As I Went Walking

 

She looked calm. She looked proud. And somehow, she looked furious. The American flag she held rippled in the wind. When one policeman yanked on her arm to try to get her onto the sidewalk, her expression barely changed as she easily stepped back to her spot on the street.

From my spot on the sidewalk, I watched the chaos ensue with eyes wide and heart pounding. I understood perfectly that for the first time in my life, I was witnessing civil disobedience, raw, live. It wasn’t the positive exciting experience, nor the negative terrifying experience, that I once imagined it might be. It was, simply put, gut-churning.

I’d started the day meeting Frank, from Occupy Durham, and driving out to meet the Walkupy marchers on the road. Last night I went a bit overboard at Food Lion on my way home from a day of driving packs and feeding the marchers. When you meet these guys, it’s not storybook. It’s not inherently awe-inspiring. It’s… real. It’s here and now and real. And so when I realized that the one way I could help them on the road was to feed them, well… I went overboard. Pop tarts. Granola bars. All the makings for twelve full-sized sub sandwiches.

Anyway, Frank and I drove out in separate cars, stopping at a Hardee’s to pick up their packs and Turtle, a marcher who volunteered to ride forward to Raleigh to watch the packs and pave the way for the arrival of the marchers to North Carolina’s capital city. On the way to Raleigh we fed the marchers, who thanked us, grabbed what they could and kept walking. They had covered eighteen miles and had eight more to go. The mood seemed upbeat, positive, determined.

Fast forward. The marchers reached Raleigh’s Mordecai Park. A crowd of Occupy Raleigh and Occupy Chapel Hill folks met them with cheers and hugs and excitement. After some mingling, the crowd moved forward as one, ready to march through downtown Raleigh. As I walked along, marched even, in time to the various chants, I blinked and looked around me. What am I doing? I thought. Where am I?

“We. Are. The ninety-nine percent! We. Are. The ninety-nine percent!”

“Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! Show me what revolution looks like! This is what a revolution looks like!”

“Whose streets? OUR streets!”

I was questioning what I believed. I haven’t got that conviction, yet. That heartfelt knowledge that I was involved in something worth getting in trouble for. It’s the feeling I’ve been looking for for a long time: the feeling of knowing something, for absolute certain. I’m fascinated by the Occupy movement and agree wholeheartedly with some of the things they’ve done or said. Not everything, though, and not with that absolute certainty.

As these questions coursed through me, these doubts and fears, I passed the first cop car. The chant changed immediately. “The police! Are! The ninety-nine percent!” The cop inside gave us a dirty look as he muttered into his radio. At the next intersection, a cop car blocked the cross walk. Like a stream, we flowed gently by, chanting, singing, and nervously getting cameras ready, unsure of what might happen. Within a few blocks, there were two, then three, then four police cars driving alongside the crowd. The majority of the crowd was in a single lane of the two-lane, one-way city street. Cars had previously been passing by, honking in solidarity or in annoyance, but flowing freely as we purposely kept to just one lane. With the police cars there, the entire street was blocked.

Sarah, holding the marcher’s American flag, stood alone in a sea of people, a look of intensity and steadfastness, of frustration, in her eyes.

Or maybe that’s just how I felt.

When the policemen couldn’t make her move, they tore the flag from her hands and tossed it to the ground. They deftly turned her arm behind her, cuffed her and dragged her between them over to a squad car. Her shoulders, bones shifting under the skin, worked as she grimaced and said, loud enough to be heard over the shouting, angry crowd, “Ow, ow, ow!”

Suddenly my arms were full of backpacks, phones and items the Walkupiers didn’t want “lost.” I consolidated all the gear and then watched as one after another, the brothers followed their sister into the street. Chants of “Shame, shame,” and “The whole world is watching!” continued as the police worked at eradicating the threat of marchers spreading the Occupy message. The prisoner’s van swallowed one after another of them, until six of the eleven marchers were gone.

The next six hours raced by, with Occupy Raleigh rallying, calling their lawyers, collecting bail money and gathering in front of the magistrate’s office. Coffee and donuts, chants and mic checks, the continuously dropping temperatures, all blended into the reactions of the five remaining marcher in my mind: Owen, turned inward and focusing on something in his hands, asking me quietly to keep him updated; Kid, hysterical and every inch his name, alternately ranting on his phone and stalking around aimlessly; Cologino, watching and chatty; Nathan, positive, level-headed and smiling as always; and Ronnie, morose but sweet and holding tight to the flag he’d rescued from the street. I answered the phones Garth and Bo had left with me, tweeting the events and doing my best to organize bail. Somehow, I’d turned into a point person for the marchers. I felt like a fraud until it dawned on me that I was continuing my role of march supporter.

Six individuals volunteered to sign the bail bondsmen. They were from Occupy Raleigh and Occupy Chapel Hill. One was a wanderer recently returned from a trip in Mexico and touring the country’s occupations. And one was from Occupy Durham. I felt no doubt as I signed the paperwork in the bail bondsman’s office.

No doubt whatsoever.