Resisting (Arrest)

Blue chards of San Francisco sky blinded our eyes as we emerged from POOR Magazine’s tenderloin office and headed underground to the BART station. Our cru consisted of my son tiburcio, a seasoned marcher at the ripe age of almost four, driving the infamous Si Se Puede Chariot ( read: hooptie stroller), myself covered from head to toe in pobre gente resistance signage- and Angel Garcia, one of POOR’s newest inmigrante reporteros and soon to be published POOR Press author. Our powerful grupo was small but we were on our way to meet up with more folk from POOR, POWER, La Collectiva de Mujer, and thousands of others in honor of inmigrante workers at Delores Park on May day

“I think the “J” train would work better than BART”, said Angel gazing into the rivers of tunnel in front of us. After several minutes of confused wrangling with schedules and underground possibilities Angel and I decided that taking the J train on MUNI would be better than the BART and cause Angel is living with a physical disability, he needs to take the elevator – so down we went.

Upon reaching the muni platform, Angel, tiburcio and I continued on with moments of spacial confusion. Although I travel almost every day on the multiple trains that run through the arteries of this City, we collectively lost site of our direction. Which must be the reason that I forgot my own rule that you NEVER ask the po-lice for ANYTHING!

“Is this the right way to Delores Park” I casually said to a BART/MUNI po’lice officer stationed oddly right at the mouth of the escalator

“Do you have proof of payment?” she said, her triangle- shot gun legs stiffening in tandem with a bullit proofed vested chest.

“Excuse me,” I stumbled, “I just asked you for directions”
“Do you have proof of payment”, she continued without blinking
“WHAT!?, activist tiny yelped, “I asked you for help, why are you harassing me?”
“Are you resisting my inquiry, Do we need to have you arrested?” She began talking lovingly to her shoulder radio, “Officer 3256 requesting back-up….”
“Here,” Formerly incarcerated, system trained, tiny began desperately searching through my stuff for a ticket.
“Cancel Back-up,” the words were terse, and loaded with disdain. She pulled out her citation book and began to write.
“Are you giving me a citation?”
She didn’t answer.


Several more minutes of targeted harassment followed until she finally “allowed” us to leave. No-longer-remotely-activist-tiny felt as though a giant knife had been twisted and turned through my insides. The grueling moments of –losing-my-son-going-to-jail-terror clung to me like dried vomit.

“Mama, where would I go if they took you away,” As we all numbly rolled over to the J train, my son completed the sorrow of the moment with his plaintive request. Feelings of empowerment and resistance, consciousness and pride that should belong to this important day fell away from my mind and soul like petals off of a sunflower.

The day was filled with multiple voices of inmigrante scholarship, which I was blessed to see and hear, but later that day when I heard about the brutal attacks on all the gente pobre, and poor families at LA’s May Day Marcha, my still adrenalin wrecked mind shuddered for all the brutal ICE raids on immigrants, po’lice harassment of all poor people of color locally and globally and border fascism which remains stronger and more frightening than ever.