbed a pillow off the sofa, stuffed it in a pillowcase, overfed the cats (you should've seen them waddling around with bellies the size of pregnant cows'!), and headed out. Bought some buttons from a woman selling them to pay for her trip, watched mall security (we met in a mall parking lot, next to a train station) try to chase away the TV news camerawoman, held a sign behind our organizer as she was interviewed for the TV news. Hopped aboard the bus and a man who could be Sandy's clone sat next to me. He had stuff, just like Sandy, bags, and a cooler, and a huge sleeping bag, and stuff to make buttons, as he was also selling them to subsidize his trip. It was fun to watch him make buttons, I'd never seen anyone make them before, and I bought the first one I watched him make on the bus. But he talked a lot, revealed too much (why do people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome persist in telling eveyrone they have it? - just the words 'irritable' and 'bowel' used in the same phrase or sentence is enough to have me running in the opposite direction), didn't listen when I spoke, and kicked the seat in front of him, which happened to be where driver number one was trying to sleep while driver number two got us going. Driver number one was most pissed off, and he enjoyed relaying the story later, illustrating the pounding on the back of his seat by elbowing the headrest as hard as he could. Me thinks he exaggerated just a tad. Sleeping on that bus is the worst experience in recent memory, and unfortunately I've done it four times in the last two years now. The road to Virginia is horrible, very bumpy, with many potholes, many breaks in the pavement, ba bump, ba bump!, ba bump!, sort of all night long. And this was not the 'new' bus I'd heard about, this was one of the old ones, in fact the one I rode in January. A narrow seat which barely contained my little body, and certainly did not contain the Sandy clone, who shall be known as 'Dean'. 'Dean' was all over me, without really trying, or trying, I don't know, but I need my personal space and there wasn't room on this bus. Bus trip aside, what a cool group of folks. One woman turns 70 in a couple months - she marched for civil rights, with MLK Jr, and against the Vietnam War, of course. One elderly couple, around her age, haven't missed a march since April of last year. There were students, Muslims, some first timers, a girl in 10th grade, along with her dad (and this was her second or third national demonstration!), and the 50somethings, like Dean, who've been doing this since Vietnam, or at least since 9/11. And me. I never encounter anyone else close to my age. They're always much younger or at least five years older. No problem though, I'm not complaining. We did IHOP instead of the usual truckstop, and the difference was vast and welcome. I sat with a couple who met in Berkeley, CA, in the early '60s, who've been protesting for years, aside from traveling the world, helping indigent people in 'third world' countries, etc., etc. I felt I was with heroes. So educated, so intelligent, so 'doing something with their lives'. It was inspiring, and I was tired, but I had coffee and a huge cinnamon bun, and got to wash my face and brush my teeth so I was happy. And I watched Dean make more buttons. Then we were in D.C. and I somehow got recruited to help Dean with all his buttons, pinning them to his shirt in neat rows of multiples. And we all took the Metro into town, to Freedom Plaza. The weather cleared, as if just for us, and with everyone in sweaters and gloves, I felt the low 60s temp was perfect and sat in my t-shirt and jeans in the sun. Lying on a granite bench, just looking at the architecture and the people all filing in from various directions. I went to the Reagan building to use the bathroom with a girl from the bus, she telling about the old Queen in Hawaii, and the ruin of true Hawaiian culture by the US. She's a military 'brat', has lived all over the world, very young, very intelligent and soft spoken. We were made to remove all political buttons before entering, had to run our bags through an x-ray machine. We felt violated, we felt our civil rights were being ripped from us, in that public building, but we had to pee.... We were so early to the Rally, I walked around, and talked to people, and looked at people, and listened to some guys rapping politically, and watched one of my bus-mates dance the Lindy Hop to some Salsa music, and people played drums, and people sold buttons, and people began working on their sunburns. As the Rally started I sat, then stood, right in front of the stage, but I felt the sun directly on my arms, my face, and without any sun block (I KNOW!, what was I thinking?!?!?!?), I decided to go sit back on the granite benches surrounding the plaza, sat next to a guy selling hats with peace signs on them, so bought one of those and tried not to expose my skin to the sun. (More on that later) Speakers, speakers, people, people, white boys with dreads, black girls with dreads, hippie girls with long stringy hair and flowing skirts, people blowing bubbles, people selling Communist and Socialist Workers' newspapers, people just trying to get from one place to another, waiting to march, waiting to march, seeing my bus-mates over and over despite the immense and swelling crowd. Dean, with all his buttons, leaving his things with me to watch while he tried, against his intense competition, to sell what he had. Back to the Reagan building again, this time with a stranger, a woman from New York who also had to go, and once we saw the line at Starbuck's, decided to make the trek back with me. This time I had to remove my PEACE sign hat. Oh yeah, had to take it all off, and by this time I had about five more buttons than I had before. Joy. Dean heard about it after and decided it was a breach of our civil rights and he told the organizing group so they might contact their legal department (this, after he tested the security folks himself by entering the building with a 'pro-troops, anti-war' button, with a piece of tape covering the 'anti-war' part - without being asked to remove it...) During a demonstration/Rally, everyone is testy. And the police, my god. EVERYWHERE. Besides the requisite helicopter, there were hordes of riot police, bicycle police, motorcycle police, police with shields and batons raised and ready. They'd move from one formation to another, one line on one street to another, their vehicles blocked crosswalks (I did the "Midnight Cowboy", Dustin Hoffman line, "I'm WALKIN' HEEEERE!" and laughed, wanted to slap the hood of one police car). Dean not only had buttons, he had the word 'p-e-a-c-e' in letters, individual sign letters, letter signs, just like that, in upper case. P E A C E. I chose C. And C I remained, all day. I was C. We found volunteers to help us, an elderly hispanic couple, from Maryland. The man had so much fun all day - he stood next to me on one side, Dean on my other, the man's wife to his side, and a guy who also volunteered next to them. We finally marched, skipping most of the Rally, behind the sound truck. Loudspeakers all over it, huge speakers, a microphone or two, women, men, chanting into the microphone, and we chanted on their cue. People took pictures of us all day long, and usually our signs covered our faces, but we held them high for the helicopters, for the people in the tall buildings we passed, and we turned around occasionally, in a rotating pattern, so everyone could see us. The weather was fantastic, the sky blue, the sun shining strong (more on that later), the breeze blowing so strong we had a hard time holding our signs! Early on, there was a skirmish. The crowd broke, we heard what we thought were gunshots, but was most likely motorcycles backfiring, the chanting stopped, there was silence, and everyone moved backwards into us, people started screaming, the police in full black riot gear ran in a pack across the street in front of us, pushing anyone in their way to the ground. It was terrifying. I ran backwards, pulled the other 'letters' with me, stood behind Dean, as he is tall. It was over before we knew what 'it' was, and we kept going, we shouted, "Whose streets?" "Our streets!", fists pounding the air above us. We felt so powerful. This was OUR march, we were taking the streets, with permits, this was a legal demonstration, and we weren't backing down. Every so often Dean would pass off his letter to a stranger, ask if he or she wanted to be a part of our little performance art, and the first was a woman in her 60s, gray hair, big smile, but when she saw the capitol building up ahead of us, she said, "We shouldn't have to be here", and started crying. I could almost cry now just thinking of her face, her nose turning red, the sadness. She wants this to be over, but we know it's just the beginning. The US has plans to overtake more countries, Syria, Iran, possibly North Korea. We don't want to have to keep demonstrating, every month, every two months, some people several times a week. She was so sad, but I told her to keep on, not to give up until we've got our country back, the country we love and are proud of, and I rubbed her back. I wanted to give her a hug. She said it was seeing the Capitol that brought it on, she's just so sad and angry. This march route was different from the rest, we went through the downtown area, past Fox News, and Halliburton, and the FBI, and when we got to the Washington Post headquarters we stopped and shouted, "Fuck Corporate Media!". The plan was to march past these corporate entities, or the buildings they occupy, and stop in front of each one, chant, face them, hold our signs, but each time we stopped the police rode past us, on the sidewalks, rode up behind people, honking, and overtook the crowd many times. Or, should I say, interacted with the crowd. Another skirmish involved someone trying to knock a cop off his bike, and whether this was a bicycle or motorcycle I didn't see, but the cop went down, so did a few others, and suddenly the police were in the middle of the marchers, scary for them with the recent Oakland protest incident fresh in their minds. They were convinced we'd be violent, but even with the Black Bloc, arms linked, bandanas covering their faces, it would've been extremely peaceful had they not kept riding into us. The police pushed us all back, people fell, I heard the story later, from a witness who said a woman went down and was hurt and bloodied, winded and crying, and a medic was attending her when the police pushed him away from her. They pushed us all back and we lost the letter 'P' for many minutes. It was a bit comical standing there with E A C E and no P, but we held our signs high so he could see us, and when we were reunited, everyone around us cheered! We mostly carried the letters low, but as I said, we would raise them for people taking pictures, and for helicopters, and for people in the highrises/skyscrapers, and the sun was behind us much of the day, HOT, burning, yeah, burning. You should see my forearms. I am burned BAD. I am a red lobster from just above my elbows to my knuckles, on one side of my arms. Lovely. And it hurts like a motherfucker. I could feel it as it was happening. We'd be standing in front of some corporate building, yellling, chanting, "THIS is what Democracy looks like!" "THAT is what Hypocrisy looks like!", and I'd feel the sun on my arms, burning. It wasn't until last night that I had a look and could see the redness spreading. The march was long, Dean and I bitched and moaned and laughed at ourselves for being so old and whiny. "My hips hurt, my feet hurt, I'm tired, I'm hungry". Then I'd say, "I don't want this to EVER end, but I sure would like to sit down", and the letter P would squat when we stopped, to stretch his muscles. When it was all over, and the person holding the mic said the police were using pepper spray at the back of the march so we should exit the street and enter the park, the elderly couple hardly wanted to give back their letters. I think they wanted it to keep going too. It was wonderful to feel so empowered. To be with people who really care about the state of this country's government, and our strongarming Middle Eastern countries, killing innocent people, and now occupying Iraq. We were together, "The people, united, will never be defeated", we chanted. It was a beautiful day. The police brutality was surprising, it was something I'd never seen firsthand before, not to that extent (they were ready for a fight all fucking day, you could see it in their eyes) and still, I was far enough back from it, a row or two, that I didn't see the instigation, didn't see the overreaction, but I know what happened. One of my bus-mates was actually beat up, called a 'chicken shit' by the cops for hiding under a truck when they started using their bikes to push people to the ground!!! But it only made us more determined. It only made us chant louder and stronger, and people locked their arms, rows and rows of people. We were beautiful. After, we were exhausted, we got on the train together, many of us, all bus-mates (some 50something people total), got back on the bus, and we rode to dinner, telling stories of what happened to each of us during the day, the Reagan building incident, the police brutality, the sunburns, the signs, the disappointment, and the exuberance, the joy, the exhaustion. Dinner was at the steakhouse where that D.C. sniper had waited until he saw someone exit, and then took a shot at the guy's belly. We stop there every time, but I never knew it was THAT steakhouse until last night (whew, it was only last night!). And then it was back on the damned bus, the narrow seat, the bad suspension, the bumps in the road, and Dean with his huge sleeping bag spilling over onto me, me with my Walkman on, falling asleep only two songs into the "Trainspotting" soundtrack. Waking several times, only to realize I'd actually been sleeping. And we got back earlier than usual, despite dropping off a fellow protester, someone who simply hopped on the bus in D.C., along the way. 6:45 a.m., I was driving home, in the dark, light just forming on the horizon. The cats were glad to see me, hesitant, unsure, and it took several minutes just to clean the litter box, to unpack a few things, to head to bed, unwashed, but not caring. C-SPAN was replaying the Pro-Troops Rally that took place at the Capitol, I suppose simultaneously, and CNN, despite the fact that a CNN camera took a long shot of us with our P E A C E signs, showed nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I slept for maybe four hours, hard, deep, but woke over and over again thinking I was late, thinking I'd slept too long, Gladys under the covers, spooning with me, and then I got up, showered, washed my hair and had coffee, looked at my sunburn, applied lotion, and headed to the Cirque Du Soleil performance of Varekai. Amazing, fabulous, stupendous, wonderful, any fantastic adjective you can think of. I loved, loved, loved it, knew I would. I caught a free shuttle from a local sports bar, and after it was over took the shuttle back and ate a huge Cobb Salad, watched some of the Stanley Cup, Boston vs. New Jersey. Drank a Bass, and here I am, home again. Wearing my Cirque Du Soleil tiny t-shirt I bought. I just wanted to get this all down before I forget any of it. I have tons of email to sift through, most of it spam, and I haven't read any diaries or journals in days, probably not since Monday, or maybe last Sunday. It's a beautiful day here, the sun is shining, there is still pollen everywhere, but it's not as bad, and it's not terribly hot yet. I still have no a/c, so I've got to call the Office again tomorrow, but today is for recovering, searching for some news online, watching my "GL"s on tape, washing dishes, relaxing, reflecting. Besides the intense sunburn, I feel great. I have great new buttons, a peace hat, and memories. Unfortunately I only had a few shots left on my camera, so I didn't get a lot of pictures. I hope Indymedia has some. Time to sift through email..... Cost of the War in Iraq
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