Blisters and Queers

There are blisters on both of my feet and the back of my right ankle is tore up. The inside of my thighs and my butt are sore from rubbing together from all of the walking, something some of us have called "ass chap", and apparently I'm not the only one. The blister on the ball of my foot is so painful that I'm stumbling around the house like I need a crutch. Every night since Wednesday, my feet, my legs, and the overall "me" has been tired.

I guess this is also what democracy looks like.

Wednesday, the air was so thick of the impending war you could cut it with a knife. In fact, before the "official start" was even announced, the rage in people protesting the war's voice was apparent. It certainly was in mine. There had been a last minute call for people to gather at 5th and Powell to protest Bush's "48 hours are up" speech and I had called Tommi asking him to meet me there. "Where should we meet?" I said. "Oh, 5th and Powell, we'll see each other" he said. Uh, no Tommi, cause there were thousands of people pouring out into the street effectively blocking off Market Street, the first day of stopping traffic there that would last well into the weekend. As I approached the demo, a sense of anger and excitement poured over me. I pulled out my Kaffiyah from my bag and began holding it high, so that the wind blew it around like a flag. The march began as soon as I arrived and I wrapped the scarf around my head since it was starting to rain. "Well, here's the rain we've been spared up until now" I thought. The last 3 major marches and rallies had been threatened by rain, and the local news station almost played it up in a way that I felt they were trying to scare people away. But almost every time rain was promised, nothing prevailed but sunny skies, warm, and dry weather. It was like Protest God was looking out for us. But Wednesday night, like the biblical God, he would offer us up as sacrificial lamb for the weeks that had past and days that would come.

But you know how it is when you're out there demonstrating and you're all worked up. The weather, unless it's extreme, becomes secondary and pretty soon you almost forget about it. I almost did until my glasses were so obscured by rain and steam that I had to take them off.

I marched down Market Street, screaming my head off with the crowd. "Stop the War, Stop Bush!" we cried until it almost became like a tribal ceremony. Like a voodoo ritual and at one point I did feel transformed. I didn't care who was around me, we were all together in the struggle. The police flanked us and there was the threat that they might arrest. But for now, they held back. Eventually I found a friend of mine who I had demonstrated with as a queer for the liberation of the Palestinian people. We walked together and talked about how we felt. I said I didn't want to chant about "What do we want?: Peace". I wanted to say "Down with Bush" or "Destroy Halliburton", you know? I didn't want peace, at least when it came to the Bush regime.

Oddly enough (maybe here's where the Protest God comes in), Larrybob and Tommi run up on us with the Out Against the War Coalition (OATWC) banner, not because they recognized us, but because they were trying to get to the front of the march. As they did, the march began to turn onto Valencia and I took over carrying part of the banner. Eventually we wound up at 24th and Mission where we heard the news that the war had begun. Some people cried. Others simply yelled in anger. The cops had left, the rain died down, and Larrybob, Tommi, and I made plans. The organizing we had done up until now was about to go into effect.

Next day. 6:15 AM. Shower. Get dressed. Leave the house. Walk down to Market Street. And as I do, large roving bands of demonstrators are heading in different directions. I pass one group of students who are all wearing fuscia bandannas on their heads and I tell them good luck. I finally reach Battery and Broadway (I thought it would be a shorter walk than it actually was), where the queer affinity groups were going to shut down the intersection. When I got there, they had duct-taped a barrier from all four corners of the intersection. That was only up a minute after I got there as the cops had torn it down and one particularly funny cop (he totally looked like he had to leave his desk job) became frustrated as he rolled this huge ball of duct tape up the street and into his squad car. People were moving into the intersection and as they did, cops would shove them onto the sidewalk. You know, big strong guys shoving little old women; real brave stuff. At this point, the cops outnumbered the protesters 3 to 1, and they, not the protesters ended up blocking the intersection. As the days went on, this irony repeated itself. After chatting with some friends, I headed back towards Market on my way to my job. As I did, I was completely amazed by the overwhelming numbers of people I ran across shutting down intersections and different parts of Market Street (yes, I got tons of pictures). It was astounding the levels of civil disobedience. Folks sitting in the street, going to jail, and folks standing on the sidelines cheering and clapping for each person dragged off by the police. This was happening everywhere I went. Hundreds of folks blockaded the offices to Bechtel, sitting arm and arm in front of the entrances to the building. Hundreds of office workers stood around, yet none of them looked particularly upset. People of all ages were out on the street. The demonstrations had been labeled a "festival of resistance" and it lived up to it's name extremely well. The atmosphere was jubilant, but this jubilation came from the personal commitment and self-sacrifice each person present was willing to give to stop the murder of their fellow human beings in Iraq. Of course, it was also a big Fuck You to the system, and that's enough to make almost anyone happy.

Oh, yes. Work. Couldn't get out. New job and all that. That's OK, cause my cell phone was on and folks had my number in case they got arrested or needed to use me as a resource. Being at work allowed me continue to organize for later that night and the next night. OATWC had also organized a zap of Halliburton for folks who couldn't leave work or school, and I suspect the Halliburton family was a little miffed with all of the emails, faxes, and phone calls they got that day. This was all a part of taking the protest to every possible corner of life, from the street to the work place. I tried to slow down as much as I could at work since I couldn't leave. Eventually, I left early and made my way up to Castro and Market to leaflet for the queer antiwar march the next night. I met Tommi there and he was exhausted. We passed out around 400 flyers in the span of and hour and a half and then Tommi went home to crash. I felt tired too, but as the subway train approached 5th and Powell, I had to get out and see what was going on. Again, I felt surprised. The "festival" was still in full motion and didn't look like it was about to end anytime soon. I met up with Larrybob who had called me on my cell.

Oh, I guess I better say that Larrybob and Tommi looked like they had definitely been through something that day. They looked almost like they were high. Later, as they told me some of what had happened throughout the day, I could understand why. Larrybob and I went up to Union Square where police and demonstrators were playing a waiting game with each other. This waiting game permeated much of the demonstrations to happen as each side tried to figure out what the other would do next. It was anarchy. And no, I don't mean chaos. I mean anarchy, like anarchism, and the strategies that had shut down the downtown were anarchism in it's classic sense. Leaderless, autonomous, action done in mutual cooperation. For a day, maybe for a couple hours, this could be Barcelona in 1936. It could be the Paris Commune. It could be Chiapas.

Him and I made our way up to the plaza at the federal building, now empty, but earlier the scene of a most foul and creative protest. A "puke in", in which 20 people ate the worst possible combinations of food and let the vomit fly to show how the war and the Bush regime made them sick. Even die-hard activists were turned away from the stench. That stench was still present as Larrybob and I counted the numerous puke stains still present. I even choked up a little. The intersection still had the spray-painted body outlines where hundreds of people held a die-in earlier. Got pictures of that too. Larrybob and I walked back down to Market and I decided to go and hit the hay. It was a long day and the next few days would be even longer. The sirens of police cars and the flutter of helicopters would provide the background noise for the night then and days after. As I write this, they are still going on.

The next night we had called for a queer antiwar rally and march at Harvey Milk Plaza at the picturesque corner of Castro and Market. Invariably, organizers of such things always worry if anyone will show up and as 6 PM rolled around, the thought crossed my mind. I kept reassuring myself and others that folks were just on QT time (queer time) and that they will show up eventually. And eventually they did, as we had several folks speak, and as the clock moved on. It was a charged rally and we queer antiwar activists were there to make our stand in this place that may be a upper middle class, white, gay male haven, but whose streets we still claim as our own. And we, as we do in any time of crisis or celebration, reclaimed them once again.

As we finished up the rally, a most amazing and unexpected thing occurred. As we started to leave the plaza, we were met by hundreds of bicyclists traveling up Market; a splinter group of Critical Mass that had many queer folks in it. The excitement as the two groups saw each other and came together in the street was that of two long lost family members reuniting. There was so much joy and now we were determined to make some noise. And noise we made as whistles were blown, folks screamed into bullhorns, people chanted, car horns honked, people came out of stores and clapped. It was a cacophony of sound. At the height of the march, at least 500 people were present. Though as we joined together in this celebration of resistance and many folks in the neighborhood supported us, not all of those around us felt the same. There was at least one instance of someone throwing some water balloons and eggs at the march, primarily because an email had gone out on craigslist.org calling for war supporters/democracy haters to attack the marchers. However, the majority of people we passed were absolutely supportive. As we marched back up Castro Street, we came back to the intersection at Market and took it over. For about 30 minutes we blocked traffic as well held an impromptu die-in and outlined each others bodies in chalk. Here we were traveling the same path as many LGBTs had traveled before us, starting with the earliest demonstrations for gay rights to come out of the neighborhood, to the angry demonstrations to protest the murder of Harvey Milk and the White Night riots, to ACT UP, to the queer resistance to the first Gulf War, and now again to us. Here we were keeping that spirit alive, even though that spirit is becoming harder and harder to find, not just in the Castro, but in the LGBT community at large.

Saturday, noon, and we're suppose to meet at UN plaza near Hyde. I get there and see the usual banners, but this time I'm in for a pleasant surprise. We are joined by many of the members of Gay Shame. Up until now, OATWC and Gay Shame had always participated in separate actions, with them joining many of the splinter marches with the Black Bloc and us joining the larger marches. Though I knew many of the folks in Gay Shame from our co-organizing of Queeruption a couple of years ago, this was the first time I had participated with them to oppose the war. God! They were great! And Ari was such a great MC. We had camped out at that spot while the main rally was going on 2 streets away. I had run over to the stage where International ANSWER was holding their rally to pry some information about the march route from someone working there. Not surprisingly, they didn't want to reveal too much (even though they had worked out the complete route with the cops beforehand), I guess to keep the troublemakers at bay? I did learn enough to know that they were going to go down Grove, make a left on Van Ness, and then go down Market until they got to Fourth. That was enough info for me. I ran back to the queer encampment and we quickly worked out a plan to march up Market to Van Ness and then jump in the parade route. It sounded good in theory. It worked out better in practice!! We, and our little band of queer merrymakers (or should I say Mary's), paraded up Market Street taking over the right-hand lanes as we defiantly marched past the cops shouting "we're here, we're queer, we're out against the war", "fags, not body bags, dykes, not missile strikes", "shock and awe, that's what queers are for", "ass and titties, don't bomb Iraqi cities", "war is bad fashion, right?". As we rounded the corner of Van Ness we saw the head of the official march heading towards us and probably to the consternation of the organizers, jumped in front of it, proclaiming it a queer march. The cops on motorcycles were the ones really leading the march, so we said, hey! "we're here, we're cops, we're out against the war!" As often is the case, queers get left out of the mainstream straight antiwar rallies and if not, we're tokenized – put on a laundry list. This time we weren't marching behind someone's little vanguard. We were ahead of the vanguard, where we belonged. It was great. Not only because the main organized march was so typical and boring with the same "what do we want, when do we want it" chants, but because we felt some real sense of community as we refused to assimilate into the march. As we approached corporate and media offices, Ari would whip the crowd up by saying "who's horny?" afterwards we would dry hump (for peace!) the windows of the target. The first was the Fang Building which has the offices of the horrible rag, The Examiner. Then it was Abercrombie and Fitch, where we freaked the cops out who thought we were vandalizing the building, but to their surprise we were dry humping it. Then Archaeologie, some bad, overpriced, fru-fru store. Then the Metreon. Sometime around the Metreon we got split from the main march, so we decided to head up an alley that ran parallel to it in order to get back up to the front. As we were half-way up the alley, a whole slew of dirt-bike cops came charging down the other end. Luckily there was a parking garage beside us that separated us and the main march. If we would've stayed in the alley, chances are we would've been beaten and arrested. So what did we do? We jetted into the garage and ran through it until we got to the main march. And, unfortunately, we were never able to hold the front of the march again. Still, it was great while it lasted. The main march ended up back at Civic Center, while splinter marches continued throughout the day, followed by more police beatings and arrest. The media here is posting stories that read "protesters alienating other peace activists" and "protests cause big financial burden on city" and the mayor has even said that hospices and healthcare facilities will have to be closed because the overtime pay for the cops. It just makes it all that much clearer that the media isn't embedded in the military, they're in bed with the military. After all, part of the war machine is the propaganda apparatus, and the local and national media here are all guilty.

So that was everything up until now. Today we have an OATWC meeting at 2:30 PM which if I don't finish this up I will be late to. It's been a very tiresome, exciting, emotional, crazy couple of days here in San Francisco and I'm happy to have been a part of it. Like the slogan goes, this is what democracy looks like….for now. There may possibly come a day when this country will follow in the footsteps of the dictatorships it's propped up for decades, and democracy will be crushed and the people will lose all hope. But for now, I can say that I'm glad to live in this time in this city where resistance to injustice is still very much alive and kicking.