Pleonastic Ephemera

8.31.2004 posted by William 17:40 link

It has been brought to my attention that the page of photos of the green dragon (apparently not associated with the activist-theatre group named Greene Dragon) burning no longer works, so I'll steal the link to a before, during, and after video of the dragon from the bright aisles of C-Town. Reading back over what I wrote of my experiences this weekend, I realize that my writing tended toward the flat and unemotional. I was interested more in conveying a bare-bones description of what happened, as much for my own benefit as for anyone else, so I didn't make much of an attempt to describe what it felt like to be stuck in a large, loud crowd, handicapped by my own bike, looking back over my shoulder at an approaching line of dark blue uniforms and white helmets, or to go in a split second from thinking about how I'm ready to quit this long, slow march and go get to a sandwich to backing away as best I could in the middle of a jam-packed city block surrounded by metal barricades from a rapidly growing fire that makes the heat of the sun on my neck which had been bothering me for hours suddenly seem cool in comparison. To do so takes work and time and skill, but I'm sure the intensity and visceral experience of those moments will find its way into something or things I write in the future. Walking home from work today I passed through Union Square, which seemingly every article I read about this week's protests notes is a traditional hotbed of political protest, and where this afternoon, judging by the number of protesters and cops I saw, there will no doubt be more arrests. I was glad not to be worrying about getting arrested, and felt little compunction to join these protesters. I feel ambivalence toward protests, especially unsanctioned ones. They have been neutralized or even co-opted to large degree, associated in the public's mind with flaky crunchies and silly hippies, or even worse, with groups of thugs who call themselves anarchists and whose agenda plays straight into the hands of the corporations whose storefronts they vandalize, by lazy reporters and the mouthpieces of those who prefer to see no public activity take place that isn't sponsored or otherwise commercialized. The police, more PR-savvy now than ever, know how to deal with protestors in such a manner as to defang the images that once could have shocked, and anyway, it's an old story, it doesn't play in Peoria, it doesn't make a difference. I've gotten asked, by friends and family, what are you protesting? I have to answer the question as if it's about supposed to be about what I, personally, am protesting, because every single person who participates has their own reasons (or lack thereof). For Sunday's march, the answer was as close to clear as I think it will ever be for me: a party whose leadership and platform I disagree with is trying to keep a President in power whose policies I feel have hurt my country and the world by staging an elaborate ritual in the city in which I live, so I wanted to register my displeasure. For Critical Mass, the answer is more difficult. I know that Critical Mass is an annoyance to everyone who encounters it and is not part of it, that it delays people and inhibits their ability to move through their city, that many people who are pro-biking and pro-transportation alternatives feel it is hurtful to their cause, that, despite the best efforts of Critical Massers themselves, it could conceivably delay an ambulance or fire engine on its way to an emergency. These are serious problems and the day may come when I decide they outweigh the benefits of participating. But for now, the experience itself is worth it: knowing that a group of people can decide of their own will, with a minimum of organization and absolutely no commercialization or sponsorship, to act together and participate in something pleasurable in and of itself, and taking part in such an action, is uplifting to me. I didn't realize how important to me it is to know that that can happen until I did my first Critical Mass, and I don't ever want to forget it.