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Ziptie School Bus Blues

It’s raining, it’s spring, it’s the growth cycle, I’m cold, I’m standing in it. My current growth is stunted. Heartbreak? no. Backwoods howler of unrequited love? no. Buying comfort that’s rather cool? I suppose. At least I have this testament to my absorption into the American Daydream. Somebody might even want to read it.

A16, heard about it? Bring down the IMF, the powers that be, disperse all telluric bile with thousands of voices chanting the Chaos incantation. Several thousand malcontents descended on D.C., that old Masonic wet dream, to register complaint with global poverty. And I was going to take pictures of cops.

There was that large voice in my head that wanted a repeat of N30 (letters and numbers, acronyms, the computer age moved out of those damn college towns.). I’m sure you remember that one. Opinion page on the Post shrugged “What Was That All About?” with a dashing bandana-ed black blocker smiling (at least, you imagine her smiling behind the very grinning cloth.) mystical shit as the Seattle police ran riot around her, fulfilling everything we always said about pigs. Suckers, meatheads will be meatheads, and the S.P.D. didn’t disappoint. Gen-X with a little Gen-Y poked the police long enough for them to punch back. Of course, that was a big WTO summit, the Darth Vader of questionable international trade agreements.

The IMF, on the other hand, along with sister World Bank, was the velvet plough gently cutting the Third World earth. They weren’t really evil, just making the world safe for investment. I’ll save the lecture and skip to the hoped-for riot.

There was a plan, there was organization, there was a lot of effort put towards shutting down three square blocks. A15. I parked my car on E St. Saturday afternoon with visions of taunting photos and street games followed by an evening retirement to beers and armchair revolting and reminiscing with some old comrades visiting the action. The sky was ready to rain on our parade (get to that later). I walked around the six square block perimeter the 10 different city and federal authorities had jauntily erected. Wow, they’re for real, aren’t they. I scouted a few packs of premature protest, choosing the largest group to follow along the edges. I even got interviewed for some NoCal public access TV joint. I told them I had journeyed across the mighty Potomac from my home in the Old Dominion to monitor the cops all by my lonesome. No organization for me, I am the ultimate sentient tentacle, ha-ha, free agent and strange detractor. I’ll fuck this shit up all by myself. So I was meandering with a large sidewalk carnival, looking for friends and fellow travelers when the cops started waving everybody into the road.

Piece of advice: when you’re following a hastily arranged sidewalk rally, if the cops flag you in a certain direction, dive into that nearby Burger King really quick, reassemble later.

Having autonomously found a nice march, I thought the police were polite enough to advise against deviation from the permitted route. Permits, I should’ve known when the block we danced into had no alleys and no open store or office fronts. Look, Johnny Anarchy, police line at end of block, go other way, wait, police line at other end of block.

Fuck.

Nine years previous, during a very ugly flourish of American adventurism, I was very young and determined to file a grievance with my government about their carpet bombing of Iraq. After watching a bunch of anarchists get chased away from the back lawn of the White House, I decided to help yell at George Bush from his front yard. See kiddies, back in those days, the piece of Pennsylvania Ave. in front was still a road. Apparently the U.S. security specialists decided all those Arabs they bombed into the Stone Age might get uppity and fulfill some stereotypes by driving a big bomb through the president’s foyer. So in ’94 they closed the road and planted some nice concrete bushes. But back then I was in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave. with a couple of hundred percussionists trying to keep King George awake, in case his conscience wasn’t. Eight p.m. struck and the police line formed. The daily protest permit (fucking permits) had expired, time to clear the drum circle away. No way, thought I, all 18 years old. I shall perform my disorderly good deed of the day. I shall sit and Gandhi my way to heaven. I also dragged two friends with me and convinced them to sit. The police surged. Holy shit, it then occurred to me I might be brutalized, yahoo, credibility. Alas, they walked past us without incident. Adrian stood up, looking extremely mollified.

“Whew, let’s get out of here.”

Steve and I got up with him, but as we rose the leather gloves clamped down on our shoulders.

“You had your chance to leave.”

Gosh officer, you mean this isn’t the Folk-Life Festival? Christ. My very first political arrest.

Let me snip this tangent by just relating the subsequent learning experience: cops don’t like protesters; one-piece plastic zip-tie cuffs are easy to get out of; learned how to tell the difference between good cop and bad cop; learned how to slam dance in a paddy wagon; getting arrested at a peaceful protest in a still barely democratic over-media-medicated USA at the height of a nationalist orgy doesn’t stop bombs from dropping. They even took my cousin’s burial flag to my eternal guilt.

Suffice to say, in the nascent rain-pregnant air of D.C., A15, 2000, I had no intention of getting picked up, and here I was in this forced picnic at 22nd St. between I and J.

They weren’t really going to arrest these hundreds of people they crammed in here? Two bicycle messengers were let through to freedom. Two stooges in baseball hats told the cops they were Republicans and were just passing through. They were let go. A woman who said she needed her anti-psychotic medicine was declined passage, ah cops. After a half hour standing around and feeling the first wave of rain, word rippled through that we were all volunteers for arrest. That’s what D.C.’s finest was telling the media. Twenty cell phones emerged, locals like me remembered all the call letters of the local network affiliates. Due to the miracle of wireless, the fourth estate was able to report the vast majority of us were decidedly not volunteering for a weekend in the hoosegow. They arrested us all anyway. Tactically I felt pretty flanked, the city was able to eliminate 600 people from any activity the day before the actual scheduled action.

So after six hours and nightfall the school buses started rolling in. Boy, what a funky field trip, with new, improved zip-ties that precluded the old school escape. So 50 people per bus got to stew with their hands behind their back as we were all taken first to D.C. General to step out briefly for Polaroid mug shots. Then, lucky us, we got to go to the D.C. Police Academy in Southeast. We waited some more. It seems I’ve got Billy the Kid hands because I was able to slip out of the ties and fake it for the officers.

Stewing, stewing.

“Hey everybody! We need a facilitator to mediate our group. We need to decide if we’re going to cooperate or not.”

I thought she was cute, she reminded me of an old radical housemate. Shit, wait, they’re leaning towards practicing jailhouse solidarity, no cooperation.

“Uh, I just got a new job and I need to be at work on Monday, so love and solidarity but I’m cooperating.”

Funny how some scraps of “respectability” and wage-slavery taste so good. I had just landed my highest-paying gig ever, which wasn’t that much, but I can’t live off the land, I need the dough.

Some Angela Davis wannbe started talking in general about the privilege of buying your way out of jail. She was looking at me, of course. I love all these people, they make immense sacrifices for very elusive gains, but sometimes they forget...

Beat.

“But it’s all about choice.”

Saved by the obscure individualist in the back of the bus, I could kiss the voice.

“Of course, of course.” They all fell into line.

More debate, more police misdirection as varied sergeants and lieutenants boarded the bus with different threats, deals and consequences. Nothing new, we just needed to hold down the actual naive bystanders who got caught in the dragnet.

“This isn’t Constitutional, goddamnit!”

“I’m trying to sleep, cops can do whatever they want, even in a pretty open society. We’ve just got to wait.” Great, my cynicism emerges to save my boredom.

I think the cops played some rearguard action with some infiltrator, a little psych war. Some dipshit or collaborator decided it was sing-along time.

“Lean On Me.”
“Stand By Me.”
“We Shall Overcome.”

They got to Fugazi’s “Waiting Room.” I was about to piss on the floor just so I could get away from this Red and Black Mr. Rogers episode.

“Yee-haw,” said I, slightly eased by the familiar song, “D.C. represent.”

This torture was broken up by good cop, who strangely resembled David Duchovny. He was talking, barely, nattering really. I don’t even remember what he was talking about but not only was he our bathroom liaison, he also got the campfire girls to stop singing.

Around 4 a.m., they finally disgorged us into the academy. Into a gym, specifically, to be emancipated from our old zip-ties and greeted with new, right wrist to left ankle constraints.

Why?

A.) Six hundred unarmed activists are going to overwhelm the same number of armed police.

B.) After we swarm over the walls we’ll fade into Southeast D.C. like Macarthur.

C.) We would then follow Che and Huey’s reanimated corpses to the gates of the Pentagon.

I don’t think a coalition as diverse as the anti-globalists (for lack of a better unifying term, remember, no heads, no archies) is going to organize a jailbreak. Too many people were holding onto their martyr complexes and “Eyes on the Prize” highlight reels. Then again, streetfighting commies and nazis, rumbling through the streets of Weimar Deutschland would often stop fighting one another to concentrate on the freshly arrived cops, I can dream, right? no, ow, zipties.

Note to proto-protester and antipodal assorted slanderers: Ultimately, since public perception anoints the protesters a bunch of kids, college students taking a semester off, there’s no reason for the cops to think differently. Thus the police pull out the stops to make jail as legally frightening as possible. Did I say legally? I was fortunate to have not catalogued any human rights abuses myself, but, call me a true believer, they’re there. I’d also be a liar if I denied the sizable college quotient in these groups. Lies triple when I subsequently ignore most of the people who have no semblance of the Stepford life the rest of us lead in the ‘burbs; city to city, vigil to vigil, march to march. And there are networks to support them, not big money, just friends and friends and friends. There’s your fucking grass roots. Finally, let’s bow our heads (I’m serious) to the significant number with extensive protest rap sheets who face “three strikes and you’re out” atrocities if some Prosecutor Generale decides to ratchet up some jaywalking charges into felonies. Law and order, motherfucker.

So we’re sitting on tumbling mats with one hand zip-tied to our feet. First grade P.E. was never like this. I thought it’d be funny to demonstrate to the trainee my neat escape trick. They applauded with a skin whitening tightening of my new straps. I’m a real funny guy.

We actually get our phone call! actually, a few! In ’91 I never saw a phone since I was “detained,” not arrested. Habeas was quite the limber corpus that night. I’d already left word with Swiz (roommate) that I was most likely headed for the big house while we were waiting for the buses. Now I ran down the list. Swiz not home, probably at girlfriends, or else snoozing through it. A few amusing jailhouse messages for a later screening, though. Mark, no answer, he sleeps. Sara picks up, she’s ready to hear her whole family went down on the Titanic while being tortured by a softball team of serial killers. Yes, she’s got that blessedly family-oriented hair trigger 4 a.m. phone pick-up.

Easy, right? come and get me and bring fifty bucks for the cops. I wanted to get cute and tell her to bring the limo with the Slim Jim’s and Caviar chilling in the back, my Armani ready to go. But this is a revolt movie, right? not New Jack D.C. But as far as I was concerned, I was sprung. Like I attempted to demonstrate before, cops don’t make it easy for us politico banditos.

There was the requisite bureaucratic misdirections for my liberator Sara..

“He’s not here.”

“We can’t find him.”

Luckily Sara’s stubborn. I saw a machine spit my name after scanning a thumb print, great, our small, surveilled world. I watch as the 19-year-old college student in front of me is lead to the waiting area for those not cooperating or bailing. She told all of us she’d left her I.D. at home and she hoped they wouldn’t finger her and her underage drinking bust a few months previous, so as to morph into something bigger. She was posing as a Jane Doe, no telling when she’d be out.

Jesus Christ, good luck, kid.

So I’m free again, free to prowl A16, studiously avoiding the black bloc charges at the cops, just enjoy the carnival of this big guerrilla lollapalooza. I took pictures of wrestling slogans spray-painted in anarcho-style and any cops polite enough to pose in riot gear. Blessedly and frustratingly uneventful from there on out, went home, slept as I could, remember, as I told the Star Chamber, I had to work the next day.

The next day I’m sick, standing in the rain waiting for a bus. I’m sick because of the poor metro accessibility of my new job. Turns out D.C. had one more present in the form of a Marion Barry pothole as I drove home Sunday afternoon. Wake up dutifully for new job, go to car, ah, slow flat. I call, say I’ll be late. Week-old boss isn’t too sympathetic, but he’s another litany of hate. I take the train to the other side of the D.C. ‘burbs, transfer on two buses, hence the rain-standing, cold, mucus, etc. It takes a lot longer than I estimated, so as I walk into work looking like a member of Mao’s Medium March, once natty khakis browner from moisture, dickhead looks at me and asks why I’m arriving at 10:00 when I said 9:00.

I refrained from answering “because you’re an asshole.” I plotted getting really baked and watching “Fight Club” over and over until I either capitulated and got an advertising job, or I digested this farce and jotted this little ditty.

Day sucked, like all slaves, my job sucks, even without the little dictator asking me what I’m looking up every time my hands don’t move for five seconds.

As I’m leaving, Boss Suck asks me why I’m sun burnt.

“I went into the city yesterday to check out A16.”

He oozes through his sleazy-shy, not affably shy, manner, “you’re a radical.”

“Sure, yeah – no, whatever.” Get me outta heeeere!

But like jail, I do have the privilege to leave at some point, unlike other, braver souls.

So I’m standing, waiting for the bus, (still in the rain). The climate controlled SUVs of dot-com soon-to-be-bust fantasyland spray up more moisture to clear my sinuses. I juxtapose this parade of excess with the parade of non-bailers I saw the day before. I see a parade of brave and scared, sublimely idealistic 19-year-olds facing uncertain futures, at the mercy of some judge who will wonder why they’re not choosing the right battles, and punishing them harder than they would some random dipshit run afoul. Most of them would spend at least the next week in jail, by the way.

I’ve drawn a line between them and me so I can stand in the rain and get oozed at by some micro-manager for 25 grand a year. I think of parades, of how five-year-old me used to stick stupid 50-star American flags on my Big Wheel during local Fourth of July celebrations. I think of 50 bucks from Sara, helping me, sort of, beat the rap on, get this, the charge of “Parading Without a Permit.”