Chapter 10

Occupy NATO—M20

May 18-21, 2012

Two weeks after an underwhelming May Day in the Bay Area, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Omak, Washington, to stay the night with friends in Seattle. The next morning, Friday, May 18, I hopped the new Sound Transit light rail link to the airport, and then settled in for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Chicago. I’d spent those intervening weeks at home, regrouping for the next action, while I planted my organic, open-pollinated, vegetable garden in the warming spring sunshine. I hoped I wouldn’t be as plagued by pocket gophers as the year before, when I’d lost nearly all of my green beans and carrots, which were literally being yanked underground, (just like I’d seen in Bugs Bunny cartoons) the moment they were ripe and ready to eat. En route, I thought about all the daunting tweets and Facebook posts I’d been picking up, describing the formidable police response Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was planning to unleash on any misguided fool who dared think s/he could breeze in to Chicago and Occupy his NATO conference without an unpleasant consequence. Rahm, whose previous job title had been White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama, put the entire NATO Summit area in downtown Chicago, on highest threat alert status, and expressed his determination to thwart us in every way possible. He promised to hit us hard with everything at his disposal. It was widely publicized that he had spared no expense in outfitting his law enforcement professionals with lots of new gadgets, some of which were military grade weapons systems that were identical to those currently in use by US armed services in the Middle East. Rahm said he would stop at nothing to make sure the NATO Summit went off without a hitch. He had hurriedly enacted a law making it illegal to assemble within a certain distance from NATO events. Then came the assertions that he would scramble the Internet, deploy a massive, cooperative, interagency police force of thousands, close Chicago Transit Authority stops into the antiprotest zone, and use tear gas and other “nonlethal” weapons to disperse us if he deemed it appropriate. He also purchased an LRAD system(long-range acoustic device) for use by the CPD, which emitted an eardrum-splitting sound that could cause permanent hearing loss, and even possible organ damage, along with helicopters and tanks if necessary. He assured NATO participants, as well as the citizens of Chicago, that he was ready for us. It was dawning on me that the mayor, and the country at large, considered Occupy to be public enemy number one, and wanted to eradicate it at all costs. WBBM Newsradio Chicago was reporting that an email had been obtained from Milwaukee Red Cross volunteers, saying that the NATO summit “may create unrest of another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.” Although officials at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication said the directive did not come from them, a chapter spokesperson disagreed by stating, “Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service.” It felt for all the world like I was preparing to go into combat—the only difference being, our side was unarmed. I thought there was supposed to be a thing called the Posse Comitatus Act that limited the government’s ability to use the military as a police force against its citizens. I was so concerned about the blurred lines between the military and the police, that I did some research, and indeed, the law does exist, and it’s been in place since 1878. I googled the statute, which also yielded me discouraging revelations that certain politicians around the country were pushing hard to alter it, or do away with it altogether. John Warner, R-VA, chairman of the Armed Services Committee under George W. Bush, had signaled his desire to change the law as an impediment to effective policing. Former Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita called Posse Comitatus “a very archaic statute that hampers the president’s ability to respond to a crisis.” I guess, technically speaking, the mayor wasn’t planning to turn the army on us, he was turning the police into a domestic army … to turn on us.

Though I was apprehensive about going, I needed to feel like I was doing something to counter the doubling down on dissenters that I was seeing everywhere I traveled. The language coming from politicians and corporate mouthpieces was alarming to me. New York City billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg had recently been quoted as saying, “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” I’d also read a request from Oakland police officers, who told local newspapers that they needed additional funds to purchase a bigger arsenal to respond to counter threats like the, “IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and pipe bombs that were coming out of the Occupy Movement.” I’d never seen so much as a firecracker being thrown at any of the demonstrations I attended—broken windows, yes, graffiti, yes … an overturned garbage can set alight … yes … even plastic water bottles being thrown on one occasion—but IEDs? Pipe bombs? No. Another recent development I noted, was the growing emergence of partnerships and alliances between municipal police departments and military contractors, (like Halliburton and Bechtel), resulting in disappearing distinctions between cops and soldiers. Fox News, (which we all called Faux News), Rush Limbaugh, and others of that ilk, were representing people like me to be the pitiful remnants of a dying fad—a bunch of lunatic, fringe, lazy, homeless, stinky hippies that belonged in mental institutions, rather than sullying city streets. Conservative on-air personalities such as Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter were doing their utmost to convince their viewers that America was fed up with our inane rot, and had had it up to here with our rants about police states and corporate greed. According to them, we were little more than outliers on a perfect bell shaped curve. The Heartland Corporation had bought and placed a number of billboards around Chicago, before NATO, showing images of infamous villains Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski. The captions read: STILL BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING? SO DO THEY. The comparison of environmental activism to mental illness, and the association with convicted murderers had infuriated so many, that the outcry prompted Heartland to remove them shortly after installation.

My friends Ellen and Barbara, whom I’d met ten years earlier at one of my Chicago concerts, had offered to pick me up at O’Hare airport, as well as to put me up at their house in Algonquin, (a suburb about forty-five minutes from the city) while I was Occupying NATO. That seemed like a great option to me, so I said yes, and prepared to stay with them. But just before I left Seattle, I picked up a handful of messages from event organizers, saying that Mayor Emanuel’s promises to severely restrict access to areas near the conference should be taken seriously; therefore, it would be wise to seek lodging within the city limits, for fear that some of us would find it difficult to re-enter if we left. Could they just do that? Could mayors and other politicians invent laws on the spot that closed off large areas of a city (or country) to people who planned to assemble to protest their government’s nefarious activities? What if you happened to live in one of those cordoned off areas, and all of a sudden, you had no public transportation to and from your home, nor could you log onto the Internet, or make calls from your cell phone, even in the case of emergencies? What if, in order to be allowed into your neighborhood, you’d be asked to produce copious documentation proving that you did indeed reside there, which may or may not suffice to convince the police to let you in … especially if you looked “suspicious” to them in any way. What if you’d forgotten your ID, or had none with the current address on it? Would you not, then, be able to reach your children to escort them off the school bus, or get into an apartment where you were pet sitting? Was this an acceptable trade-off for whatever security and safety assurances you’d been given?

Fortunately, Ellen and Barbara took my change of plans in stride, and in their kindness, even purchased a tent, along with a sleeping bag, which they placed in my hands as soon as they greeted me at O’Hare airport’s, Vestibule 3H. I’d learned online at Occupy Chicago.org, that a downtown church, St. James Cathedral, had generously offered to let us stay on their property as a place of refuge and shelter from police brutality. We arrived at 65 E. Huron, where the church was located, and Ellen escorted me, sleeping bag, tent, and all, through the open door. It was a grand old house of worship, possessing rich stained glass windows and antique oak pews. Ellen and I saw that the church was about a third full, perhaps a hundred fifty people, and everyone was listening to a speaker at a podium on the altar. Relief washed over me as I took in the scene of my temporary home. We were walking toward the aisle to sit and listen to the speaker when two women intercepted us. One said, “Excuse me, who are you?” as she eyed my sleeping bag suspiciously. Though I was taken aback by her clipped tone, I could understand why Occupy Chicago would exercise caution to ensure that I wasn’t a cop, or an agent provocateur, or something equally offensive. After all, having just landed, I was still clean, coiffed, crisp, and dressed fairly conservatively. And, at fifty-two, I was well past the age of many of my fellow revolutionaries. “We’re here with the Occupy Movement, and I saw your offer to house us, so I was planning on staying here for the next three days.” The woman’s eyebrows shot up as she tried to contain her hostility. She then turned to her frosty colleague who said, “This is a private meeting ma’am, you aren’t allowed to join this group.” Startled, I looked at the other woman and said, cleverly, “Ummmmmmmm, really? Uh, are you sure? I mean, ‘cause like, we were told by Occupy Chicago, on their website … that we could stay here during NATO … so, like, what exactly is this meeting.” The first woman snapped, “It’s a private meeting and that’s all I can say.” I didn’t know what to say next, so my friend, Ellen, queried, “What exactly is this meeting, and who are these people?” The woman began to reiterate, “It’s private …” when her colleague interrupted, “It’s Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you aren’t here for that meeting, you should go, or maybe, I could take you downstairs to the office and you can ask them all your questions.” That didn’t sound very encouraging to me, however, I still believed we were in the right place. I could imagine that, in a large city like Chicago, there could possibly be 150 alcoholic Occupiers who’d called a special AA meeting for themselves, as well as for the benefit of visiting alcoholic Occupiers.

Downstairs in a small basement office, a husky man in casual clothing eyed us warily as the AA woman left. I explained to him that we had been directed by Occupy NATO to the church, and that we understood that the head priest had offered us shelter and sanctuary there. The man could not have been less welcoming as he said, “Oh no, no, no … uh uh. I do not know where you got that information, but it is most definitely not true. I’m not sure how you all got in here … but you gotta go right now. You’re not the first one that’s barged in here today, and you need to just turn around and go back to wherever you came from.” By then Ellen’s wick had shortened considerably, prompting her chilly rejoinder, “We got in here because the front door was wide open, which usually means you’re welcome, and we were told that Occupiers could stay here. The only reason we know your address is because it was posted on the Occupy NATO website. We were invited.” The man seemed to know more than he was admitting to, as he spat, “You need to leave this place right now—period.” Neither Ellen nor I could understand why he was so angry with us, since our demeanor had been friendly and pleasant until that last exchange, however, we simply did as we were ordered, turned away from him, and began to mount the stairs we’d been led in on. “Not that way,” the man barked venomously. “You need to go out the back door.” And with that he stomped us out a small basement exit, which he closed loudly behind us and locked audibly.

“That went well,” I said to Ellen, whose hackles were still up. “I’m so glad we didn’t just drop you off, Laura. What the fuck was wrong with that asshole,” she fumed. “I dunno,” I answered, “but I remember getting another text about the ‘Wellington Ave. Church,’ that said they would put us up too.” We got back into the car to investigate that lead. After we told her what was up, Barbara began driving a long way across town, to 615 W. Wellington, where we came upon a much more inviting scene—a group of scraggly, travel-weary road warriors, brimming with as they immersed themselves in the political discourse I’d become so accustomed to in my adventures.

There were blacks, whites, Latinos, queer people, transgender—you name it, all clustered around the closed side door of the church, some spilling out onto the sidewalks and parking strips of the surrounding dwellings in the city neighborhood. One of the first I recognized was a young man named Maupin, whom I’d met in Washington DC while Occupying Congress and the Supreme Court in January. I recalled his engaging personality, rail-thin body, and the mop of unruly, dark hair atop his head. When he’d introduced himself in DC, I immediately changed it to “Moppin” in my mind, because of that outstanding volume of hair. I also remembered the deep husky voice, ever present cigarette dangling from his lips, and the dirty, bagging-at-the-butt blue jeans. He had a craggy, earnest, working-class face, with a depression-era vibe, like Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) in the Grapes of Wrath. I could easily envisage him as a black and white Dorothea Lange photo, gracing the pages of her books, chronicling hungry, poverty-stricken Americans fleeing dust bowl states. I pictured him traveling westward among whole families of Okies and Arkies in rickety jalopies during the thirties, as they sought employment picking fruit for opulent landowners in California, Oregon, or Washington state. The sight of him warmed the cockles of my heart, and we embraced like kin as I told him how nice it was to see him. His infectious grin enveloped me as he held out a handmade 99% patch for me to wear. Ellen and Barbara felt it safe to leave me there, as I was certainly in the right spot. Then I saw “OccupyFreedomLa” and Sky “CrossXbones,” streamers from Los Angeles, which also eased my anxiety. They’d both ridden one of three buses from L.A., (paid for by some generous Occupy supporter) which ferried Occupiers to this church, which we were now calling, “The Convergence Center.” Just then, the side door to the church swung open, and it was announced that the dinner was ready and we were free to come in and eat.

I knew most of them were flat broke, so the words were met with great enthusiasm as famished, tired folks filed into the brightly lit room, which was adjoined by an industrial kitchen, staffed by volunteers who had prepared our supper. The meal was offered to us by an organization called Occupy the Seeds, who had cooked up huge pots of brown rice, organic, home grown greens, and produce. They also provided sesame tahini dressing, fresh condiments, and a whole host of other real foods that were nourishing, visually appealing, and tasty. Watching the ragtag crowd descend ravenously onto the feast strengthened my associations with impoverished, opportunity-robbed soup kitchen patrons of decades past. Jacob Riis studies popped into my head, as I merged this scene with his sepia-toned photographs of shockingly poor tenement slum residents in New York City, after the turn of the twentieth century.

After the repast, I looked around the space and wondered aloud to FreedomLA if I could set my tent up anywhere in the room after we folded up the tables. “Oh, the church is only offering us meals and a meeting place. I’m afraid there’s no overnight camping here,” was her response. What was with this vexing habit of Chicago churches to giveth and taketh away in the same breath, I wondered, as I mulled over my options. A few moments later, as I was talking with someone else, FreedomLA interrupted and said, “Hey, they’re talking about lodging over there, so you should listen in.” A young woman had mic checked the crowd to say that we were being offered lodging on the South Side of Chicago by the head priest at St. Sabina’s Church at 7800 Racine Street. She said it was only one short bus ride off the Red line, which we could catch about a mile away. Knowing nothing of Chicago Transit stations, I scrambled to write down every bit of information in sharpie, on my right arm, as she read off the instructions to St. Sabina’s. It was approaching 11:00 p.m., Seattle time, and I was fried from my long day of travel, so I stood there trying to order my thoughts and gather the energy to walk to the bus stop carrying my backpack, sleeping bag, and tent. Barbara and Ellen were probably just arriving home in Algonquin by then, and I wasn’t even considering asking them to turn around and retrieve me. They both worked hard at their day jobs—Barbara, as a production manager for scholastic book publishers, and Ellen, as a talented, yet meagerly compensated photography teacher at a local community college. In addition, Ellen also attended classes in political studies. Knowing their crazy schedules, I’d rather have slept over a heating grate than call them back at this late hour. If all else failed, I probably could have gotten myself a hotel somewhere, though I was loathe to do so. It was probably safe to assume that few, if any of the others in my group, could afford to plunk down a credit card (as if they even had credit cards) for a night of comfort in a big, expensive city, so I was damned if I would either. Just having the option put me at a distinct advantage to many of my comrades and I felt the weight of my privilege in every step I took. A young woman among us climbed the base of a street lamp to be seen as she shouted out that two bicycle rickshaw cabbies were willing to cart up to three people each to the Red line station. I looked where she was pointing, and saw two skinny, sweaty guys, both professional peddlers, sitting on the seats of their oversized three-wheeled tricycles. Both had spent the entire day carting around sight-seeing tourists to pay their bills, and earn the privilege of living in the Chicago metropolitan area. How exhausted they must be, yet here they were offering me and my fat ass, a mile ride to the CTA station—for free. I was grateful in the extreme, as my younger, fitter counterparts beckoned me forward to mount the narrow seat with a slender girl named Audra, who’d arrived that morning on one of the L.A. buses, along with a slight, elderly black man named Lendon, who lived in the deep South Side of Chicago—a long bus ride from the last stop on the line. All together, with our bodies and our bags, we must have weighed over 500 pounds, yet our driver cheerfully bade us aboard his buggy, and told us that he too was a dedicated Occupier, and wanted to support us in any way possible, in addition to attending NATO actions in the coming days. Ten minutes later, we exited his chariot, and I begged him to take a five dollar tip, which he steadfastly refused. Sneakily, I shoved it into his jeans pocket as he turned to leave. He smiled back at me, as I thanked him profusely for his personal contribution to the quality of my life that night.

Lendon was a distinguished man who possessed a straight back and three-foot-long salt and pepper dreadlocks, which nearly touched the floor as he sat regally in the train seat. He was colorfully dressed in an assortment of vintage clothing from head to toe. He was a feast for the senses—his rich mahogany skin providing the perfect backdrop to his unique attire, as his mellifluous voice articulated his affinity for Occupy, and his hopes for the future of the 99%. He advised us to exit the train at the Seventy-Ninth Street stop, and then to catch the bus toward Ford City, which would take us to Racine Avenue. He leaned in and lowered his voice, “Just so you know, it is a black neighborhood, but the main priest at Saint Sabina’s, is a white guy by the name of Michael Pfleger. He’s been there a long time and he’s a good man. He’s notorious for rabble rousing and supporting liberal causes and social justice movements. He’s well known in this neighborhood, so if you get lost, just ask someone where Saint Sabina’s is and you should be fine.” Until I met Lendon, my only working knowledge of Chicago’s South Side, was that it was the “baddest part of town,” which I had gleaned from Jim Croce’s monster seventies hit, “Bad Leroy Brown.” So now, I was adding a Catholic Church named Saint Sabina’s to my base of wisdom, though it rankled me that I was having such a hard time remembering how the locals pronounced the word “Sabina.” I wanted the “I” to sound like the one in Tina, but no—it was not to be. Every time I went to say it, I had to back up and start again until I got it right. That is until I came up with a handy mnemonic that involved me imagining the priests referring to their Sunday sermons as the Sabina Monologues.

I hadn’t seen a section of town like this in years, but as Audra (who admitted to being uneasy about our surroundings) and I rode the bus past the numerous boardedup buildings interspersed with thriving ghetto industries; liquor stores, pawn shops, beauty parlors, bars, churches, usurious check cashing marts, Newport cigarette billboards-, and the like, I was instantly reminded of my childhood days spent in the depressing Omaha, Nebraska ghetto of the 1960s. North Twenty-Fourth Street, in Omaha, shortly after the riots in L.A., was not a pretty place. The bloody Watts Riots, in South Central Los Angeles, had started in August of 1965, when a young black man named Marquette Frye was pulled over by a white state patrolman, who suspected him of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The relationship between the police and the underserved community was already strained, at best, but as a gathering crowd of residents watched the officer, Lee W. Minikus, arrest Frye, they became agitated and angry, eventually resulting in an insurrection that played out for six chaotic days and left millions of dollars in property damage, as well as thirty-four deaths and scores of reported injuries. Fourteen thousand National Guard troops were called upon to restore order to the area and a curfew was imposed over forty-five square miles. When it was all said and done, very few changes were implemented to ease the suffering of the neighborhood residents, despite the fact that then Governor Pat Brown and a gubernatorial commission found the schools there to be inadequate, the housing substandard, and unemployment rates to be unacceptably high.

That uprising had triggered nationwide civil rights unrest and upheaval, which spread from city to city, until it finally reached the Nebraska town where I lived. In a matter of days, my poverty-plagued, mostly African American, Midwest neighborhood had turned into a shot-up, burned-out, still-smoldering, brick and plywood jungle, newly remodeled by the seething rage that had propelled black folks to rise up and demand change. Some had asked peacefully, while many others were out of patience with due process and preferred to achieve it “by any means necessary,” from a color-consumed nation run mostly by wealthy white men, who were no more willing to do right and soften the stranglehold they enjoyed on the means of production than they are now. At that time, as in these times, they wielded ultimate power and control over the quality of black people’s lives and were mainly responsible for the deplorable conditions that most lived under. I remember in 1969, seeing a large gathering of very angry people assembled near our dilapidated shack off North. Twenty-Fourth Street. They were on the verge of setting the whole block on fire—again, after a white Omaha policeman shot a fourteen-year-old black girl, who was coming home from the store, walking through an abandoned lot with some groceries when she was spied by the officer, who said he mistook her for a tall, heavyset male suspect, who had allegedly robbed a liquor store nearby and was still at large. The officer said that he thought she was the perpetrator, as he pulled out his gun and shot her dead. His attitude was far short of contrite, and his words had been delivered with indignation and disdain. They were seen by many of us to be more of an explanation than an apology. That incident sparked days of demonstrations and uprisings in the Omaha ghetto where residents had gathered spontaneously outside the police station and chanted things like, “Burn, baby, burn” and “Hell no, we won’t go.” Those public displays of outrage instantly struck me as the way to go to get people’s attention and leave a lasting impression when things were intolerable. I remember my mother listening intently to the local radio station to hear what was happening in our little corner of the world. She’d just come home from her mind-numbing, short-lived factory job (at a place called Components Concepts Corporation—what the hell does that mean?) and was telling me and my sister what her coworkers were saying. The job, which was to assemble plastic gizmos of some kind, required little or no thought, so she and her fellow employees helped to alleviate the crushing boredom by talking to each other throughout the day. My mother was almost giddy when the riots broke out near us, because the conversation at work suddenly veered away from mundane small talk and insipid gossip, which my mother abhorred, to topics that mattered to her. If she couldn’t interest any of them in discussions about art, literature, opera, and classical music, then this was the next best thing. Before the unrest, she would come home from work, throw her purse down on the floor and scream things like, “If I ever have to hear another woman describe how happy she gets when her baby pees on her, I’ll hang myself.” We knew she was not to be toyed with when making such statements. In fact, scarcely three years earlier, Mom had done just that, during a particularly stressful time in our lives where we were living in a neighborhood surrounded by racists, had very little money, and she was trying to complete her college education, so we knew she was capable of following through on such things. Trying to free her from the yellow braided laundry rope she swung from after she’d stepped casually off a chair, noose encircling her neck, had not been pleasant, and I never wanted to go through that again. She was never given to selfcensorship when it came to talking to her children, so, my sister Lisa and I were thrilled to hear her rattle off terms like, “racist honkeys,” “pig motherfuckers,” and “blue-eyed devils,” to describe the fury she and her colleagues were feeling. We were tickled by her gift for constructing ghetto sentences that somehow managed to smoothly integrate bits of classical literature. We found the juxtaposition delightful, when she’d string together phrases like, “Those rabid jackals think we’re all just a bunch of animals. Goddamn peckerwoods just shot that little girl down like she was a common cur. Hath not a nigger eyes! Hath not a nigger hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions! A pox on all those crackers’ houses!” At nine years old I didn’t know exactly what it all meant, but I do remember being enthralled by watching people who’d had enough, reached their boiling point, and just gone off.

The South Side of Chicago exuded the same bleak, forgotten, broken, hopeless feel that Omaha had back then, and the familiarity of the scene made me all the more anxious to revive some of that “Burn, baby, burn,” “Hell no, we won’t go,” spirit that had so affected me back in 1969. Audra and I got off at the intersection of Seventy-Ninth and Racine, on the advice of the heavy black woman who drove the bus. Her voice was loud and authoritative, making her sound mad, even when she wasn’t, and her breasts were so large they almost obscured the steering wheel beneath them, which made it hard for me to focus on anything else, but she was every bit as knowledgeable and helpful as Lendon said she’d be. We stood there momentarily, and saw a large stone building that looked like it might be St. Sabina’s, but upon closer inspection, was not. We ventured into an alley where we encountered half a dozen or so young black men, who were hanging around outside a rundown neighborhood bar.

“Come on over here ladies—it’s my birthday,” hollered one.

“Uh oh.” Audra said, quietly.

I walked toward them, smiling, as Audra shadowed me.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” I said to the hollerer. “Do you know where Saint Sabina’s church is?”

“Awww yeah, it’s right over there,” answered the birthday boy, pointing, helpfully.

“Thank you so much. You have a great birthday.”

“Thank you,“ the young man replied, respectfully, bowing slightly and tipping his dark green Kangol cap to us.

A hundred yards later we stood directly in front of one of the large wooden entrance doors to Saint Sabina’s Church. A man that Audra knew from her long bus ride from L.A. was already there, enjoying a cigarette at the curb. Audra threw her arms around his neck and scolded him for allowing them to be separated. Her relief, however, at reuniting with her friend in this strange and foreboding place was almost palpable. I tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside the cavernous, dimly lit church gym were a dozen or so bedraggled, scruffy human beings, lying on the ancient varnished wood floor, all along the walls of the hot room. One or two industrial fans blew at full blast, providing some modicum of relief from the hot, stale air.

Home. A kid who introduced himself as Franklin approached me with a clipboard, and asked for my name and contact information. He said that he was in charge of keeping track of everyone, and making sure we got onto his list, so I happily complied with his request. No sooner had I finished, when he began regaling me with stories of the physical ailments he was afflicted with, which included, but were not limited to; vomiting, nausea, and excessive mucous discharge. He surmised that all of these problems had been caused, and/or exacerbated, by the medication he was taking to prevent him from contracting HIV-from a total stranger he’d slept with the week prior. A sizeable cold sore was blooming underneath the peach fuzz of his upper lip, as he explained how the man had only revealed his HIV-positive status to Franklin, after they’d had sex. “I mean—I didn’t ask—we were both kinda in a hurry, and neither one of us talked much—but still …” he trailed off. Franklin informed me that there was now a course of medication, similar to the “morning after pill,” that had a 50% efficacy rate for preventing HIV transmission after unprotected sex. Apparently, though, for the highest chance of success, the medication was to be taken no longer than seventy-two hours after the encounter, which troubled him, as it had been at least a week after the tryst before he’d been able to afford the drugs. He was twenty years old, short haired, zaftig, and clearly concerned, as he worried aloud about his chances of remaining healthy. “I don’t know if I should even bother taking the meds. I mean—I gotta take them for a whole month and every time I do, I end up puking in a trash can somewhere and I don’t even see it coming. It’s like—what would you do if you were me?” I was unnerved, and even recoiling a little bit, at his willingness to divulge the most intimate, even somewhat disgusting, details of his life, however, I did notice how his graphic banter had taken the edge off the hunger that had crept up on me earlier. “What are the odds you’ll stay HIV negative if you keep the meds up?” I asked. “The doctor said it’s like … 10% or something, since I didn’t start taking them right away,” Franklin answered. “Well, it’s certainly a personal decision,” I stalled, not really having a definitive answer. “But people are living nearly normal life spans, in good health, many years after diagnosis,” I offered. “I do think I’d consider abandoning the procedure if it was me, since you feel so awful and the drugs have so many horrible side effects.” Franklin’s face immediately registered relief that someone had given him, what he interpreted as, some sort of permission, to abandon the drug regimen that was making him so miserable. His brow unfurrowed all the way, and he declared us to be a team, which I had no particular objection to, other than being tired and hoping my hunger would remain at bay. I helped him to greet and check people in that night before going to bed, and the next morning I assisted him in waking people up. We’d been kindly informed by Father Pfleger himself, the night before, that we were welcome to sleep at his church, but we were to be out by 8:00 a.m., and could not return until 8:00 p.m.—a small price to pay for all the comforts Saint Sabina’s represented, compared to sleeping outside, under a bridge somewhere, in downtown Chicago. I thanked him, and said how much I appreciated the accommodations. With my own private tent and a gym mat Franklin scored me from the basement, I was the envy of all the squatters at the church—the 1% of the 99% as it were. No one seemed to hold my relative riches against me however, since I was older than everyone there, and the kids understood how a fossil like me might need a little extra comfort. In fact, some of them began asking me questions, as if I were the den mother, and I quickly came to enjoy that role. “Is there gonna be a bus to pick us up tomorrow?” “Is there anyplace to store our gear?” “Can you get Wi-Fi?” “Is somebody gonna feed us?” The next morning as Franklin and I gently woke people up with phrases like, “Good morning, sweetie … it’s 7:25 and you’ve got about half an hour before we have to leave,” or, “Rise and shine, Valentine.” Sleepy, blinky, Occupiers mumbled, “Okay,” and “Thanks,” back at me. There were times when I half expected them to call me “Mom,” which would have made me smile. One couple was nestled together, deep in slumber inside a double sleeping bag. When I touched the young woman’s shoulder, she began to stir, and a tiny puppy wriggled out of the bag. It had slept pressed against her stomach all night, and nearly fell over backwards while yawning expansively at me, and wagging its curly little tail. The two humans told me it was female, and that they’d found her on the roadside as they hitchhiked to Chicago to Occupy NATO. They tumbled out of their bedding, and reached down into a backpack for some puppy chow they’d bought somewhere along the way. By eight o’clock, we all stood outside the church in the morning sun, hoping that the ride another camper had spoken of would be coming soon. “I dunno,” one kid said, “yesterday at the Convergence we waited hella long, and the bus never came.” That was all I needed to hear to convince me that I should hoof the half block to bus seventy-nine, and transfer to the Red line to reach the Convergence Center on Wellington Avenue. “Hey guys, I think that the Walgreens by the bus stop sells CTA transit passes for like, three bucks, that covers the whole day on buses and trains. I’m not going to take the chance of missing any marches waiting here for a free bus that might not ever come. If anyone wants to follow me to the Walgreens, that’s cool.” Suddenly, I found myself standing in the middle of a dozen panic-stricken youths, who wanted to kill the messenger who’d just delivered this abysmal news. “How’m I ‘sposed to come up with three fuckin’ dollars,” one barefoot brown girl, with an adorable short afro, no shoes, and a leather halter top wailed. Another, with freckles and long red hair, let out a woe-filled gasp, and buried her face in the crook of her arm so that none of us would see her beginning to weep. Then Franklin and a cute gay boy who’d showed up late the night before, named Von, looked pleadingly at each other, desperately hoping that the other could produce the unimaginable sum I’d quoted, to ride public transportation into town. “I guess I’ll just have to walk to the Convergence,” Von whispered to Franklin, who said, “Yeah, me too.” I didn’t know Chicago at all, but judging by the time it took us to get to Saint Sabina’s on the train and bus, it had to be at least fifteen miles away, if not more. Though I had previously considered myself to be of limited funds, I could see that I, who possessed not only a credit card, a checking account, and about a hundred twenty dollars cash, may as well have been Bill Gates to them. I couldn’t stand it any longer, and began doing the math to figure how much it would take to buy the most desperate among us, two-, or three-day CTA passes. I came up with around thirty bucks, and tried not to start a riot as I quietly offered to purchase them for the neediest kids. By then it was approaching nine o’clock, so we walked to Walgreen’s and got in line at the counter to buy the passes. As I waited there with everyone, I speculated that, since it was getting late, we might be better off to head directly downtown and meet up with marchers, rather than go all the way to the Convergence and then ride back into town for the planned Mental Health Clinic Solidarity march, to support patients who were protesting the recent shutdown of the clinic due to a “lack of city funds.” I didn’t want to miss anything, but quickly realized the blunder, when my suggestion was met with sideways glances and anguished faces. The mysterious reaction resolved itself when someone sheepishly said, “Well, yeah but we’re starving and none of us has any money to eat. They’re feeding us on Wellington, so we gotta go there first.” My general lack of awareness made me feel like an idiot, as I compared mine to Mitt Romney’s latest remarks. “Oh yes, I just love Nascar … I don’t attend much, but I’ve got several friends who own teams.” It had amazed me that those words could come out of his mouth, right on the heels of his declaration weeks before, when he’d said, “I just love American cars. My wife has a couple of Cadillacs that she just loves, too.” This was apparently the best he could do to right the ship after it surfaced that the Romneys had a vehicle elevator installed in their garage for easier management of their personal fleet. My suggestion to forego the visit to the Convergence because of time constraints was almost as out of touch as Mitt’s latest remarks. It disturbed me to note how quickly a few years of comfort and good fortune had made me forget how hard it was to live in this country without money. At the time of Mitt’s Nascar statement, I had shaken my head in disbelief that anyone could be so clueless about the hard realities facing millions of Americans every day. Those comments, along with daily revelations of Mitt’s unscrupulous leadership at Bain Capital, incensed me to the point that I’d begun sending out a rash of snarky tweets, with rants like, “Romney” unscrambled is “R Money.” Even though I held little sympathy for Mitt, it wasn’t particularly difficult for me to understand how he’d come to be so ignorant about a huge segment of the population, but my own lack of sensitivity frustrated me. I, like many of them, grew up poor, and knew on a visceral level what is was like to yearn for things I needed or wanted, yet had no means of acquiring—save stealing, or some other illegal pursuit. Those were the realities that had inspired me to get out into the streets and “Raise a Ruckus” in the first place, yet, here I was, oblivious to their circumstances. I might as well just pack my dog into a crate, put him on the roof of my Cadillac, and go on home.

And so it was, that it began to sink in that many of the activists I hung with were without even the slightest margin of protection against calamity in their own lives. Despite that, they’d somehow gotten themselves to this place, by hook or crook, to oppose the excesses that threatened to steal their futures. They wanted to gain some control over their destinies, and they’d heard that one of the most important actions in a participatory democracy is just showing up, so that’s what they did. They’d taken it to heart and showed up, even though they didn’t have any idea how they were going to feed or shelter themselves once they got there. They’d jumped off the cliff and begun building their wings on the way down. For them, social justice wasn’t a lofty ideal to aspire to—their lives depended on it.

“Why don’t you guys go grab some snacks to tide us over till we get to the Convergence, and I’ll wait in line for the passes,” I said, pushing a twenty at them. Relief dominated their faces as they thanked me, before darting off into Walgreen’s aisles in search of something edible to mollify their discomfort. Soon they were inhaling fistfuls of chips, popcorn, and candy aboard the seventy-nine bus that carried us to our Red line station. The sight of them devouring their food like vagabonds in a Dickens novel compelled a middle aged black woman sitting nearby to take pity on them and ask if anyone wanted to finish the barbecue potato chips she had in her purse. They pounced on the offer, swiftly accepting the half-full bag from her hands. It was painful to watch them forcing themselves to slow down long enough to divide portions equally on the way to the church on Wellington Avenue. The woman asked if we were locals, or if we were just in town for the NATO protests (how did she know?). I remained silent, as I listened to them launch into colorful stories about their former lives in the cities and towns they came from. One thing they had in common though, was that all of them had left their homes and/or low-paying service jobs to roam the country and join up with other revolutionaries to act on their conclusions that things had gotten so bad, they had no recourse but to abandon their worlds, and get out in the streets to try to change things. As we arrived at our Red line station stop, the kind woman told us that she agreed things had gotten really bad, “especially on the South Side.” Then she told us that she supported us and hoped we wouldn’t get arrested. As we poured off the bus and onto the sidewalk, she hollered that God would be with us.

First we rode the Red line, then transferred to the Brown line, eventually arriving at our final destination, 615 W. Wellington, where the Convergence was located. People milled about inside and out, as we entered the building and took in the rows of boxed cereal, bags of bagels, cream cheese, butter, coffee, tea, jams, and other breakfast foods displayed on the tables before us. I worried that my crew may have filled up on junk, but saw otherwise as they loaded their plates with nutritious fare. A wide opening into the kitchen allowed me to see the hive of volunteers who were rushing about, scrambling eggs, slicing fruit, frying bacon, flipping hotcakes, and washing mountains of dishes. Nearly everyone I struck up conversations with had ridden into the city on any one of a number of free buses that were still arriving from around the country. A few people were still curled up in the corner of the dining room, after arriving late the night before with no lodging lined up. The church leaders had relaxed their rule at the last possible moment, and graciously allowed them to to bed down there, when it became apparent they had no other safe choices. Spirits were lifted to dizzying heights, as the hungry began to feel full, the tired began to feel rested, and the smokers among us began to share tobacco and weed. The sun was shining, the weather was warm, but not too hot yet, and life was good. I mingled contentedly with folks, forging new friendships, for about an hour before starting to walk with them to a Brown line stop that would connect us with Occupy Chicago members who were protesting the closure of vital mental health clinics that were said to be indispensable to those who used them throughout the city. I was excited at the prospect of getting to meet some of the people that I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off as I’d watched, on an OccupyChi livestream months earlier. Somehow, patients had managed to organize and bring attention to the issue, in spite of their challenges, and even chained themselves inside one particular clinic for several days before being forcibly evicted. I found it difficult to leave my home during that time, as I nervously observed vulnerable clients, whose heartbreaking stand was being documented by a handful of individuals who were on their side. Many of the unlikely activists who had come into my living room, via Ustream, were also elderly and physically disabled, in addition to having manageable mental health concerns.

I followed the procession of demonstrators, since I didn’t know which Brown line stop to get off on, but to my pleasure, we ended up directly in front of the same clinic the patients had locked themselves inside of a few months ago. We teamed up with those already in position, and found spots to listen to a few short speeches before we embarked. I found it fairly easy to distinguish the client activists from others on hand, because of their endearing, idiocentric mannerisms. The most visually arresting was a tall, dark black man, who was dressed only in white hospital sheets, pinned and draped upon him to look like a robe and veil, along with leather thong sandals. His hands trembled as he clutched a brass topped staff in one hand, and a weighty Bible in the other. A nearby friend called the man “Cowboy,” despite his distinctly non-Western garb. He seemed at ease, though shaky and physically fragile, as he stood on unsteady legs and gazed serenely through slightly haywire glasses. He asked if any of us were wondering why he was dressed that way. I was eager to validate his wardrobe choices, but not sure whether it was a rhetorical question. And if it hadn’t been, I certainly didn’t want to give an answer that would push him over the edge, since I knew from his own admission, that the clinic’s closing had deprived him of the care he relied heavily upon to function. As I deliberated my response, he moved on to explain that he had purposely outfitted himself to look like Moses as he parted the Red Sea and led his people to the promised land. He said that he, like Moses, would lead us on the march to show people how desperately they needed these facilities to stay open. He spoke eloquently about the false economy of closing places like this in Chicago, which had the potential to throw patients dangerously off-kilter, and could unintentionally cost the system much more than it saved, in the form of increased emergency room visits and elevated crime rates from those, who, with clinics like these, found their lives manageable and even enjoyable. Cowboy Moses argued that he had been able to live independently for years, with minimal assistance from this newly closed clinic, which Mayor Emanuel contended was too costly to continue operating. His sweetness and vulnerability drew me in, and made me want to make everything better for him. I wanted to defend him against the Mayor and the other city officials that had taken away his lifeline. I also wanted to get my hands on the nearest sledgehammer and bash the doors to the shuttered clinic wide open for all to enjoy and get their equilibrium back. It was approaching ninety degrees outside as I strained to hear Moses’ waning voice above the din of traffic and passers by. Something on the periphery caught my eye, and I looked across the street to see a large number of police officers gathering, with helmets, shields, zip-tie cuffs, and batons, which seemed uncalled for, given that we were perhaps only two hundred peaceful protesters. Sure, some of us had signs saying things like MAYOR EMANUEL KEEP OUR CLINICS OPEN, but the amount of cops seemed a bit heavy-handed. Similarly incongruous, was the helicopter that had begun to hover overhead and monitor our movements. Moses was completely hoarse by this time, so he wrapped up his speech and began leading us up the street, toward a large city park, that was to be our lunch stop before marching on to Rahm’s house.

Sadly, our leader was physically unable to march more than a few feet at a time, very slowly, before stopping to rest, so there were several awkward moments when all of us realized we’d be on the two-mile journey to the park for hours if we allowed Moses to stay at the helm. Respectfully, many among us began to ease up on him, some patting him on the back, even bowing their heads or thanking him as they excused themselves to scuttle past him. I stayed with him until the crowd was blocks ahead of us, before asking if he would be okay if I followed suit. “Oh yes, Ma’am, I don’t need no help,“ he assured me. Reluctantly, I began trotting to catch up with the group. so that I wouldn’t lose my way to the park.

I arrived, tired and thirsty, to a lush green opening, which was halfway between our starting point and the Mayor’s house. Like magic, a rusty old pickup truck pulled up to the park entrance and began unloading huge coolers, which they placed onto metal folding tables they’d also brought for the occasion. Like a well-rehearsed squadron, they quickly set up two feeding stations, which they furnished with paper plates, plastic utensils, condiments, beverages, and garden fresh organic greens and grains. Tabouleh, quinoa, homemade dressings, and an abundance of produce, fed those who came from the mental health clinic, as well as the several hundred more that were already on site for the Mayor’s March. As I glanced toward the edges of the park, I could see almost as many police, standing with their hands on their batons, as there were marchers. I looked skyward and saw that the law enforcement helicopter was still with us as well. Then, I looked out into the throng of people gathered at the park, and noted that Moses, inexplicably, was already there, sitting comfortably in the shade on a lawn chair, as he held court for his many friends and admirers. How in the world had he gotten to the park before me, and how come there wasn’t a drop of sweat on his brow, I wondered. And where did the chair come from? Nice touch. Get down witchyo’ bad self, Sir Moses. Contemporary music began to play from a sound system that had also magically appeared, followed by political speakers, who outlined abuses foisted on us by city leaders and the megarich in recent years.

Shortly after the lunch break, we were underway to Rahm’s house, rested, refueled and ready to rock. We trekked for half an hour, until we stood directly in front of a light-colored, two-story Victorian, with a nice front porch and a decidedly Midwestern feel. Many of the people marching looked like locals and young professionals. They wore clean clothes, were freshly showered, and had combed, blow-dried hair. The signs they were carrying were mostly asking the the mayor to do such things as, open the mental health clinics back up, funnel more money into education, employment, and social programs, and decrease spending on jails and policing. There was one in particular, however, that caught my eye. It was easily eight feet long, and required two people to hold it upright. The bearers took special care to position themselves right on the Mayor’s lawn, with the message, RAHM IS A [BLEEP] [BLEEP] UNION BUSTING PRICK.

Oh, I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of that, was my first thought. My second was surprise that a man as wealthy, controversial, and high profile as Mayor Emanuel, lived in such an accessible place. I’d expected him to inhabit a giant castle that was completely surrounded by iron gates and guards and the like. The neighborhood certainly was well-to-do and close to downtown. And its lovely, old, well-kept homes did have lots of appeal—but for God’s sake, his nearest neighbors were only a few feet away. If his windows were open, they could hear the toilet flush. Some of them were sitting on porch swings, gawking at us like we were from Mars. Sheesh, this must be some prized block. The battalion of cops who’d followed us all the way from the park did exercise some restraint by staying on the fringes of our protest, which I took as a good sign. Maybe it was to spare rich people the ugliness of a violent outbreak next to their homes. Most of us stayed on the street and curb, however there were those brazen few (like the sign bearers) who’d pushed the issue by encroaching onto his lawn.

From Rahm’s house, we walked and walked and walked and walked until my feet were blistered and bleeding. We ended up somewhere downtown, but by then, I could walk no further. I would limp a few steps and have to stop and lean against some structure to get relief. I fell far behind the rest of the group, and wondered how I’d make it back to a train stop, until a kind man on a bicycle noticed me struggling and approached me. The short but muscular man was returning from fishing on Lake Michigan somewhere, as evidenced by the silver pole protruding from a panier attached to the front fork. “How was the fishing?” I asked, trying to affect a smile.

“Better than the walking, I’d say,” he answered, affably. Then I looked down the street he came from, and saw a tall, slender woman, with similarly coffee-colored skin, a pleasant, engaging, countenance, and a silver fishing pole, identical to his, tucked in to her bike bag. “Ooooh, shoot, you look like you in a world a hurt, chile … ,” she opined, sympathetically. “How far you trying to go?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied. I just need to get on the nearest bus or train that can take me to Saint Sabina’s.”

“Oh, honey, that’s a least half a mile away. You ain’t never gonna get that far on them feet. Why don’t you let my husband ride you there on the back of his bike. It ain’t no limo, but it’ll get you there better than trying to walk.”

“I don’t know …” I replied, I’m sure I weigh a lot more than he does.”

“Yeah, but my man is strong girl. He ain’t gonna let you fall. We been married twelve years and he ain’ never let me down yet,” she said, winking at him, coyly.

I was touched by the kindness of the two strangers, but hesitant to hoist myself up onto his saddle. Before I knew it, they were both gently supporting me and lifting me onto the seat. In no time, we were underway, him pedaling, me leaning heavily on him as we glided smoothly to our destination. A few minutes later, they helped me down at the train stop and watched as I took off my shoes, which were too painful to wear. The husband then reached into his handlebar basket, dug around, and produced a pair of black rubber flip-flops, which he extended to me. “You need these more than I do, so take them, Ma’am …” he sweetly ordered, as I shook my head in disbelief at their unflagging generosity.

“I don’t know how I can ever thank you two enough for saving me, today,” I choked out. “I didn’t know how I was ever going to make it back.”

“You just heal them feet up and stay out there and keep marching to get a little justice for us, honey. We lost our house too, and we see what Occupy’s been trying to do, and we appreciate it.” My train arrived, and I hobbled onto it, wearing his flip-flops, holding my old shoes, and waving back at them as we pulled away. Sitting on the hard plastic seat, I pulled my throbbing feet up to my chest so I could examine the wounds. All of my toes sported blisters of varying sizes, but the most ghastly sight was the oozing discoloration and bruising under both of my big toes. I nearly gagged when the nail covering the mess pulled off easily, with a light tug from my sweaty fingers. Later that night, as I lay in my tent, talking with Franklin and Von who were stretched out beside me, I wondered if my infirmities would repair themselves enough for me to participate fully in the next day’s NATO protest.

Tens of thousands of raucous, fired up, Occupy NATO protesters greeted us the next morning in Chicago’s Millenium Park. The infusion of energy coursed through me like current through a copper wire, as I jumped, enthusiastically, into the gathering with both feet. An enormous concrete amphitheater stage provided the platform for a dozen speakers, who educated us about the kinds of activities we should be monitoring closely around the NATO conference. They warned of the dangers we all faced, as international leaders assembled together behind closed doors to make deals and forge unholy alliances with each other, that would ultimately lead to future wars, increasing economic inequality, and the continuing degradation of the environment. Many contended that these types of collaborations would create unbreachable cabals that threatened to make our planet a generally unlivable place, designed to further accommodate corporate interests, and serve only the super wealthy few at the very top. Their conclusions were that we had to watch such organizations as NATO, the G8, the WTO, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the IMF, the NSA, and myriad others, with utmost diligence as they continued to exceed themselves in running over us and stealing the world’s resources, which, by the way, included our labor.

I mostly stood in place to see the stage, but found that my feet still hurt badly when I tried to take more than a few steps. My anxiety began to mount, as speakers wrapped up, and we were given the overview of the day’s events. Our next move was to be a medium distance hike to the closest point we were permitted to get to the actual NATO Summit, over a mile away. I was certain that I couldn’t make it, so I sent out an APB on Twitter and Facebook, asking if anyone could help me figure out a plan. Once again, my friend Ellen came to the rescue, and quickly texted me the location of a nearby bike rental shop that could help me out. I hailed a cab that was traveling a few feet from where I stood, and struck up a conversation with my driver, who, as it turns out, was from the West Bank of the Gaza Strip. As we chatted, he told me he was surprised I knew so much about a region that he said most Americans ignored. He gave me his full support of the Occupy Movement, which he credited for bringing attention to the conflicts he said were raging in his homeland. His accent was thick and hard for me to understand, but much better than my Arabic, as he said, “Every person I pick up from Occupy … knows something about my country. I am very … impressed by this. So, I tell you a story now—if you let me.”

“Please do …” I encouraged.

He went on to describe the horrors of daily existence for most Palestinians in his Israeli-occupied and controlled homeland. He called the Israelis “barbarians,” who stole Palestinian land, and murdered their children with impunity. “They act like the Nazis treated them—however,” he blurted, stabbing the air with his finger, interrupting his own train of thought, “each person have the ability to think for himself. I tell you, I can say 100% that I know, myself, that there are good people there too. I have friend … who is Palestinian, like me, who go to door of Russian family, who are Jewish, and who have come to my country to live and settle on my friend’s land. My friend—he knocked on the door and told the Russian man that this house was the house he grew up in! It was his family’s home! The Jewish man and his wife, who have lived there for many years by that time—they say, ‘No, this cannot be your house. We were told that we can move here to this place with our family, from Russia. We have been told that the houses here have been built here just for us … and that No people will be displaced. We made sure to ask them and they guarantee us.’”

“My friend, he say, ‘Yes, this was my house and it was taken from my family by the Jews. I can tell you that upstairs in the closet, there is a cat drawn onto the wall, which my daughter has done, when she was very young … and in the bathroom is a crack on the floor which looks like a fish … and in the back yard are two olive trees, which have carved stones at their base.’”

The cabbie became more and more animated as his story unfolded, “Finally, the Russian man—the Jew—he says to my friend, ‘Okay, okay, I believe you. Everything you have said about this property is true, so you must be telling the truth. And so, we have no choice but to tell you how sorry we are about what you have suffered and what has happened to you. My wife and I feel responsible for your loss. Our children are now grown, as are yours, and you say you are now alone, because your wife has died. Please accept our offer for you to live here with us. We will share this house. We insist.’”

My mouth was agape with incredulity when he finished talking, such that I scarcely noticed we’d been sitting in front of the bike rental place for a few minutes with the meter ticking. “So … my friend—he thinks about it, and he agrees to stay with the couple and they have lived together as very good friends ever since then. I get letters from him … still. This is a very good story.”

“That is the best story I’ve heard in … forever!” I exclaimed. The tale was so uplifting my heart was pounding in my chest, as I clasped his hand to hold and shake it before I left. I stood outside the passenger side, digging in my pocket for cab fare, as he leaned over and touched the window. “‘This ride is very short … you don’t have to pay me. Please tell your friends about my friend though. He has taught me that not all Jews are bad. They are brainwashed too—and everyone can decide for himself, what they are going to do in this world.”

My head was still abuzz with his happy ending as I pedaled away from the rental shop, back to Millenium Park, for the march to NATO. The bike was a little too tall, but it had been the closest they had to my size, so I settled for it. My crotch, having been inactive for much longer, was far less tender than my feet, so the occasional landing on the bar wasn’t nearly as painful as walking. Thousands of us proceeded to within a mile of the international summit, where a stage had been set up to contain the long line of military veterans who had traveled here from across America, to deliver short speeches, before returning their medals of honor at the NATO Summit. To a person, they expressed disillusionment, sorrow, anger, and betrayal for the lies they said their government had told them, in order to coerce them into fighting an unjust war under a false pretext. Every branch of the armed services was represented by the young men and women in uniform, who stood waiting patiently for their turn at the podium. One spoke of being “robbed of his humanity,” after being forced, once in Iraq, to wage a brutal war against civilians. He recalled being told he’d be fighting a “vicious enemy,” and that he would be “welcomed” by Iraqis as a protector and liberator. Instead, he had found himself thrusting his gun into the faces of terrified old men, women, and children, who had had nothing to do with 9/11, or Al Qaeda. The awards, which he referred to as, “meaningless trinkets,” had left him “broken and hollow,” as he struggled to make sense of the whole affair and regain his balance. Another spoke of being told by his government that he was in Afghanistan to “save their women from the horrors of the Muslim religion,” but once there, saw how woefully underconcerned our government was about the welfare and safety of our own service women, who he professed to have repeatedly witnessed being sexually assaulted by enlisted men—some even from his own unit. He said he grieved every day for all these women, as well as for countless Iraqis and Afghan citizens who lost their lives in the “pointless” wars. A Syrian-American woman who was Muslim, and also a US Army soldier, described her feeling of shame after having signed up to “serve her country,” post 911, only to discover that the reasons she was given were, “all a bunch of made up lies.” She contended that she had “only wanted to do (her) patriotic duty,” and was even willing to die for our freedom. “And now I feel deceived and tricked—I can hardly bear to face my own family after what I’ve done,” she lamented. One of the last to speak was Scott Olsen, the veteran Marine from Oakland, California, who’d been lucky enough to survive two tours of duty in Iraq, only to be critically injured by aggressive OPD cops, who’d split his head wide open when they intentionally lobbed a tear gas canister at him and his colleagues, while he was protesting with Veterans Against the War at an Occupy Oakland rally. The device had exploded against his skull, resulting in a near-fatal fracture, which had caused him serious brain damage that required months of intensive rehabilitation as he relearned to walk and talk again. I noticed a handful of police officers in riot gear, (some who were likely former soldiers) surreptitiously wiping away tears with black-gloved hands, under their light blue riot helmet shields. They were visibly moved by Olsen’s frailty and halting speech, as he recalled aloud his orders to “eliminate the enemy, wherever he found him.” “Once I got there, I couldn’t find any ‘enemies’ to eliminate,” he reflected. “All I found were frightened people—who just wanted to live their lives and be left in peace, like you or me, or anyone else.” Then he, like all those before him, turned his back to face the mile of road which separated us like a moat from the conference itself, and hurled the hardware with all his might toward it, leaving it lying impotently on the ground with the others—despised by their owners—in the middle of the heavily guarded, closed avenue.

No sooner had the last bauble hit the pavement, when the glut of omnipresent, heavily armored police, began feverishly erecting barricades and shoving people away from the collapsible stage, while simultaneously broadcasting harsh orders to disperse. A couple dozen protesters, dressed in black, began pressing forward, storming the stage area, ignoring the dispersal order, and trying to get into the newly decreed “No Protest Zone.” Fearing for my safety, I stopped filming and jammed my cell phone into a zipped pocket, just before being smashed between my bicycle and the row of metal stanchions police were erecting. Cops began yelling obscenities at startled Occupiers, who began screaming to be released from the enclosure. Many other protesters, who had managed to wind up outside the crush, began fleeing hysterically from the scene, which cleared a passageway for me to see city buses, loaded with law enforcement personnel, rolling onto a side street. As soon as officers exited the coaches, the drivers remained with the vehicles, which had been appropriated by the city of Chicago to serve as overflow paddy wagons and processing stations for arrestees. I overheard one of the cops relaying that he was, “securing the area to move some heavy artillery into the theater of operations,” over his police radio. Once again, I was struck by the use of military terminology, which seemed to be becoming more commonplace, as I eavesdropped on radio communications between cops across the nation. I was getting used to hearing words like, “deploy,” and “neutralize,” when I joined a political action and tried to exercise my right to peacefully assemble in protest of my government’s activities. I hoped the “artillery” he was referring to might simply mean one of the two LRAD (long range acoustic device) units that the Chicago Police Chief had shown off to a news crew the week prior, and not a Howitzer or live cannon of some kind. I could live without my hearing, but a direct missile hit would be hard to recover from. At the LRAD demonstration, given to the local ABC affiliate on the South Shore Beach of Lake Michigan, the CPD announced they’d purchased the pair of twenty-thousand-dollar apparatus, as a “communication tool,” to help project the directives they anticipated needing to give to the crowds who were planning to Occupy NATO. The anchorman referred to it as merely “a modern day bullhorn,” which would be used solely to give “fair warning” and “clear messages” to help avoid “breakdowns in communication” that past protesters had experienced in being able to hear orders to disperse during political protests held years earlier. He said that many participants had claimed they “just wanted to go home,” but had been caught off guard when they discovered they could not do so, after failing to catch the underamplified police command. Though he did mention that the machines were capable of emitting “high-pitched alarm tones which are not fun for the ear,” he assured the viewing public that there was no intent to use them in that way on antiNATO activists.

“We’re (now) able to broadcast over a great distance. It’s clearly understood, so there’s no miscommunication. It’s more effective than using a bullhorn,” a uniformed Police Sergeant, Chris Bielfeldt, said innocuously in the interview. He went on to add, “We’re using this as a messaging device. We’re not using an alarm tone. We’re using this to communicate messages.”

“So alarm tones to those people who might think this is going to be used to bring people down by using alarm tones …” interrupted the newsman.

“No. We’re here to broadcast messages with the device,” came the swift response from the Sergeant.

What the story did not elaborate on were the numerous controversies and issues swirling around the use of the LRAD “Sound cannon.” A recent article, posted by Roberto Baldwin at Gizmodo.com website reported that:

“The Occupy Movement has become one of the longest large-scale protests in US history, and all that protesting had pitted the activists against police departments and their crowd-control weapons. One of the more controversial of those is the LRAD Sound Cannon.”

So what’s the harm in a little noise? Well, a lot, actually.

The LRAD Sound Cannon is an acoustic weapon and communication device …

Developed by the LRAD corporation to broadcast messages and pain-inducing “deterrent” tones over long distances, LRAD devices come in various iterations that produce varying degrees of sound. They can be mounted to a vehicle or handheld. The device produces a sound that can be directed in a beam up to thirty-degree wide, and the military-grade LRAD 2000X can transmit voice commands at up to 162 dB up to 5.5 miles away.

… that blasts “non-lethal” sound waves …

The LRAD corporation says that anyone within a one hundred meters of the device’s sound path will experience extreme pain. The version generally utilized by police departments, (the LRAD 500X) is designed to communicate at up to two thousand meters during ideal conditions. In a typical outdoor environment, the device can be heard for 650 meters. The 500x is also capable of short bursts of directed sound that cause severe headaches in anyone within a three-hundred-meter range. Anyone within fifteen meters of the device’s audio path can experience permanent hearing loss. LRAD claims the device is not a weapon, but a “directed-sound communication device.”

… and keep birds from hitting planes …

LRAD systems are deployed at airports to sonically deter birds from residing in the paths of aircrafts. The bio-acoustic deterrent helps minimize bird strikes like the one that caused the ditching of Flight 1549 in the Hudson river. In this context, the LRAD broadcasts tones and predator calls that frighten birds away.

… but has also been used against activists …

The LRAD device has been used on several occasions against activists in the US. The first documented use was in Pittsburgh during the G20 summit in 2009. The Pittsburgh police used it again following the Super Bowl in 2011. The LRAD has reportedly been used against Occupy protesters in Oakland and recently against Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zuccotti Park.

… and has potentially long-term side effects.

Use of the device has come under fire because of the potential for permanent hearing loss. Human discomfort starts when a sound hits 120 dB, well below the LRAD’s threshold. Permanent hearing loss begins at 130 dB, and if the device is turned up to 140 dB, anyone within its path would not only suffer hearing loss, they could potentially lose their balance and be unable to move out of the path of the audio. The device is also entirely operator-dependent, which could lead to serious ramifications if the officer in charge doesn’t have sufficient training.

As a professional touring musician, who’s sung through hundreds of state-of-the-art outdoor sound systems across the globe, I must say, I do love a good sound system. I’ve even purchased a few over the course of my career. However, the idea that any police department in the United States would find it necessary to buy an LRAD Sound Cannon, whose main purpose is—let’s face it—sending dissenters (and all other living creatures) running for their lives to escape the ear-breaking blasts, rather than a conventional sound system, is ludicrous. We are continually being told that municipal budgets are stretched to the limits and need to be slashed to the bone, so the reasoning leaves me cold. Any police department in the country could easily outfit itself with enough volume and clarity to knock off a mastodon from half a mile away for far less than the twenty-thousand-dollar price tag that came with the LRAD “attention getter.” I wondered if investments like these were part of the reason the Mayor felt he needed to close mental health clinics. If the intended purpose was, as they insisted, to “communicate messages,” there are scads of systems that would do just that, for a fraction of the cost, although they would not be able to drop you to your knees with organ-damaging frequencies at the drop of a hat, like LRAD can.

I knew from having seen the ABC broadcast that the LRAD system would be, “on standby” at the NATO rally, but I didn’t expect to see what looked like beefed-up Humvees advancing toward us, down the same street that I saw the city bus/paddy wagons stationed. I also saw what looked like a tank, amidst the other armored vehicles on that side street. The pain of being mashed on all sides by police barricades, my rented bike and panicked Occupiers, coupled with the frightening approach of paramilitary troops, proved to me more than I could easily handle, so I began pleading with some of the yelling officers in front of me to let me out of the kettle. At first they refused, but one finally took pity on me and relented, after I fell against the bike and tumbled to the ground, inadvertently pushing a small opening in the metal barricades. The cop didn’t stop me when I used the fall to my advantage and pushed as hard as I could to widen the wedge enough to let me squeeze through. It was almost as scary to be standing among the officers without a barrier between us, as it had been to be on the inside of the scrum. Still, I did feel fortunate to be able to get out of there, as it seemed I’d come close to being flattened. Part of me wanted to ride as fast as I could to the nearest airport and highjack the next flight out to anywhere—while the other wanted to witness what lengths Rahm’s army might go to. Once out of immediate danger, I walked with others toward the street with all the armor, and climbed to the edge of an elevated apartment parking lot, hoping to videotape the carnage. Shortly after that, my cell phone battery, inopportunely, ran out, leaving me to oversee, without documenting, what happened next. Our original numbers had declined dramatically after the riot squad rushed in, leaving what looked like about five hundred of us in attendance. At first glance, I judged there to be more police officers than Occupiers, which gave me little solace, as I watched them start swinging their bludgeons at the small group of Black Bloc anarchists, who continued trying to breach the barricades and get onto the forbidden avenue. I looked behind me and saw the familiar round speaker of the LRAD unit, which had been moved into position for possible use. Cries of pain from downed demonstrators registered upon my ears, as a riot cop strode up to me, clenching his baton like a baseball bat. “Get the fuck off the concrete and get out of here, right now,” came the crude order, from the husky officer in the kevlar vest. I wasted no time leaping down from my perch and jumping onto my bike, before he took a notion to take a swing at me with his club. I moved so fast that I made bone bruising contact with the bicycle’s center bar, before getting up to speed. But once I did get going, I zoomed past the parked buses and armored vehicles until I got a few blocks away and darted up another street, wanting to gain a vantage point that wasn’t so tightly patrolled. Every street I went down had cars and cops stationed at every intersection, making it well nigh impossible to penetrate the compound they’d set up. If I wanted to see what was happening, the only method was to head back the way I came, past all those buses and tank-looking things—which is what I tried to do. This time, I only got within two blocks of my original perch before I was stopped by a group of law enforcement personnel, who advised me to go no further, “If I didn’t want to get hurt.” I took them at their word and dismounted my bike to stand on an upraised apartment lawn, craning my neck along with some mostly black building residents, who had also come out to see what they could. “Ooooooweee, they just tore that little motherfucker’s ass up!” exclaimed a dark-skinned man with binoculars, (a resident, I presumed), who was glued to his post. He handed them over to another young brother, who began cringing and grimacing as he gave us a running commentary on what was taking place up the street. “Bammmmmm, Dawg! Oooooh shit! Ahhhh, hell no … No, boy … don’t get up—just stay down, Nigga. Ohhhhhhh, snap, they got ‘im again. They done beat that other white boy’s face bloody. He a damn mess … Oh, lookout Homie … now there go another one …” I wanted badly to ask for a turn on the glasses, but could see the police eyeing us contemptuously from the car, so I resisted the temptation.

“How many are there?” I burst, no longer able to contain myself.

“You mean cops or them other people?” the commentator replied, never taking his eyes off the action.

“Both,” I answered.

“Shoot, it looks like there’s maybe twenty or thirty of them protesters … and like … eighteen … million cops!” he finished, cracking himself up as his neighbors erupted in hysterics.

Soon thereafter, one of the officers who had been leaning into a car talking to his coworkers, straightened to turn and address us. “Okay, look folks, we’re going to have to ask you to leave now and head back up to your homes if you live here, and … if you don’t live here, you’ll have to head back that way …” he said, motioning behind him.

I appreciated that this one’s tone wasn’t as bossy as I’d heard near the kettle, but I knew he meant business, so I turned to leave, just as one of the residents beside me said, “Why’ve we got to leave? We live here. This is our building and this is our yard.”

“I understand that sir, but I’m asking you and the others to go back inside to your apartment now—for your own safety,” was the officer’s response.

The man turned, grumbling, and slowly walked toward the apartment entrance, as did the others. Another man mumbled under his breath, as he walked past them, “The only danger I see here is you.” He was closely followed by a woman, balancing a toddler on her hip, who defiantly tossed a denuded pork rib bone out onto the street near the police car before flouncing toward the entrance door that another man was holding open. “I ‘spose you gon’ charge me for littering now,” she hissed, belligerently.

Oh please don’t make him mad, I mentally pleaded with her.

“‘Asking”—you say it like we got a choice. Hmmmph, I really don’t see why the hell we cain’t just stand here in our own damn yard!” She concluded, all lathered up, as she tried to slam the shock-absorbed door behind her.