I served four years in the US Marine Corps (1959-63), and during that time I was given the impression that I was guarding our Constitutional right to peaceful protest. So when the war started last month, I went out to exercise these rights and wound up in jail.
This happened in San Francisco, on Franklin street, beginning around 6 p.m. on Friday, March 21st. The police cordoned off the block between McAllister and Fulton, then announced over a bullhorn that we were all under arrest. Some 200 of us were seized on that block alone, and I later learned that similar mass arrests were made at a number of other locations along the march. According to some estimates, the SFPD rounded up as many as 500 protesters that evening. This was only a small percentage of the protesters, but our voice was effectively silenced-for that evening at least. This type of police action is euphemistically called "proactive."
Although the police arrested us before we really got started, it had been our intention to spend the next few hours marching up and down the streets of San Francisco, beating drums, flying banners and chanting slogans, as we'd done the previous evening.
It was not my intention to get arrested, though I had known there was some risk of that. I took part because I considered it important that older persons like myself should be there with the young people-not to give leadership or advice or wisdom or even suggestions, but to simply to march in the ranks and thus show by our gray-haired presence that we who are old enough to be their parents and grandparents stand with them.
Of course I'm not the only older person in the antiwar movement. Unlike back in the 1960s, today's movement is composed of both young and old, and I believe that it one of our great strengths. Some events, like the weekly Lake Merritt Peace Walk which I've also been attending, consist of mostly elderly people; other events, like these marches of Thursday and Friday were mostly young people, probably because a lot of strenuous marching was required. Two weeks later my legs still ached.
Several hours passed from the time they corralled us till they actually hauled us off to jail. Nevertheless, the experience wasn't all bad. During this time I had the opportunity to talk with people around me, mostly young people, and I was impressed by their spirit and self discipline. I felt honored to be standing among them. Morale was high, and there was a strong sense of solidarity.
We discussed what we should do. Attempt a mass escape? We decided not to. There were too many cops, at least three for each one of us. Someone suggested a "die-in," that we simply lie down on the sidewalk and let them carry us off. Nevertheless, in this situation there didn't seem to be a point in that. The police had told us they were only going to cite us and release us that same night, so we decided to just submit to arrest.
For the most part this went peacefully, but there were some violent incidents. I saw an elderly person who'd gotten clubbed and was being treated by a medic. I also heard that a policeman was injured, though I didn't actually see it and don't know any of the details.
Also at one point, a fellow got in an altercation with several cops who began swinging their clubs, and, in trying to escape them, he dove into our ranks right where I was standing. I tried to get out of the way, but on that tightly packed sidewalk, it was impossible. Suddenly I was flat on my back, looking up as the guy fell on top of me, and 3 or 4 cops piled on top of him. From the bottom of this heap, I saw a club swinging, and before I had time to even be afraid, it flashed though my mind that I was going to get some broken bones. But the police paused at that moment, and the other protesters pulled me out.
I got to my feet and the police asked me if I was okay. I told them I was, except for being a bit shaken up.
Finally, gathering my wits, I looked around and asked who'd pulled me out from under. "Who rescued me?" I said, "I want to thank you, whoever you are."
A young woman stepped forward; her name was Kristin. She and her companions, T.R. and Jen, were high school English teachers.
"English teachers?" I said, "Then I have a question for you."
"About grammar?"
"Yes," I said. "Should the word antiwar be hyphenated?"
The three exchanged glances, and discussed it a bit. Their consensus was that antiwar did not require a hyphen.
There was plenty of time, and I made use of it to speak with a good many people there. One was Nathan, a tall, thin fellow who'd recently returned from studying in Scotland. Another was María, a sociology student at SF State who came from Peru. One of her companions, Brigit, was studying methods of communicating with deaf people. I asked her if she planned to work on Bush.
I spoke with a teenager who hoped to study drama. I could've told her she was in the right school tonight; she probably knew that. Chris was another fellow I met there; he was a businessman, president of his own company. Several of my companions were Hispanic, and one was part Pala Indian, who'd recently gotten his Ph.D. from Berkeley. Another fellow was a punk rocker from Missouri
I even encountered a person I'd met during the previous day's march, Raven, a student at Sonoma. "How did you get here?" she said on seeing me. "I was detained," I told her.
People chatted, got to know one another, and sang songs: "This land is our land," "We shall overcome," "How many roads must a man walk down?"
One woman sat perched on a railing by the sidewalk with a drum which she beat as she sang "We shall rise like a phoenix from the fire." She had a beautiful voice. I later learned that her name was Hannah, and that she was from Fresno.
Other than the couple of violent incidents I've mentioned, the police were basically respectful of us. Being mass arrested seemed a bit unreal, almost something of a novelty.
Nevertheless, those four hours the police had us cornered on the sidewalk were far more intense than anything I had experienced during my time in the Marine Corps. Without bullets actually flying, this was about as close as you could get to battlefield conditions. It was a time and place where if anyone screwed up and lost his head, several people could've gotten seriously hurt-as almost happened to me when the altercation occurred in which I got knocked down. I was impressed at the way these people remained calm, literally turning this tense situation into a social event.
We believed this was a flagrant violation of our Constitutional rights. Why were they putting all this manpower and resources into doing this to us? Could we really be that important to them? We discussed and commented on these things among ourselves.
Obviously they had ended our demonstration for the evening, but, "Do they think they can crush us with this?" said one.
"They must be idiots," said another. "It just makes us stronger in the long run."
Although the arrests were being carried out by the city police, we suspected the hand of Ashcroft behind it all. And for us this was one more reason to question the legitimacy of the Bush administration. To begin with, despite media whitewash, Bush was known to us as "the man who stole the presidency" and it seemed that everything he did and said served to further diminish his credibility as an honest president.
We saw remarkable parallels between our situation and that of two and a quarter centuries ago. Even coincidence, or perhaps synchronicity, seemed to underline the similarities-such as that of an unelected ruler whose name happened to be George.
"George the Second," someone remarked.
"Not the second," said another. "His father called himself George Bush Jr., and so he would've been the second, and that makes this one another George the Third."
"If the Founding Fathers were alive, they'd be out here with us," said one.
"Sam Adams wouldn't have missed it for anything."
Nor was it forgotten that France had been the traditional ally of Americans oppressed by unelected rulers named George. Among our banners was a French Tricolor. Bush's unjustified remarks about France was another thing that had seemed almost calculated to offend many Americans as much as the French-and anybody with a minimal knowledge of American history should've understood that. I'm told the first George III wasn't very sane either.
And of course our conversations had touches of jailhouse humor. The police had commandeered Muni buses for use as paddy wagons, and someone told of an incident on a previous day, in which a group of protesters, being hauled off in one, had pulled the "stop request" cord.
We peacefully submitted to arrest. They took our names, put us in a bus and took us to a jail. It was about 10 p.m., after we'd been on the sidewalk some four hours, when my turn came.
An officer with a clipboard asked my name, and I gave him not only my name, but also my branch of the military, plus my rank and service number-according to the Geneva Convention.
The officer looked at me for a moment, then said, "Semper fi?"
"You're a Marine too?" I said.
He was.
They took us to Bryant Street, and released us at about 2 a.m. When we got out, we were met outside the jail by a protesters' support group who'd brought us hot tea and donuts. The National Lawyers Guild was also there and said they would help us in court.
And a protester stood by the curb, displaying a "No Blood for Oil" sign to passing motorists.