How many lawyers does it take to change an Islamophobic lightbulb?

No. Today is too beautiful for what I wrote last night about the plotlines of the dystopian novel running off the page and into the headlines.

Instead I'm going to post about how Iraqi farmers, the Oakland government, and the lawyers of America are the sources of hope in our modern moment, on vagabondurges.com today.

Hands Around Lake Merritt

Was election night as bad as it gets, or is the worst still to come? That sick feeling of disappointment, of alienation from your nation, of watching a big part of my demographic identity declare itself in direct opposition to everything in my mind, spirit, soul... Yeah, Tuesday sucked.

But faced with that question, if the worst is still to come, I just can’t find my optimism. He appointed a known white supremacist as his chief advisor! I can’t wrap my mind around that. We have a president who wants neo-nazis at his right hand. And Americans are cheering for him. It’s...disgusting.

All last week was trying to keep the spine straight, the head above polluted water, clinging to the emails, texts, and conversations of support and shared awareness, but even when those come from around the planet they feel small when the world at large has gone insane.

Then Sunday. A beautiful warm autumn afternoon in Oakland, when an estimated 10,000 of my fellow Americans gathered to surround Lake Merritt with a message of peace, opposition to bigotry, and dedication to the ideals that made America great in the first place.

My mother, awesome woman that she is, took us to an anti-War protest for the first Gulf War, and I’ve found my way to a few others over the years, but this was the first time I’ve seen thousands of people united in somber silence, peace signs held up in the air, saying without words that we as a country are better than what our “democracy” puked up on Tuesday.

Oakland has seen nightly protests of broken glass and tear gas as small numbers of people manifest their opposition. But this was something altogether more inspiring. Children played tag on the grass, dogs in sweaters, neighbors sharing food and hugs while everyone from old school Berkeley hippies to post-Millennials (have they named them yet?) shared a space and a message.

God it felt good. Restorative. Reassuring. Fortifying. There are four long years of resistance to (let’s be honest) evil ahead of us, but there are a lot of kind and genuine souls in my peaceful army, and I have faith in us. I found my optimism. They gave it back to me.

I want to stop there. But I can’t shake one other feeling. Nor should I. It’s fear, not for me (entirely insulated by my privilege and status) but for the children of America, the minorities of America, the refugees and the immigrants of America, all the vulnerable of America. So many groups are threatened by Trump’s inhumanity, but on Sunday they came together in one little boy. The demonstration was dissolving by then, everyone heading home for dinner, and I felt wrung out. Not ready for the pain of seeing a child having cause to ask this question.

This is not who we are. This is not who I will ever be. And you and I both will do everything we can to protect this child, won’t we? I’ll see you on the barricades if we have to, because this child deserves to live in a country where he never has to ask this question again.

Has it really been a year?

I genuinely love these people

I have no sense of time. Made a salad last night, went for the dressing I bought a little while ago, and found, to my dry-rucola’d dismay, that the dang thing had expired. Last April. The bottle looked embarrassed, kinda deflated, the kid in the Jedi robe caught hiding in the back of the theater to watch it again.

And I guess I’m not under the threat of an arrest warrant anymore. Because, again to my surprise, a year has gone by since I was arrested at a #BlackLivesMatter protest. A year since I felt a sliver, a splinter of a sliver, of what it’s like to not trust the police, to see their uniformed bodies as menaces.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear from the police.” (Always white) people soberly informed me. Was I doing something wrong? By peacefully exercising my fundamental American right in support of my community? By trying to get to my bicycle so I could go home? And the guy next to me, hands going blue in his plastic zip-ties? He’d been walking home from BART. He hadn’t even known there was a protest going on.

And in black neighborhoods, where standard police procedure is to pull up next to a man walking down the street, detain him, handcuff him, sit him down on the ground like a naughty child, in full view of his community, maybe his kids, treat him like a dangerous criminal, and only then actually talk to him? To ask what’s going on today. How does that feel? What does that do? And how does it feel to see, again and again, officers not even going to trial after they kill somebody like you? No matter how many eye-witnesses say it was an execution, no matter if the bullets go in their back. Or maybe they merely beat you into the hospital.

I kept going to those protests. And when I’d pass the ranks of police, faces hidden behind riot gear, hands gripping weapons, my body would release adrenalin. My body getting ready to react. Overreact? Survival mechanisms pulling me away from deliberation, the indefatigable animal asserting control over the precarious grip of higher human functions, the amygdala overruling the prefrontal cortex.

But what’s happened in the last year? If there’s been progress, it’s been shy. Perhaps under-reported? The Terrible seems to slide right into the news, while the Wonderful has to fight its way on. Plenty of terrible to see, from Trump supporters’ racism and determination to avoid thinking, to terrorists attacking Planned Parenthood and BlackLivesMatter demonstrations yet receiving only innocuous labels. But I have to believe in progress. I have to hope. I have to. I have to believe that Bernie can win, and can drag our self-sabotaging country forward. I have to believe that humanity’s progress will eventually be reflected in its structures. Because that is one thing I still believe, humanity, in its prefontal cortex, when given peace, wants peace. So with everything in me, may peace be upon you. Peace be upon us all.

Of Monkeys and Banks

In my third Feelgood Friday post I said I wanted “to go right up into the horrors of the world today and find beauty in them” but last week I really enjoyed the bunnies. Is there another recent news story that involves serious issues for the human race and cuddly animals?

Why yes, yes there is.

Deforestation! Now there’s a dire issue. Expanses of essential forest are disappearing, worsening climate change, robbing all of us of the advantageous (medical) secrets undiscovered in the verdant depths, depriving us of our natural heritage, and threatening extinction of an unknowable number of species with just as much right to exist on the planet as we do. 

You didn't know they get along?

Including...baby chimpanzees! Cute, cuddly, big-eyed and fuzzy-headed baby chimpanzees. And tigers, for crying out loud! As if we have enough of those to spare.

Videos like this one are pretty damn shocking. And it’s all for 1%er corporate profit from producing disposable packaging. Paper and pulp. Since we need more junk mail, redundant print-outs, and packaging.

But what can we really do against corporate titans? Sign a petition? Scoff! Go for it Greenpeace, but we all know banks are impervious to morality. (Unless they happen to be in Iceland, the one country with the ethical cajones to actually hold its bankers accountable.)

And yet, after less than three weeks, Santander bank decided not to continue funding the deforestation. It turns out that even a massive bank pays attention nowadays when 167,513 people sign a petition, 14,788 send emails to the CEO, hundred pick up the phone, people visit branches to speak their consciences, and the video gets shared 100,000 times. Or perhaps they’re just an abnormally human company. That’s theoretically possible.

One bank pulling their funding may not be enough to persuade a company like April to find a better way, but it sends a powerful message that perhaps rapacious business-as-usual isn’t going to be so as-usual for long.

My Day In Court, Practicing Nonviolence

Too many names, outside the Alameda County Courthouse

“Appear in court on December 26,” they said. So I cut my family’s Christmas short to be back in Oakland, security-screened by 9:00 this morning. I try not to predict the future, but I was eager to hear the consequence of my peaceful protest. Dismissed? Fined? Charged?

The grumpus behind the glass pushed the words through her frown: “We haven’t received your paperwork yet. Go to the DA’s office to be rescheduled.” No resolution. My three guesses were all wrong. Instead, I have to call in every week for a year, to find out if they’ve charged me. I told the clerk I was going to be out of the country for the next couple weeks. “If we charge you and you do not appear, a warrant may be issued for your arrest,” and she went back to her desk.

Not an ideal arrangement for a traveler, especially one who plans to work abroad for weeks at a time. But also, I find myself reluctant to participate in any more demonstrations. They are pushing me away from the exercise of my Constitutional rights, and into...let’s call it trepidation. My government is engaging in Trepidationism against me.

Trepidationism for me, but make no mistake, the system engages in Terrorism against black people. Or perhaps people of color. Or perhaps the not-rich. When the police, George Zimmerman, and who knows who else, are allowed to kill black people with impunity? It’s time travel.

Because this is what Martin Luther King achieved. He took away the terror of being black in America, in a time when they could be charged with assault just for looking “recklessly” at a white person, or not taking off their hat. (Read this.) I’m reluctant to cite MLK, since I have lived with white privilege my whole life, and despite my best attempts at empathy, have never felt for myself the terror of living in a society that oppresses you this way, but when I see our country sinking backwards into a time of systemic terrorism, I am willing to reach for any heroes I can find.

The list of heroes includes all the civil rights leaders, from Dorothy Height to Claudette Colvin. Does it include Malcolm X? The man whose legacy is clear in our civil religion, the violent alternative to King’s nonviolence? Absolutely.

Some say King’s message only got as far as it did because the establishment looked at Malcolm X and saw the very real possibility of rage released in violence, so took the offered path of peace. I don’t know if that’s true (and though it’s inherently flawed to compare wildly different circumstances, I can’t help but notice that Gandhi had no violent counterpart...or did he? And Mandela?), but either way, the frustration and anger of those who have been too-long abused by this system are very real, and very strong. Undeniable.

The danger is that this possibility of violence, for all its rational origins, ends up being another face of the Terrorism that I denounce. When the system, through police or vigilantes, threatens violence, it’s Terrorism. But when they force those opposed to present the same threat..? That feels like a loss, understandable as it may be.

And then there’s the bloodsoaked example of the French Revolution punching us in the face. Violence to end oppression, that betrayed itself, consumed itself, and only led to another form of oppression.

So, I’ll spend the next year in trepidation, with the looming threat of a misdemeanor (oh my!) and people of color will live under the constant menace of assault, humiliation, exploitation, and outright murder. I don’t need any help with my vague discomfort, but the racial Terrorism in our system has to change. We just have to figure out how.

Protest Part Five: Weary, Wary, and Working Together

I was guilty of the thing I loathe: letting the misbehavior of a few drown out the positive actions of the many, but when I got home from another night of protest last week, with memories of fighting and looting in my head and anxiety in my bloodstream, I was close to giving up. Not giving up in my belief that America can do better, nor in my desire to see that happen, but giving up on getting off my ass and into the street to show it.

That night, when someone would throw a rock at a store window, a dozen voices would respond “This is a peaceful demonstration!” “Stay nonviolent!” “Keep it political!” But the scenes lodged in my mind’s eye were the three fights, the blood, and the police, riot gear out from the beginning, well worn now, barking orders and aggression. The “less lethal” guns in their hands that have been sending peaceful protesters to the hospital lately. And always, the helicopters thudding around overhead; as far as I can tell, it’s usually one police and three or four news agencies. Both focus only on the kernels of chaos. And despite my best efforts, so was I.

Then Saturday happened. The MillionsMarch demonstration downtown, 2:00 PM, the daylight bringing out the peaceful masses and burning away the murky chaos. Souls from every demographic particular came out to walk together, talk together, say together that something is wrong. It was among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

The news helicopters were up there again, orbiting, and I wanted to shout “Are you filming now? Are you seeing this? Are you witnessing the desire, of all of us, for justice? For safety? For accountability and trust? For progress? Are you reporting? Are you doing your part to show the world that the responsible, admirable voices of the many outnumber the rash violence of the few? Are you helping us make change?”

Unity all around me, I felt uplifted, reassured, and restored to my belief that we do care, and that we can speak. None of this is to say that it was perfect. These were still just people. Humans. With this much passion, this much anger and history, one cannot expect perfect calm.

On Saturday I saw words, love, mutual support, and cooperation. And patience wearing thin. I believe humans are peaceful. I am peaceful. But how many candlelit protests can one attend that are met with no response from the politicians but silence, from the media but misrepresentation, and from the police but rubber bullets, before one looks to other, more overt means of being heard?

Richmond's police chief is into something

Is it possible that the system will wake up and take sufficient steps, before the fires spread? Start with the no-brainers: end the militarization and impunity of police. Get back to a level where residents and officers see each other as humans, not potential (inevitable?) adversaries. THIS! This is what we need to see! Richmond is proving the obvious here, that when officers know they will be held accountable for their actions, and are placed in an environment of mutual respect with the community, these shootings will decrease.

Start there, then we can address the deeper issues. Obama is taking a first step. How are you going to help? How should I? Two thirds of you said everyone should protest, nobody said to smash shit, and no one said there was no need to do anything. If two-thirds of any town got out and marched? That would make the news. (And your participation will inject fresh hope and patience into a movement that is running a little low on both.)

I’m daydreaming again, but peaceful demonstrations like the one on Saturday have that effect on a person. Go out and feel that optimism, touch that participation, and hear your voice asking for a better world. And let me know how it feels.

Oakland Protest, Night Four: What now?

I had my perception of the Oakland protests.

Night One: people upset over the state of race relations in our country, and police impunity in reflecting it, demonstrated in the streets with signs, chants, compassion and anger. It was the purest form of democracy left in our plutocracy.

By the end of the night, things got out of hand, understandable with that much emotion and the way crowds work. The police showed admirable restraint at first, and I thanked them for it. People were wrong to throw bottles, and the police didn’t need to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades against a civilian demonstration. I was disappointed to see the night end that way.

Night Two: perhaps a result of the prior mayhem, the crowd was smaller, and more militant, the message diluted in petty vandalism and burning garbage, faces hidden behind masks to enable counterproductive hooliganism. I’d seen enough, left the contested street and was waiting until I could reach my bike when one cop, maybe looking to make an example, maybe filling a quota, or scariest of all: having lost control and lashing out, had me arrested. I spent the next few hours with my hands zip-tied behind my back, seeing a side of the law that I thought was reserved for those who deserved it.

Night Three? I stayed home, angry at those I felt were damaging our desire for change. I felt I had my understanding.

But last Thursday the rhythms of a protest drifted in my window. I’ll go look, real quick, real careful, to see how things are going. I found a march, resolute and disciplined in the statement of their message, no mayhem, no excuse for police action, demonstrators I’m proud to have as countrymen. It felt good to see.

Then I looked left to a line of face-shielded police blocking a street, ready to arrest us...if we blocked a street? A cold feeling took root in my core, with cracks of anger and flecks of fear. Instead of cops doing their best, they seemed like ominous soldiers of suppression.

And every nauseous cell of my skin felt my white privilege. I had been inconvenienced for a few hours, my shoulders stiff and achy from being pinned behind me, and have to show up in court, once, for what I feel are unjust reasons. So many deal with so much worse, yet there I was, disturbed by the sight of the police.

What is it like for those who live under constant threat of police abuse? How the hell do we expect people to remain calm who have watched their brothers beaten, their fathers humiliated, their whole demographic thrown in prison (while the real criminals go marching on)?

A friend told me of his police ride-alongs where procedure is to stop (black) men on the sidewalk, handcuff them and sit them on the curb, THEN start to talk to them, ask what’s going on today. That has never happened to me, not in my white skin, in my relatively affluent neighborhood, where, despite being racially mixed, every driver I’ve seen pulled over since moving here was black or latino. Every single one. A few hours being treated like a dangerous criminal when I hadn’t done anything wrong and I was sickened; what’s it like when that’s your everyday reality?

So what do we do about it? Politicians are clearly not going to lead, and the police aren’t going to break the cycle of aggression by themselves. And the courts? In 2010, out of 162,000 grand juries, 11 did not result in indictments. 11 out of 162,000. Yet now we have two out of two deciding there’s no need to even have a trial. I see that as the courts declaring that it is not a crime for a cop to kill a black man. This cannot go on.

So again, what do we do about it? Smash Starbucks? Shake our heads and go back to watching Jersey Shore? Or maybe we, those of us with hearts and souls and self control, should spend some time in the street. Do you think it’s a crime to kill a black person? Do you want some punk smashing a window to speak for you?

So how do we affect change? Protest responsibly? Burn shit? Run for office? Do nothing? Vote on the vagabondurges.com version, here.

Dear fellow Oakland protesters, and others.

The type of legitimate protesters I went to join

Dear fellow protesters in Oakland, thank you for coming. I know you’re angry, so to not waste your time I’ll get to it:

What is the point? Your point. Your purpose. Your goal. Why are you here?

Are you here to express your frustration with race and class relations in this country, advocate for justice and change, and oppose the militarization and impunity of a segment of the police?

Or do you just want to burn shit?

Because the two are mutually exclusive. Standing for the former entails NOT doing any of the latter, and doing the latter destroys the voice of the former.

Are you here to protest, or riot? They are fundamentally different. Is your enemy hate crime, or Starbucks? Do you want to build something better, or just smash what’s here? Do you want to oppose those responsible, or just harm your neighbors?

My opinion? This War on Trash Cans accomplishes nothing but toxic fumes. This aggression towards all police officers does nothing but further inhibit dialogue and progress. I see demonstrators and police pushing each other into simplified extremism, and it makes me sad. I’ve known good cops. Men and women who I was glad were there to back me up.

When will you learn that violence does not have the effect you wanted it to when you were an angry 16 year old? It’s time to grow the fuck up.

Just an excuse for their ugly little tags

As you may have guessed, angry violent “protester”, I am sick of your shit. You are not a protester. You are a hooligan. And I will not stand by you. So tonight, as the helicopters again drift overhead, despite my desire to finish what I’ve started and demonstrate my conscience, I am staying home. It’s not because I’m scared, not afraid of being arrested again, but because last night looked to me like a movement degraded, a legitimate grievance lost in petty vandalism, and I will not participate in that, even tacitly.

To those actual protesters, both previous night, and probably tonight too, I thank you for caring. Apathy is the great enabler of discord and abuse.

And to those who have come to Oakland to hide behind your coward’s mask and make trouble in someone else’s community… Violence breeds violence, so please don’t tempt me.

Oakland Protest Night 2; I wasn't expecting that.

Always with the fire, but it seemed lackluster

Helicopter buzzards hung above Oakland tonight, again. I barely slept last night, was dead on my feet at 5:00 this afternoon, was freezing, and still kind of hungry after finishing my leftovers. I didn’t really feel like going out to monitor the protest again tonight. But I believe something important is going on in America right now, a nation crying out for change, for hope, for progress, so I added a thicker layer and rode downtown.

Hipsters sipping cocktails where last night wafted clouds of tear gas, but those rotary buzzards drew me to Telegraph Ave, where crowds stood around, calmer than last night. It just felt like a lot of spectators. Fine with me, I wanted a short night.

Why did they need guns
like that out?

The police seemed edgier, with some rushing around with guns leveled at people, the way the military guys on TV said one should never do. But things seemed to calm down. The police cleared Telegraph, and I let them, moving to a cross street, 40th Ave.

Then I saw it. Some jackass had brought a circular saw blade. I’d been surreptitiously kicking chunks of asphalt into the bushes all night, lest some hothead be tempted to throw them through a cruiser’s window, or worse yet, at a cop. But this? Best case scenario: someone would blow out a tire tomorrow. Worst case scenario: someone lost in anger and mayhem might throw it at a cop. But if I picked it up, touched it, might they bust me for possession of a weapon? That quantity of police presence makes you think about such things.

I thought twice before picking it up.

I took of photo of it in situ, just in case, then picked it up, two steps, and tossed it into the burned-out wreckage of a dumpster. Phwew, that was as intense as the night was going to get.

The cops decided to move us further down 40th, and I complied, walking when they walked, then when they cried “double time!” I jogged ahead of them to stay out of the way. We reached a crosswalk and the order to “hold up” rang out. I crossed over to my side and slowed to a walk.

I was only a couple blocks from my most famous friend, a travel writer who inspired me to the craft. I considered texting to see if he wanted to come out, but was exhausted and wanted to go home, so was considering how to loop around to reclaim my bicycle.

That’s when they arrested me.

My last exposure, moments before my arrest

A deputy chief, scalp shiny as the skinheads of nightmare, charged towards me shouting “YOU! You’re under arrest! You are under arrest!” I thought he was talking about the teenager behind me, who had been sandbagging a bit when the cops pushed us down the street, which seemed unfair, but no, he was talking about me, charging at me. I was under arrest for being in the area of an unlawful assembly, penal code 409.

Two officers stepped forward and pinned my arms at my sides. Took me to a van, hands against it, thorough search, zip-corded my hands behind my back. I spoke with them respectfully, letting them know I was not going to cause any trouble, just as I had not all night. They marched me to a shattered bus stop where half a dozen kids sat with hands pinned behind their backs.

They were going to take us to the prisoner bus. Except no one knew where it was. They loaded us in a van at 10:28, and at 10:57 we had circled back to our original location. My shoulders were hurting, hands going numb, and, of course, I had to pee.

I didn't have a chance to ask his permission
to post his photo. In real life he has a face.

My comrades seemed like good guys. Former pacifists, conscientious objectors to facets of our culture, but I got the feeling that over the years, they’ve seen their protests ignored, brushed aside, and now arrested. The guy next to me had committed the same crime I had: walking. He’d gotten off BART, and was trying to figure out how to get to his house when the same deputy chief arrested him.

I’d spent the night, the day, the next night, defending the police, reminding people that they are not all the racist, violent, aggressive caricatures of pop lore. The assholes, basically. Sure, there are some among them who are inherent bullies, who were going to be on one side of a police altercation if not the other, bad seeds, just as there were bad seeds among the protesters. But all it takes is one…

Eventually they gave up on the bus and drove us to a processing station across Oakland. Took my photo against the van, and I signed my form on the hood of a cruiser. I am due to appear in court on December 26. Merry Christmas, America.

Thoughts are overflowing my brain, but the whole thing is buzzing like a fluorescent lightbulb, so I’m going to bed. I hope that’s still legal.