d.c., the black bloc, police, and iraq

warning: the following is long. sorry about that.

Last weekend I went to Washington D.C. to participate in a march on the Pentagon. Three others from Colorado and I made the trip out there. The drive itself was pretty good….we talked a lot and got to know each other to some degree. And I found myself enjoying my company. So that was fun.

The march itself leaves me with a multitude of feelings. I ended up marching with the black bloc (an anti-authoritarian contingent). I had made the decision before leaving on the trip to take part in direct action if possible. I spoke with a couple of lawyers here is town, to get an idea of what may be potential outcomes of such actions. I was okay with that and my decision had been made after many months of contemplation. I felt completely okay with my decision. I knew it was right for me at this moment and these circumstances.

So, after arriving in D.C., I sought out others who also wanted to participate in something that directly challenged the state and made a clear statement against this war. I ended up finding the SDS (Students For A Democratic Society) and the more general black bloc. The black bloc is not an organization but rather a tactic used to confront state authority. I have been around it in the past at other events and felt like this was a good opportunity to hopefully engage in direct action that was personally meaningful.

Before I get any further, I would like to clarify something. As I stated in a letter that I wrote before engaging in what I thought would lead to my arrest, I do not have any illusions about the effects of my personal actions. I know that nothing I do as an individual will somehow single-handedly end this war and occupation. I have given much thought to the dangers of ego and ‘coolness’ that can potentially be involved in these kind of decisions. However, I do feel that I have reached a point in my personal being where this is the appropriate decision. While I don’t have illusions about the effectiveness of a single, individual action, I do feel that my action can contribute to a larger effort. In that way, it can be meaningful, not only to myself but also to the larger effort to end this occupation and killing. And I feel a strong desire to challenge the authority of a government that insists on committing these sorts of actions against human beings.

Unfortunately, this did not happen to the extent I had hoped and planned on. I did participate in the black bloc and we did take some matters into our own hands and challenged the powers that be. The general march ended in a parking lot near the Pentagon, not the Pentagon itself. The black bloc, before reaching the end of the march, broke away from the main line of demonstrators and set out into a large road that led to the Pentagon. Traffic was of course blocked and, as we continued across a bridge towards the Pentagon, we met with a large group of riot police dressed in armor and armed with batons, pepperspray, and teargas.

Our march stopped and we linked arms and sat on the pavement, so that the police could not knock us off our feet. The police began to threaten the group with teargas. Someone, who did not appear to be part of the black bloc and apparently someone from the other part of the march, tried to negotiate with the police, asking the black bloc if we would take a step back if the police did as well. As this individual was engaged in communication, standing in the small space between the protestors and the riot police, he was suddenly snatched by police and disappeared behind their line. This greatly upset all of us sitting on the pavement.

The moment was very tense. I was sure we would be teargassed and arrested. I was prepared and felt surprisingly at ease because I was okay with my decision. When I have been in similar situations in the past, I have felt confused and conflicted because, while not wanting to back down, I also did not want to face arrest and other negative potentialities. This time, though, I knew what I wanted to do and it made the situation feel much different.

A woman, probably in her 30s, was sitting next to me. She was not there as part of any group but like me had made the decision to stay. We talked in brief exchanges. She was planning on going to Palestine and we talked about that. She was unsure of what to expect from the police and the teargas in the present situation but she was not backing down. It was wonderful to see this happening.

As it began to get more tense, the police said they would begin firing teargas in two minutes. Interestingly, I did not hear them give any orders to disperse or face arrest, as I usually have in the past in similar situations. At this point, there were conflicting opinions and ideas on what was the best thing to do. Some people thought that it would be best to march back to D.C. (the Pentagon is across the river in Virginia) and engage in direct action there. According to locals, there were many potential targets including a military recruitment center and weapons manufacturers. Supposedly, police in D.C. are not able to mass arrest whole groups of people but in Virginia they can; this was one reason given to support returning to D.C. Others vocalized concern that we weren’t really accomplishing anything by sitting in the road and that getting teargassed and arrested wouldn’t change that.

I wanted to stay and said so; many others did, too. I felt that we were in fact accomplishing something—we were refusing to listen to the state and continuing to protest this war, even when we were told that we couldn’t do it at that time or place. We were blocking traffic on a major road—a message, I believe, of not allowing business as usual while this war continues. We potentially would show many people an example of state violence; I would hope that if a group of maybe two hundred, unarmed and totally nonviolent people were teargassed and arrested, media, even mainstream, would tell that story.

The largest concern seemed to be that, while many had made the decision to be arrested, many others did not want to do that at that particular point. I understand that and completely support it; I do not feel there is any correct or right tactic to be used in opposing this or any other war or other form of state violence and oppression. We all make sense of what is right for us as individuals at any given moment and this is not something to criticize or judge.

In order to make sure that those who did not want to be arrested were able to do that, it was somehow, in a very disorganized way because of the moment, decided that everyone should go back to D.C., regroup, and figure out another course of action. Most of the group got up and headed back to D.C. and the moment was over. It was only after this that the police even gave an order to disperse—after almost everyone was gone.

I didn’t go back to D.C.; I felt pretty strongly that nothing would come out of that. I felt totally deflated. I don’t remember ever feeling so disempowered. I felt that there was nothing to do. The moment was over.

After awhile, I walked to the edge of a grassy slope and started crying. I had failed. I thought about this war and about all the individuals and families caught in it. My decision was not seen through and I felt lost. And so, so sad. The war and occupation continued, as I knew it would, and I had not done what I felt was personally necessary.

I walked back to D.C. I wandered around for awhile. Then I got on the metro and went back to the Pentagon. When I got off the metro, I didn’t know where I was in relation to where the march had been and I walked around the outside of the Pentagon. I talked with a security guard who told me I had to walk around the building on a road if I wanted to get to the parking lot where the march had ended. I finally got there. I don’t even know why I was trying to find it, anyway. There was nothing there. A few big semis that were just about finished being loaded with the sound system and other components of the rally at the march’s end. Scraps of paper talking about the march and some newspapers published by various groups were blowing around or stuck to the wet pavement.

I started back. I passed some young person sitting up against a wall of concrete. He had a frame pack on his back. A few minutes later, just before I came to the bridge across the river, I came across a older man taking a photo of a discarded protest sign. I said hello. He asked if I could take his picture with the sign. We talked a little and it turned out that he had taken a bus from some city….maybe Pittsburgh, to come to the march. They hit a storm and he didn’t get to D.C. until about five in the afternoon. He missed the march.

We started walking back to D.C. together, he had to catch a bus later that night back to the city he lived in. The young guy I had passed earlier caught up with us and the three of us walked across the bridge over the Potomac. I mostly just listened; I was really depressed. The man was a security guard somewhere and drew, as he said, “cartoons.” He was kind of a big guy that people maybe overlook, that kind of big. He had glasses and talked in a slow kind of cheerful way. The young guy was from I can’t remember where and was down in New Orleans, volunteering with the Common Ground Collective there. He had his frame pack and swore sometimes, which was probably only noticeable in contrast to the other man's way of speaking. I don’t remember either of their names but the big guy gave me one of his ‘cartoons’; it was about the goodness of hugs and photocopied on a piece of paper folded so that it had a few pages. The young man pulled out a flask of some kind of whiskey and offered us all a drink. It was a cold and windy afternoon, really kind of dark.

We walked a lot of blocks and I split up from them just before the bus station. I wanted to stop by the encampment on the capital mall, just to see if there was any other direct action or civil disobedience being planned. I had went there first thing in the morning and again after I first walked back to D.C. from the bridge and talked with folks there and met some good people. It was about dusk now and just a few people were gathered in one of the larger wall tents. I just looked at their silhouettes through the plastic of the tent and then kept walking.

I went to Union Station, were I had been the last time I was in D.C. in January. I remembered having found a good place to sit and drink coffee and eat bagels. I went there again and got two bagels and filled up my cup with hot coffee. I sat down by a pay phone and called Jen. I talked to her and cried and cried. Finally, I hung up the phone and left the station.

When I was sitting in that street, with my arms linked to other people’s arms, I felt like we were somehow changing the world. It was beautiful. I realize now that I made a mistake—I put everything into one decision, into one potential action. I felt that if I took a certain action, somehow I would feel better. Maybe even that somehow that would be enough. That I could go back to just thinking about taking a long hike, reading good comic books. I know this isn’t true. Things don’t disappear. We are not alleviated. Whether we like it or not, and I think for most people it’s not, this government is engaged in war and occupation, in killing human beings. After I was able to get out some of my feelings of intense disempowerment, disappointment, and regret, I was able to see that there is no single action or statement that makes things go away. It’s a continuing effort, a way of being alive. Opposition and transformation come from a multitude of decisions and actions and ways of being. This is not to say that the decision to participate in direct action is not meaningful; in fact, I believe the opposite to be true. It is simply that all of this, all the efforts to challenge hierarchy, domination, and authority, do not culminate in one action that relieves these problems or clears the conscience. And I’ve been reminded that there is much to learn from every situation.

This feels like the beginning of something. At the moment, I felt like it was the end, a deadend, a failure. But I realize that there is much potential. When I think about all the people who experienced what happened at that action, I can’t help but believe that there are more and more people committed to change. I feel horrible that the occupation of Iraq is not over, that this government continues its inhumanity. The occupation was not ended on Saturday, of course, and would not have ended if that action had been realized. This keeps going on. Every day that this continues more people are killed, more families are separated, more lives destroyed. And everyday more and more people challenge the authority that allows and creates these atrocities. There is hope in this.