For Occupy, this weekend is kind of a big deal. Occupy Nashville is hosting the first state-wide rally, attracting protesters from all over the state of Tennessee. Several people from Clarksville even went the extra mile (well, sixty miles) by walking to Nashville, chanting and carrying a banner.
I'd crawled into my sleeping bag, resolved to skip the planned midnight march in favor of what warmth and comfort I could muster. (If you know me, you know that I'm kicking myself now that I've recognized this. Meditative awareness fail.) But when the Clarksville bunch showed up, after a day of anticipation (and after, on their side of the story, thirty hours of walking), the camp got loud. Chanting, cheering... Revelry. A desire to recognize these heroes compelled me to get dressed and re-enter the cold.
They were on the ground: sitting, laying, smoking and exhausted. They were served coffee and pizza, and we helped set up their tents.
And then it was midnight. We gathered at the top of the stairs, where Will-from-Legal addressed the crowd. "When marching, you will not be arrested if you stay on the sidewalks. Walking in the street is illegal... You have been advised. Do what you want." Upon hearing that, I expected to see a handful of us stepping out into the street from time to time. Our Clarksville friends came to the front of the crowd, and the march began. Almost everyone walked right into the street; we on the sidewalk were the handful.
Deaderick, at midnight, is not a bust street. I was amused by our group's "daring" display of civil disobedience, as we inconvenienced a single driver. And then we turned right onto 2nd Avenue. The front line linked arms, and chanted "This is what democracy looks like!" as they walked into oncoming traffic on the one-way street. I happened to be walking near Will-from-Legal and heard him say to himself, "Really? Oh my god." Not what you'd normally like to hear fro your legal adviser. Is this what our democracy looks like?
To many people, yes. It is.
Of course, many people support the status quo. That's what makes it the status quo. The perception that we in Occupy are reckless, crazy people is not only due to misunderstanding or lack of information It is also a recognition that we are rocking the boat--a boat that a large percentage feel does not need to be rocked. The idea that people would disagree with us and speak out was not surprising to me, but being in the center of it was nearly overwhelming, Not all response was negative. I'd say 35-40% of the people around us seemed supportive, but it was the other 60-65% that impressed me in the moment. In the street, the cars changed lanes or stopped to avoid contact with Occupy; on the sidewalks, however, people were drawn to us. My natural inclination to be invisible was bruised and beaten. "What is your problem with America?" "What does your sign sa--oh, it's just a bunch of Democrats."* Yelling. Insults. Mocking. At the plaza, people often drive by shouting, "Get a job!" The march gave us an opportunity. When somebody shouted at John, from Knoxville, to take a shower,** John fell back to talk, and as I walked on I heard the start of his conversation: "I did. We all shower. They're really good people..." And at one point several guys we passed started chanting, "USA! USA!" to counter our own chants. We took up theirs: "USA! USA!" They shut up.
Unlike Deaderick St, Broadway is the heart of Nashville tourist-driven nightlife, and the street was plenty busy. After a couple of blocks, a police car had stopped and the officer approached the group announcing, "If you get move to the sidewalk, you will not be arrested." Those at the front of the group turned to mic-check the announcement, but before they'd finished the sentence, two people were arrested. I felt like everything should have seemed like it was in slow motion, or else that everything should have "happened so quickly." The lack of time distortion disoriented me. I'm a fan or trespassing and other boundary-crossings, but at that moment the fact that some of us were not standing on the sidewalk seemed like the scariest thing in the world. The Complacent Citizen training I'd endured for most of my life kicked in, and I just could not understand why my friends were still in the street. Of course, they didn't move, Court--civil disobedience doesn't stop when the cops show up. But after five arrests, we were all on the sidewalk. Several of our group had their cameras and phones out, recording the scene and chanting, "The world is watching! The world is watching!"
I was so confused. Were they trying to chastise the police? The chanting of "Bullshit! Bullshit!" a moment later seemed to suggest that they were. The world was watching... what? Watching the police do their jobs? They probably didn't have to shove people so hard against their cars, but there was nothing near what I would consider excessive force. We've seen the videos and heard the reports from around the country... were we just feeling left out? Were we fantasizing a chaotic scene? On one hand, I felt the reaction was irrational, but on the other hand, so was it all. Awhile the police were slamming Matt and Jen and Jeremiah and the others against the cars (and I am, by the way, making an effort to not e sensational--I do mean slamming) and handcuffing them, other people were walking out into the street yelling and swearing and flipping us off, without looking first (and, therefore causing a much greater risk than we had), but nobody outside of Occupy Tennessee got so much as a casual glance.
Once the police had gone, we reconvened at the next corner. Someone was shouting, "Do not let the police intimidate you!" Good advice for that moment. "They are evil!" Wait, what? The police have to accept that we are going to walk down the busiest street in town en masse... Was it so hard to accept in turn that they were going to arrest us? Other Occupations have been given good cause to distrust the police, but in Nashville more than anywhere else the police have been on our side. (They're unionized. They get it.) In fact, as we continued to march toward the night court, where we were told our friends would be taken, somebody on the sidewalk fell to the ground, unable to walk. Gathered around him in concern, several of us were in the street, and an officer drove up, blocking traffic to protect us.
A guy named Scott hadn't marched with us, but he came down from the plaza once he heard about the arrests. He and I got to talking, and fell back to the end of the crowd. We passed a car of young women who rolled their windows down and were yelling at us. I'd had enough of it. I ignored them. And then I heard a car door, and footsteps running toward me. A pretty (and very drunk) girl in a tight pink top, wanted her picture taken with a protester with a sign. So that was me. She handed her iPhone over to Scott as I tried to wrap my head around one of the strangest moments of my life. I had witnessed people getting arrested for something I had been a part of. I had been marching with people from all over the state, in support of an idea too big to articulate fully. I was cold, I didn't know what to think, what to feel, and now I was a prop for this bimbo's photo op. I'm glad that moment of my life will live on anonymously in a stranger's facebook photo album.
After that weird moment, Scott and I were well behind the rest. A police car drove past, away from the courthouse, and we saw one of our people in the back seat. The car drove on a couple of blocks, and then pulled over. We approached the car and the officer rolled down his window and told us to move back and wait; she would e released soon. We obliged. I recognized the girl as one of our visitors from Johnson City, and so when I saw the other members of OJC, I ran over to tell them where she was. The five of us waited, and eventually the girl was released. She told us that the officer had been taking her to the courthouse when he was ordered, over the radio, to give her a citation and release her. She said his response was, "You've got the be fucking kidding me." We walked her back to the camp, and from there Lance, Butch and I set off to meet up with everyone at the courthouse. By the time we got there, the rest of the people had been given citations and released, and we continued the march.
*For the record, my supposedly left-wing sign says, "Something better is what I'm after, and no less."
**For the record, John was well-dressed and clean-cut. How strange that we, as people, can see what we expect to see, rather than what is actually there.
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