Marching in a Strange Land
Prep Walk Down Lafitte’s-
It’s a forty minute walk from my place in Mid City to Duncan Plaza in Downtown, where today’s protest is going to be held. It’s only a nine minute drive by car and a thirteen minute ride by bike, but my bike is still in the shop, and I’m nervous about taking my car down there. The truth is, I’m nervous about all of it. I have no idea what to expect, but the online images I’ve seen in the last five days of fires, looting, and rows of menacing police swinging batons and shooting tear gas canisters into crowds invade my mind with every other step I take. Sure, the New Orleans protests have been peaceful so far, but did that really mean anything?
And besides, is peace really what you want? Or do you want the chance to see the world burn from the inside?
Ultimately, I’m glad to be walking. I’m taking the Lafitte Greenway, a bike/walking path that cuts straight through a good chunk of the city, starting at the top of Mid City, slicing through Bayou St. John and Treme, before ending at the start of the French Quarter and into downtown. The path is only a couple years old, so there’s not much history to it, but the one thing I do remember is how I’ve been told numerous times by various friends, family and coworkers that I should avoid the path during the summer when it’s dark out, because school’s out and all those kids who live along the path have nothing better to do then jump me and steal my stuff.
Well, it’s now the beginning of June, and school’s been out for months, and the whole world has turned upside down multiple times in that same span, and I’m marching down this path alone in the fading daylight and it’s lovely. Peaceful. But in the distance, I can see the massive buildings that make up the downtown cityscape and I gulp.
Only forty minutes until I’ll be right under those massive buildings, waiting for whatever is supposed to happen tonight…
It’s okay, though. A nice, forty minute walk is just what I need right now to mentally prepare myself, and to remind myself why I’m doing this.
Why are you doing this?
Because of the systemic injustice and racism that’s been going on for years unchecked.
Oh, what a saint you are. Are you sure you’re not also going just so you can be a part of something big, something you can talk about for years? Because you’ve been cooped up in your house for months and you’re afraid of missing out? Are you really going because you want to help others or you so you can have stories to tell?
In truth, I recognize it’s probably a bit of both, but I don’t want to focus on that right now, so I go over in my head the rules that I read on someone’s facebook post about how white people should act if they want to be good allies at the protests.
–Don’t start chants. When the chanting begins, shout back whatever needs to be shouted back but don’t lead the chants, you’re not the leader in this in any capacity.
I don’t think this will be a problem. I’m not much of a chanter, and I’m certainly not one to take charge of one.
–No selfies. This isn’t about you, it’s about the cause. Document the event, not yourself being at the event. This isn’t about social media.
Again, I don’t think this will be a problem. Don’t think I’ve taken more than three selfies in my whole life. I tend to look better at a distance anyway.
–Listen to the leaders of color when they give directions/instructions. Do what you feel comfortable with, but don’t go off on your own and do your own bullshit. This is not about you, and you’re not leading this in any capacity.
Considering that I feel incredibly pensive just walking toward the protest, I can’t imagine I’ll be doing anything but meekly going along with the group.
-No jokes.
This is actually my own personal rule. Humor is basically a second language to me at this point, and I use it all the time to try to diffuse awkwardness and discomfort, and any other time where I think I can get a laugh. But something tells me that irony and sarcasm, especially coming from a white guy, has no place in a march for black lives. Obviously, this is the rule I fear the most about breaking, and it makes me consider how this is the first time I can recall where I’ve had to muzzle myself in such a way.
–Don’t do that thing where you give a head nod to every black man you pass by. In fact, you should stop doing that altogether, it’s odd.
But how else will they know that I feel bad about slavery?
What makes you think they give a fuck about whether you feel bad or not? And if you really did feel bad you could have donated to pertinent organizations and participated in marches before it was trendy.
Ok, ok, but hey at least I’m here now, right?
Except I’m not actually there yet, I got another thirty minutes of walking to do, but those downtown buildings are getting bigger with each passing second and the nerves in my stomach are getting tighter and tighter.
Arrival
I gave myself an extra thirty minutes to walk to the plaza, just in case. But apparently google is on point today because I look at the time just as my feet hit the grass of the plaza to find I’m exactly thirty minutes early. I look around what should be the epicenter of whatever craziness unfolds today and frown. By the look of things it seems like I’m five hours early. I don’t see anyone with protest signs, or in black t-shirts, or really anybody, except for the random pedestrian breezily walking through the plaza like it’s any other day.
Oh well, they must have cancelled for today, might as well just go back home, open up a beer on the front porch and relax.
No, I tell myself. You’re already this far, can’t take the easy way out now.
I explore the plaza a bit, and find on the opposite side, on a grassy hill, “my people”. Of course, they don’t feel like my people at all at the moment, they seem like complete strangers and again the urge hits me to just turn around and try this another day. But they’re holding signs and wearing black shirts and they’re here for the exact reason I am, not so they can feel comfortable but to fucking finally do something about what they’ve known has been a problem for a long, long time.
And maybe so they too can have a story to tell too…
I tentatively approach the outer layer of the group, which covers the lower end of the hill, and lean my head in to listen to the man who is currently addressing the people, who, from my vantage point, looks to be a shirtless young black man in his early-to-mid-twenties. I have a hard time hearing everything he’s saying so I stealthily make my way up the hill around the outer edges of the group, until I’m about ten feet away from the speaker with a few rows of people in front me.
It’s obvious now that he’s in the middle of an impassioned speech, talking about a recent time where he was harassed by the police for no reason, handcuffed and thrown into the back of a cop car. His words are a bit garbled because he’s half-crying as he talks.
Again, I feel incredibly uncomfortable. This feels like something I should be watching on a documentary or reading in a book, not be face-to-face with. This is not my world.
I scan the crowd and estimate there are only about forty people here, at most. Almost all of them are wearing masks, which I know is something I should be used to by now, but coupled with the matching black shirts and protest signs, it all just sort of makes the whole thing that much more surreal.
As I study the crowd I realize the majority are people of color, except for near the bottom of the hill, where most of the white people are standing. Except for one very young looking white guy in front of me everyone else on top of the hill is a person of color. Shit, I shouldn’t be here. I should move down the hill. Know your role. But I don’t move. I worry it’ll be too awkward if I walk down now, so I just stay put and listen.
“Before I even knew what was happening, my face is being pushed into the window, and the cop’s screaming that he don’t like my attitude.”
I have the urge to take some pictures with my phone, as I read that photographic documentation (but no selfies!) is very important and very necessary if you’re a white ally. But honestly, right now does not seem like the right time, I feel so out of place, I worry that if the group sees a lone thirty-something white man taking pictures they might suspect I’m an undercover cop. So I just continue to listen.
The young speaker has finished his story and is now throwing out questions to the crowd. Specifically, he’s throwing out questions to the white people in the crowd, which includes me, obviously.
“And I wanna know! I wanna know right now, why you white people came today! What do you hope to accomplish here! What do you want from this? Why did you come today? This ain’t a rhetorical question, I want you all right now, to tell me one at a time. If you ain’t got skin in the game, why you in the game?”
I feel a major queasiness in my stomach. Nothing I had read online has prepared me for this. Everyone told me the important thing to do was shut up and listen, now this guy wants my opinions and I know if he calls on me I’m gonna say something stupid because I’m nervous and don’t want to be here anymore. In this moment of mild panic I feel myself sorta of crouch down and make myself small and sidestep behind the white guy in front of me.
So courageous.
But my fears are for not, for not two seconds after he says this, the young white man in front of me that I’m hiding behind, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen, starts talking. And almost immediately, everyone in the group realizes this is a mistake except for him. I suppose it’s his tone that first dooms him. It’s just such a confident tone. It’s that kinda tone that people use to assure others not to worry, they have all the answers.
To put it simply, it’s what I would call a “college tone”, or if you wanna be a little more precise, a “white guy college tone”, and it’s a tone I know embarrassingly well.
And with this college tone, this dude begins to explain that while racism is obviously horrible, what’s even more horrible is that the solution to it is right in front of us all, we just refuse to realize it. And what’s the answer, oh he’s gonna tell us! You see, race is just a social construct, and if we just ignore it we would find that we are all one people. And sure, life is hard for black people, but it’s hard for everyone too and we can’t ignore that…
Meanwhile, I’m cringing so bad I’m practically quivering. Not just because of what he’s saying but because it’s making me remember half forgotten conversations from my dorm years, where my pontifications ran down the hallways like wild drunk streakers. I’m forced to remember that while I was in the middle of reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X for a freshman English class, I casually told one of my friends that “besides for race, I think me and Malcolm have a lot in common…”
Oh God, make it stop.
And it does stop. Because we’re not in a liberal arts college dormitory, we’re in new territory here, and even though we’re all trying to come together for this, bullshit will be shouted down, and it is, by the white, black, and brown people here who have heard enough from this well-meaning but thoughtless young man. In turn, the young man looks utterly baffled at this response, and tries again to explain his position, which only leads to more, and angrier, jeers, until finally one of the other leaders, a black woman with long dreadlocks and red pants, who I soon find out is a complete badass, puts a stop to this.
“We’re not here for that,” she tells the crowd, “we’re not hear to drown out other people’s voices with boos. If we think what he is saying is coming from a place of ignorance and privilege, we need to communicate that with our words.”
This works sort of like a spell on the crowd, who quiet down, only for the pontificator to resume his pontificating, and I see the other speaker, the young shirtless black man, roll his eyes so hard that it looks painful, before he uses his powerful booming voice to cut the him off and make a sudden announcement.
“Alright people! We have twenty minutes until this really gets started. What I think we should do, just to show how serious we are, is shut down this fucking street right now, before the masses get here! Whose with me!”
Everyone sorta grunts in support, but I feel like there is tone of hesitation here. Although perhaps I’m just projecting because I find this idea terrifying. Shut down the street now? Loyola Avenue, a major street with four massive lanes and the neutral ground dividing it? There’s not even fifty people here! Won’t the cops easily be able to destroy us in our current size? Isn’t the saying ‘strength in numbers’? Did the speaker just say that to shut up the annoying white kid? Am I gonna go to jail before anything really happens because this kid didn’t know his role??
Shutting Down the Street/ The First March
God dammit, I think, I should have just gotten here on time. Who comes to a protest a half hour early? Serves me right.
We all start walking to the street, and I notice the white people are definitely following as slowly as possible and I know I’m not the only one having second thoughts.
“Come on guys! You came here for a reason didn’t you!” the young black man barks at us. Everyone nods their head meekly as their feet take them to the edge of the curb. We all watch the cars zooming by. Jesus Christ, we are actually going to do this.
And as I’m agonizing over this in my head, something happens that catches my eye. An older black man wearing a white shirt and whose in a wheel chair, rolls right by us and screams:
“All lives matter!”
I’m shocked by this but no one around me reacts, so I wonder if I misheard him. But then he repeats himself even louder:
“All lives matter!”
Again, no one does or says anything. And then the shirtless leader of our small pack walks out into the street, turns to us and waves us in:
“Let’s fucking do this!”
And so we do. We really do. It’s kinda funny how it works out though, because as soon as we make our way out to the street and find our own spot to stand and chant and hold our signs, not a single car comes by for at least five minutes. And that might not sound like a long time, but it very much is when you’ve just crossed the threshold between speaking about something and being about something. But the leaders do not let that five minutes go to waste, as they start to critique our chanting. They’re main complaint being that some of us, a good deal of us, aren’t being as vocal as we should be, a criticism I can’t really argue with, as most of the crowd, including myself sound a bit like this:
Leaders: “When I say black lives, you say ‘Matters!’”
Leaders: “Black lives!”
Us: (faintly) “…matter..”
Leaders: “Black lives!”
Us: (faintly)“…matter…”
It’s clearly not an ideal performance, but the leaders are coming up to all of us meek ones and letting us know that simply won’t cut it.
“We need to hear you dammit! They need to hear you! Why did you come here!”
Slowly, I see more arrivals finding us and joining us on the street, and our voices collectively rise in volume and boldness, until eventually we are at a level that’s not embarrassing. And since I first arrived I begin feel comfortable enough to take a picture. It’s not a great one, but it’s a start.
It’s not long after this that the first car finally shows up, and honestly, the results could not have been better. It’s a newer looking beige Honda and the driver is a young white woman. She starts saying something to the crowd, and I’m just waiting for her to freak out and blast her horn, but instead, she opens her door wide and jumps out of the car, leaving it parked in the middle of the street, and joins us and starts chanting herself.
…and the crowd goes wild.
Our first success! Was she already planning on joining the protest? Was she already an ally? These questions are impossible to know, but the mini-event itself is so positive that the crowd seems to not just be chanting anymore, but swaying their hips just a bit, as if they’re almost dancing. And now I actually feel pretty great about being here. I feel more than comfortable, I feel like I’m in the middle of something important. And the feeling seems to be spreading throughout the people.
…and then, just when I thought I had a handle on things, a middle aged black woman appears from the sideline, holding a sign that has a picture of a young boy, no more than ten at most, and she’s not chanting, she’s sobbing, and she’s speaking, loudly and angrily, but also very quickly, and it’s hard to make out everything what she’s saying through the sobs, but I hear enough to know she lost her child to the police.
This sight has a definite impact on the crowd, and we all sort of grow silent, many of us looking from her to the ground before us.
Admit it, you were having fun weren’t you? You were feeling a rush of jubilation. Do you think that mother finds any of this fun? Is this fun for her? This isn’t a fucking music festival.
The chanting and protesting continues for I don’t know how long, but at some point I look around and realize our size has grown by at least six or seven. There are a few hundred of us now, and the fire in our belly has definitely increased. No sooner do I realize this then the leaders wave their arms at us and tell us we’re gonna march. New chants erupt from the crowd as we begin our descent down Loyola toward Poydras. Again, that surge of adrenaline comes to me as we make the heavy traffic of Poydras stop for us. Yes, despite myself, I feel powerful in this group. And that feeling only increases as the many cars honk tirelessly, not in anger, but in enthusiasm for our cause.
This first march isn’t a long one, only around the block really, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s sort of a prep for what’s to come, for the leaders to allow us time to perfect our chanting and shutting down the streets.
There is a rather interesting moment that happens here though, as we’re shouting out one of the more catchy chants that goes like this:
“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!”
“NO RACIST ASS POLICE!”
“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!”
“NO RACIST ASS POLICE!”
So as we are repeating this over and over, I realize that I haven’t actually seen any police in the area yet. Which seems impossible, considering the circumstances. But it’s true, there have been zero police presence so far. It’s my guess that they are hiding behind one of the buildings that surround us, or on some street nearby, waiting for things to go bad before they strike.
But just then our group comes across an intersection, and I spot a cop standing next to his bike blocking traffic for us. Without even thinking about it, I give him a respectful head nod. It takes me a second to even realize what I just did.
What the hell did you do that for?
…I don’t know, it just kinda happened. I guess that’s my natural reaction when I pass a cop.
Yikes, what are you even doing here?
I mean, it doesn’t really change anything. I still think the police system is supremely fucked up and racist, and needs a complete overhaul.
Sure, the outer you may think that. The one that is horrified by the youtube snuff films and the other miles of evidence of clear immorality and systematic bigotry. But the inner you, the you that’s been you since around six years old, still sees cops as society’s golden protectors. It’s ingrained in your head. You’ve lived a life with practically zero police interaction. Nobody has ever called them on you, you’ve never called them on anyone else, you’ve never really needed them nor have you been given any reason to truly fear them. Face it, when there isn’t a national outrage going on you barely consider the police in any capacity. All you really know, whether you want to admit it or not, is if shit ever goes down, they will protect and serve you and your kind before all else, and in the back of your mind that’s reassuring.
OK, ok, fine, but I still want change. I’m still here, aren’t I?
Oh yeah, you’re still here big guy, you’re quite the crusader. I bet that mother who lost her child back there is very grateful for all you’ve done today.
“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!”
“NO RACIST ASS POLICE!”
The Speeches
Once we complete our loop back to the plaza, we find a much different sight waiting for us. Whereas before it was maybe a quarter-filled up, it’s now completely covered in protesters. The hairs on the back of my neck rise up, there have to be a couple thousand people here now, not including the couple hundred that left for the march. I am at once filled with awe, hope and mild concern. If things go bad tonight, just how bad will they get?
But that excites you too, doesn’t it? If things go to hell and the riots begin, that’ll be an amazing story to tell for years to come.
I find an open spot place in the middle of the crowd and listen to the new speakers of the day, who stand on top of the largest hill in the plaza and speak into a microphone that tends to go in and out as they talk, making it sometimes difficult to understand what they’re saying.
If I’m being honest, this entire part of the demonstration seems the most disorganized. Some speakers seem well prepared with clear, powerful points to make, while others seem to be speaking off the cuff, and while doing so frequently contradict either those who spoke before them or themselves. For example, there are some who are steadfast in their opposition to the damaging of property while protesting, while there are a few who say something along the lines of, “While I’m not gonna throw any bricks, I could not blame someone if they were angry enough to do so…”
There was one speaker in particular really spoke to me. Her name is Angela Kinslaw, and she’s a passionate and professional orator, I find she has a skill of speaking to both those who are directly affected by the injustice, and allies like myself who want to help but are riddled with uncertainty. Most important of all, at least for me, is that she has three major bullet points of what she wants to see improved from this movement.
- Community. The city, and society, must learn to embrace the black community and help with the challenges it currently faces.
- Budget. The budget must be redirected so the proper funds can go into programs that’ll help the community.
- Accountability. Those in positions of power who do harm to the black community must be held accountable.
Again, this all sounds great to me, but I’m so out of my depth I have no real understanding have how to achieve this, but then again I recognize that’s not my function here.
The one other thing I have to add here is that near the end of the speech segment of the protest, I spotted the older black man in the wheelchair again, rolling his way up and down the plaza pathway, and again I heard him yell out to the crowd:
“All lives matter!”
And again, everyone seems to be completely oblivious to him.
The Final March
The last speaker begins to conclude her speech, and thanks us all for coming out and that she’ll see us all back here at the same time tomorrow. Then she begs us to be safe and smart and to not walk home alone.
And… that’s it. She puts down the mic, waves goodbye, and the thousands of people around me kind of just shuffle off.
I stand there, bewildered. That’s it? That’s the whole thing? A tiny march and some speeches? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there weren’t some good points made and an incredible experience overall, but this all feels very unfinished, a sentence without an exclamation point. We’re gonna change the system with just that??
But as I turn and look out to the departing crowd, I find they’re all departing in the same way, a giant snake of protesters taking the corner down Loyola toward Canal. That’s either one hell of a coincidence or there is one big march left and the speakers had their reasons for not announcing it publicly.
Naturally, I follow the masses to Canal and just try to find out what the hell is going on.
“Wait,” I ask a rando in a mask, “are we still protesting or is it over?”
He shrugs his shoulders, as do the next three people I ask. It’s very clear that no one quite knows what’s going on, which only adds to the tone of confusion and chaos that sticks to this whole event. But even if no one knows exactly what’s going on, no one is going home either. There’s something in the air. A hint of something special to come.
As we turn down Canal, the vibe of the crowd picks up. There is a growing electricity among us, but it’s more than just that. To me it feels like this vibrant combination of anger and joy, the people dancing their hearts out while screaming their chants in pure aggression. It’s as if this snake of protesters is both furious at the world but in love with the moment at the same time.
And that bizarre energy carries the thousands of us down Canal and left on Claiborne, so now we’re stampeding under the monstrous and loathsome highway overpass whose very construction destroyed countless of black neighborhoods back in the sixties. But I’m not really think about that right now, I’m thinking that if you ever want to make a surreal moment even more surreal, just add echoes. Because thanks to the titanic amount of concrete hovering above, our chants are bouncing back down at us before hitting the pavement and shooting back up. It’s amazing, but also a lot for my already overstimulated mind to handle.
“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!”
“NO RACIST ASS POLICE!”
We’re a few blocks down Claiborne when I begin to hear cheering from above. At first I think it’s just more echoes until I start seeing the people around me start pointing into the air and going wild. That’s when I look up and to the right of me and find the head of our snake waving and fist-pumping down at us from some sort of ramp. The sight confuses me at first because I can’t quite fathom what they’re walking up. And then it hits me and my heart begins to pound so fast and hard I swear it’s smacking into my rib cage.
It’s the onramp to highway 10!
Holy shit, they are taking us to the highway! During rush hour no less! We’re going to try to shut down the highway! Holy motherfucking shit. This can’t be true. We’re going to get destroyed by incoming cars. This is a wonderful, but terrible, idea, and I can’t help but wonder if the police had any clue that this was the plan.
And then, as if to answer my question, the police make their presence known for the first time that evening, as no less than ten cop cars appear behind various street corners and start careening down the other side of Claireborne while their lights and sirens talk all kinds of angry shit.
Oh they had no idea we were gonna pull this. I wonder if the leaders of the march knew either, or if they just called an audible at the last second. In my mind, I can picture the leaders in the front, glancing over at the onramp as they come to it, smilingly a little and deciding, ‘let’s fucking do it’. Of course I have no idea if this is at all true, as I am just an ally, just one part of a snake that now seems to be heading for certain death.
Thirty seconds later, I’ve reached the entrance of the onramp, and I take a breath and place my feet where human feet should never be, in the middle of a goddamn highway onramp. Personal space disappears as we all squeeze in together on this incline. I feel like I might faint from the insanity.
Meanwhile, all around me, the protesters continue to chant.
“THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!”
“THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!”
When we reach the top of the onramp, personal space becomes an option again, a big one. Because it turns out that if you’re not in a car, the highway is quite a large area with tons of wide open spaces. And we take over these open spaces with delirious passion, our protest snake transforming into a bit of a disjointed blob now, and I just can’t believe I am doing this. We’re on the fucking highway. How is that possible??
Are you even considering the movement anymore, or are you just lost in the adrenaline of being where you shouldn’t?
To the east of us, the setting sun has turned that side of the sky to a fire of orange and red, and the looming downtown buildings hovering above us reflect this fire in their many windows, and directly above me are giant green highway signs and all around me are people holding their own protest signs and… I just feel like my head is going to explode, but my heart is fuller than I can ever recall, and I have no idea what to do, so I keep marching alongside everyone else.
“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!”
“NO RACIST ASS POLICE!”
I’m honestly not sure how long we march like this on the highway before we reach the cars, in my mind all this sort of skips around from one moment to the next, like a string of amazing jumpcuts. But in any case, I hear about the cars before I see them. One of the things I learn today is that in a march, news spreads down the line, from cluster to cluster, much like that childhood game of telephone.
This is what happens now, as the word trickles down that we’re close to stranded cars, stuck in the sea of marching people. Not long after that, I come to my first car, with the person inside, a black women, cheering her heart out. This really hits me.
A little further after that I come across another couple of stuck cars, but the drivers aren’t in them. They are out on the street, cheering on the protesters and screaming their hearts out. The whole thing is so god damn incredible I start to get choked up, what am I experiencing right now?
Even further still, I come across this:
A young man standing on the hood of his own car losing his mind in the best way possible.
And while I’m taking this incredible sight in, I notice another car in the next lane over. The driver of this car is white, and he is clearly not happy. Now I’m not saying he looks hateful, or anything, he just looks like a man who was on his way home from work when he got caught in all this, and now he’s stuck here for what definitely will be a long time, and he’s not happy about it.
And what strikes me so much about these two very different reactions is that I can only really relate to one of them. Countless times I’ve found myself in heavy, standstill, traffic on the highway after a long day at work, seething in my car, cursing who’s ever fault this is as if they did it on purpose.
I’ve been there before, I can definitely empathize with that.
But I have never, ever, had the experience where my day was interrupted by something that was so dear to my heart, so important to me, that I felt the need to jump out of my car, stand on my own hood and cry out in a combination of both pain and joy.
No, I can’t say I can truly relate to that at all. I find it beautiful and life-affirming, but it is completely foreign to me. And if I didn’t realize it before, I realize it now. Ally or not, I’m most definitely a stranger marching in a strange land.
We march further down the ten, so that the Superdome is now in full view, and the number of stranded cars has increased ten-fold, so much that we are back to being a tight protest snake, slithering our way southbound, the tail undoubtedly wondering if the head knows where it’s going.
“We’re turning back!” the news hits me through the telephone yet again. There’s too many cars up ahead for us to make our way through, we’re told, we have no choice but backtrack.
But of course, no true protest wants to do the exact same thing twice, so on the return trip down the same stretch of highway, hundreds of marchers jump the median and, in the face of oncoming traffic, shut that side down too (I join them… after I’m certain the cars are stopping and not going to ram into us).
I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point the sun stops setting and the sky turns into night. For me it feels like this happens in one quick move, like a flip is switched. And now in the dark of the night, things seem to have a much more ominous tone. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but there’s tension in the air. Perhaps we can all feel that the ending is close, and we all know something big has to happen before we call it quits.
And then another update comes down the line. The cops are up ahead, on foot, blocking the highway, and they’re in riot gear.
Oh shit, oh shit. It’s going down now.
The pace quickens among us and the snake becomes a frenzy of excited whispers. We all start to rush ahead so we can get to the front lines and see for ourselves these cops dressed for battle.
Even before I make it to the front, I guess that the cops have stopped our path just after the Vieux Carre offramp. This turns out to be exactly the case. “You’ve had your fun now it’s time to leave the highway and return to reality,” is clearly the message here. But nobody’s going anywhere. I quickly find a spot on the side, just at the entrance of the offramp, so I have a clear view of the two warring sides. I tell myself that I’m positioning myself here so I can take quality pictures and properly document the events about to unfold, like a good ally, and not because it’s right next to the exit so I can flee if things turn really ugly.
The leaders of the protest seem to be going off on the police as well as giving directions to the crowd, but it’s so loud and frenzied right now it’s hard to really make out anything they’re saying unless you’re relatively close to them, which most of us are not.
The crowd chanting soon becomes deafening.
“SAY HIS NAME!”
“GEORGE FLOYD!”
“SAY HIS NAME!”
GEORGE FLOYD!”
And then the oddest thing happens. Next to me, I hear a microphone voice call out:
“ALL LIVES MATTER!”
I look over and find that same black man in a wheelchair from earlier holding a megaphone and screaming his favorite three word saying. For the third time that night, I have to question if this is actually happening.
But these doubts are quickly squashed when a couple of fellow black men and women circle him and begin to cuss him out, viciously. And he’s yelling back at them, not backing down at all.
So now my attention is torn between the war between the cops and the protesters and this tiny infighting skirmish going on right by me. I start to feel overwhelmed and dizzy. Meanwhile, one man in particular is growing more furious at the all lives matter gentleman by the second, and it really looks like he’s going to start throwing punches any second now.
What the hell do I do here? What is my role in this? It’s certainly not my place to get in between these two people and solve the issue myself. But what if he really starts beating down the all-lives-matter man? Surely I have a responsibility to save a handicapped person from a dire situation.
I don’t know what to do, so I just do nothing but watch, splitting my attention from the infighting to the frontlines ahead. Meanwhile, the crowd has taken up a new chant.
“KNEEL! KNEEL! KNEEL!”
Jesus, they want the cops to kneel, just like those images we saw online for the last couple of days. But I have little faith this will happen here. In what I know about police, they sure don’t like being told what to do or bending to others whims.
This goes on for maybe five minutes, or maybe an eternity, it’s hard to say. But finally, my head is so dizzy I have to walk away from the noise, over to the edge of the highway, and lean over the railing so I can feel a nice breeze of air against my face.
“KNEEL! KNEEL! KNEEL!”
I stay here for a bit, trying to regroup, occasionally making the mistake of looking down and seeing that fifty foot drop to straight pavement below. Christ, where the hell am I? What am I doing?
You wanted to come here and show your support. Just like everyone else here. You are one of thousands who are frustrated with the way things are. Sure, maybe you’re motives aren’t completely altruistic, but who’s is? Anyway, you showed up, you participated. Don’t beat yourself up too much.
Suddenly, a huge cheer emanates from the crowd. I rush back to my old spot, which takes some time because I have to fight through the new layers of people all trying to get a look at whatever is happening.
When I finally make it to my old spot nothing seems different. Cops are still standing there, unresponsive to the crowd.
“What happened?” I ask the lady next to me.
“The cops did it! They kneeled!”
They actually did it. And I missed it. I missed the grand finale. God dammit. I should have been there to document it. Oh well, the important thing is that it happened at all, right?
The leaders of the protest speak a few words to the crowd, dismissing them, and soon large swaths of people are departing down the offramp. It’s over, the night is ending.
I take a moment to collect my thoughts, glance over at the highway insanity one last time, and then follow the folks down the concrete decline.
“They kneeled, that’s something,” I hear a woman say to her boyfriend as they walk next to me.
“Don’t mean shit. Just performative. Typical bullshit. You watch. Once this is all over, and everyone has forgot, the cops, and everyone else, will go back to their old ways. Everyone. It’ll be back to normal once this is over. You watch.”
Another two minutes later, I’m back on normal city streets, alone, and it almost feels like everything I just was a part of never happened. I think about what that man said on the offramp and find myself disagreeing with him. Obviously, I lack experience and understanding in this area, but if what I just witnessed is happening across the world, there’s no way things won’t change, right?
I consider taking Lafitte’s back home. It would be a nice bookend to the day, plus another forty minutes of quiet reflection. But then I remember it’s June, it’s dark out, so I decide against it. I call a friend and have her pick me up instead.
