de profundis
Four years ago, the political got very personal.
I was a good little radical then; that night, if anything, is what galvanized me. I had wandered down into the streets ready to spend a few hours protesting the oncoming war and then go home and on a date and to my homework. I can't really claim much in the way of nobility: I cared, I cared until my little heart was worn out, but I wasn't a grownup about these things, not yet. I still wanted Bad Guys to line up against. I still wanted to Win and Go Home, because I still thought there was a chance things worked that way.
So I wandered into the eye of the storm, and into a protest that shut down Portland highway by highway and bridge by bridge. The notion was to get everyone to stop and think: this is an inconvenience, but bombs are about to start dropping, tonight, on a nation of real people. Stop. Stop and look around. Feel this moment. Know that it matters. We knew everything would change, we knew it would be a disaster, no matter how much we could never have predicted about the four years to come.
I have written about this before: the peaceful protest I sat in, the places elsewhere in town where it got ugly, where demonstrators fought with riot police, where a police chief shipped in from LAPD and a mayor who wanted to make political examples got brutal and militaristic, where anarchists and would-be revolutionaries got stupid, or naive, or nasty. The squad car driven at me and my friends, engine gunning. The flashbang grenades thrown in our faces. The scared preteen who wanted to make a stand, choking on vinegar-soaked cloth in case of tear gas, that I helped smuggle out of the worst of it. The firehose, the rain, the choppers, the friends with black bruises a foot square that lasted weeks, the people dragged off of sidewalks and then arrested for jaywalking, the children called terrorists. The cops who told me, as they cuffed and searched me, that they'd like to torture me for opposing this President, that they wished they could treat me as Saddam would. The bones that stayed intact because of news cameras. The sadistic prison guards who forced me to watch footage, over and over again, of the first bombs dropping, complete with mocking commentary on how I hadn't been able to stop the deaths of my "little I-racky friends." I've written about the violences that gave me shaking, terrified flashbacks for months after, and I've exorcised those, mostly. I've told the funny bits, gestures wide, trying to make light of a night that changed who I was and my trust in the world forever, trying to make a good story out of the scared kid I was. I've tried the heroic angle, the confessional angle, the big-picture, the find-the-themes tale. I keep wanting this to be the opener for a piece about my discovery of street medicine and a new politics of triage, or part of a larger account of demonstrations, or about the conversation I had shortly afterward with a South African dissident that midwifed my perspective on matters of justice.
This should not be those, because I haven't exorcised the most selfish part of how I changed that night. Many, many people died that night, four years ago, far away from where I was. Many have, as a consequence, died since. Perspective tells me these things are the most important, that these things are, if I am decent and an activist and true to my faith, what I ought to write about, on this brutal, tragic anniversary of a war that never should have been.
My politics are concerned with those and daily, but four years ago, the political got personal. That's what I need to exorcise.
Feel this moment. Stop and look around. Somewhere, there's a bridge blockaded in my head. Somewhere, I'm still cuffed and working on an escape plan, but the daily routine gets hit, diverted, stymied, bottlenecked. Feel this moment.
I keep wanting to put it in continuity, in context, because that's what I do: stories. I keep wanting to move on down the road.
Feel this moment. Stop.
Okay:
I didn't go to jail that night at the protests for the war. Was I on the street to protest this invasion? Yes. Did I stay there because I felt that the law of morality and humanity came first, before my concern for the convenience of my neighbors, that this was a great enough wound in the world's order to merit disruption and risk-taking? Yes, of course, yes. Was I motivated by a dead grandfather whose world was turned upside-down by a US occupation that pulled out and left his homeland free of their prior oppressors, but still full of bloody, awful chaos, who I wanted to honor by trying to prevent any other children like him being forced into guerrilla war? Yes, yes, yes, peace be upon him. That was why I sat in the street. That was why I linked arms. But it was the arm-linking that made me stare down shotguns and sing at truncheons. It was the people I was with in the streets that night that made me bold enough to resist for more than eight straight hours in the cold rain, and it was eventually those same people who made me turn into another sort of activist entirely, the kind with a medical kit.
But it wasn't why I went to jail that night. I could have run away, even at the end, when we were surrounded by armored police and vehicles in phalanges two and three ranks deep. I like to think that I went behind bars for the cause, like Bonhoeffer and Berrigan and Esack and Tutu. Part of me did.
Let's get personal: I went to jail that night for a girl. Not one I particularly liked, while we're in the confessional.
One of the people at the core of the protest with me that night was a transgendered girl, a transient who was staying with some of my friends. She was deeply unbalanced, not a particularly healthy person to be around, but well-meaning. She had a lot of wild stories about a past escaping a cruel family, falling in with a cult, breaking free, moving on, finding herself on the streets, leaving behind a name she never told us. That night, over her more practical gear, under her satchel, she wore a tutu. She never did have much sense.
Let's confess: I was only a few steps out of the closet then, with anyone other than family and close friends. I had shoulder-length hair and looked fairly androgynous and didn't pass so very well even when I tried. That night, raw and haggard in a turtleneck and jeans, I looked male, and I had allowed that on purpose for protection, for privilege, to cover my ass. I still have survivor's guilt over it--but I'm getting ahead too far.
We were surrounded, two and three ranks deep, by masked men with covered names in black armor, with shotguns, with hands on canisters of pepper spray, with armored cars. I cannot tell you, if you have never looked on all borders of a space the size of a street intersection and seen this all around you, what it feels like. If you have not been there, I cannot really get across the feeling of looking at people next to you and trying to predict who will get hit first, who you might have to take a truncheon for, a bullet for, not knowing the intentions or the limits of whatever faces are behind all of that implacable, reflective plastic. I shed a lot of skin that night.
They announced, over a loudspeaker, the order to disperse. None of our guards moved; a small gap had been left on the southeast end of the box, as an escape route. The girl in the tutu got up, moved toward it, shrugged at the rest of us; it wasn't worth it to go behind bars, for her, I think. I was ready to get up and follow. She approached an officer, to ask him if that southeast gap was the way to exit, and could she disperse, as asked--I was near enough to overhear. He began to point, nod, confirm, when two more armored officers came up behind her, threw her to the ground, cut her satchel-strap and cuffed her. She was ground into the pavement as they hogtied her and carried her into a van belly-down.
I could not let her be the only one in there. Do you understand? We were the only two out trans women there, that night, in that place. She was not my friend, really, but I could not let her be the only one in there, alone. I linked arms and went nowhere; when they came for me, I stood up, I was polite, I announced the contents of my pockets and went civilly--but I went.
They split us up, as it turned out. I missed some parts that were related to me later. They put her in a cage--a cage!--first, apart from other people, poked at her, mocked her while she was under restraint. She was held out in the rain under a bridge, as I was, but for longer, and under a different bridge. Eventually, later that night, we were brought to the same precinct, where it got worse for both of us.
I keep wanting to move past the nausea and tell the bit about getting the other prisoners to sing "I Feel Pretty," the moment of queer solidarity I had in the holding cells, the way I small-town-charmed the detective who first processed me, before I was relocated. I want to tell the good bits. I want to keep my city lit up and lively.
Stop. Feel this moment.
She and I were processed one after the other. They read me as male; they read me as queer.
The sherriffs didn't stop at taking my shoelaces and my name. They cuffed me, surrounded me, and told me they would strip me down and lock me up with a rapist they had just arrested, who they described in graphic detail. They told me I would have no contact with a lawyer or the outside for at least three days, and that they could arrange this in the processing, that I would be alone in an isolated cell and they would ignore any cries for help. They told me in no uncertain terms that they would have me raped, even while I was cooperating, and they laughed. There were a lot of them, and I was alone, and they laughed. I was cold, and damp, and naive. I was very young. They did it because they could.
She was brought in after me, stripped down to her long underwear, and as they were throwing her to the ground and removing her piercings, she tried to bring up the local statutes preventing discrimination against the transgendered, the right to self-identification, hell, the right to remain silent. As they had told me, they told her these were "TV rights," and they knelt on her back and grabbed at her crotch and triumphantly announced that she was a he, and that he was a freak.
What did I think I was going to do, when I let myself be arrested? Did I think that I would be able to protect her? That my bearing witness would matter? There was that sharp, sick moment, where I tried to move, to intervene, to stop what was happening, as they dragged her in front of a medical examiner, harassed her, mocked her, shoved her around. There was that moment before I realized I was under lock and key, and being shouted at by armed people, and could do nothing to stop it. There was that moment where I contemplated the cowardice of not being beaten senseless and chose it.
There is a dull horror in watching and being able to do nothing. Maybe there's something I could have done, and I didn't. I don't know. I didn't. I froze and I choked on that feeling and did nothing. And I let it get selfish, because--
because--
It could have been me. Any other night, if I had worn a different shirt, if I had been further along, if I had--it could have been me, there. They threatened me; they carried out many of those threats on her, and I watched. I watched knowing that it very well could have been me, that for the rest of my life it could be, with no more option to hide things, soon enough. (I hear someone in my head, going, but there are laws. That kind of discrimination is illegal. Didn't you tell them?) I don't know what I thought I would accomplish, watching what they did to her, feeling it creep into me.
They locked her in a solitary cell and covered the window to isolate her completely. I was made to watch the foreign deaths that began that night on television, on repeat. Eight hours later, they let me out. Ten after that, they let her out.
There was supposed to be a suit against the bureau. She skipped town, moved on, scared, before her chance to testify. Records were, shockingly, lost, of who was on duty that night, of who was involved. The city moved on. The traffic was unblocked. Larger stories unfolded and the flurry of outrage was forgotten for a homeless, unbalanced young transsexual done wrong by people in uniform.
We never heard from her again. But let's be honest: this is a selfish exorcism. I don't know how she is, if she's even alive, but I know I'm stained, and that that night just won't wash out. No matter what stories, what themes, what global events were more important, no matter how many times I tell myself the context, no matter how many times I try to process it and get the traffic moving and get over the bridge we blocked together.
Stop.
It is spring, and the cherry blossoms are appearing, tree by tree.
Feel this moment.
I was a good little radical then; that night, if anything, is what galvanized me. I had wandered down into the streets ready to spend a few hours protesting the oncoming war and then go home and on a date and to my homework. I can't really claim much in the way of nobility: I cared, I cared until my little heart was worn out, but I wasn't a grownup about these things, not yet. I still wanted Bad Guys to line up against. I still wanted to Win and Go Home, because I still thought there was a chance things worked that way.
So I wandered into the eye of the storm, and into a protest that shut down Portland highway by highway and bridge by bridge. The notion was to get everyone to stop and think: this is an inconvenience, but bombs are about to start dropping, tonight, on a nation of real people. Stop. Stop and look around. Feel this moment. Know that it matters. We knew everything would change, we knew it would be a disaster, no matter how much we could never have predicted about the four years to come.
I have written about this before: the peaceful protest I sat in, the places elsewhere in town where it got ugly, where demonstrators fought with riot police, where a police chief shipped in from LAPD and a mayor who wanted to make political examples got brutal and militaristic, where anarchists and would-be revolutionaries got stupid, or naive, or nasty. The squad car driven at me and my friends, engine gunning. The flashbang grenades thrown in our faces. The scared preteen who wanted to make a stand, choking on vinegar-soaked cloth in case of tear gas, that I helped smuggle out of the worst of it. The firehose, the rain, the choppers, the friends with black bruises a foot square that lasted weeks, the people dragged off of sidewalks and then arrested for jaywalking, the children called terrorists. The cops who told me, as they cuffed and searched me, that they'd like to torture me for opposing this President, that they wished they could treat me as Saddam would. The bones that stayed intact because of news cameras. The sadistic prison guards who forced me to watch footage, over and over again, of the first bombs dropping, complete with mocking commentary on how I hadn't been able to stop the deaths of my "little I-racky friends." I've written about the violences that gave me shaking, terrified flashbacks for months after, and I've exorcised those, mostly. I've told the funny bits, gestures wide, trying to make light of a night that changed who I was and my trust in the world forever, trying to make a good story out of the scared kid I was. I've tried the heroic angle, the confessional angle, the big-picture, the find-the-themes tale. I keep wanting this to be the opener for a piece about my discovery of street medicine and a new politics of triage, or part of a larger account of demonstrations, or about the conversation I had shortly afterward with a South African dissident that midwifed my perspective on matters of justice.
This should not be those, because I haven't exorcised the most selfish part of how I changed that night. Many, many people died that night, four years ago, far away from where I was. Many have, as a consequence, died since. Perspective tells me these things are the most important, that these things are, if I am decent and an activist and true to my faith, what I ought to write about, on this brutal, tragic anniversary of a war that never should have been.
My politics are concerned with those and daily, but four years ago, the political got personal. That's what I need to exorcise.
Feel this moment. Stop and look around. Somewhere, there's a bridge blockaded in my head. Somewhere, I'm still cuffed and working on an escape plan, but the daily routine gets hit, diverted, stymied, bottlenecked. Feel this moment.
I keep wanting to put it in continuity, in context, because that's what I do: stories. I keep wanting to move on down the road.
Feel this moment. Stop.
Okay:
I didn't go to jail that night at the protests for the war. Was I on the street to protest this invasion? Yes. Did I stay there because I felt that the law of morality and humanity came first, before my concern for the convenience of my neighbors, that this was a great enough wound in the world's order to merit disruption and risk-taking? Yes, of course, yes. Was I motivated by a dead grandfather whose world was turned upside-down by a US occupation that pulled out and left his homeland free of their prior oppressors, but still full of bloody, awful chaos, who I wanted to honor by trying to prevent any other children like him being forced into guerrilla war? Yes, yes, yes, peace be upon him. That was why I sat in the street. That was why I linked arms. But it was the arm-linking that made me stare down shotguns and sing at truncheons. It was the people I was with in the streets that night that made me bold enough to resist for more than eight straight hours in the cold rain, and it was eventually those same people who made me turn into another sort of activist entirely, the kind with a medical kit.
But it wasn't why I went to jail that night. I could have run away, even at the end, when we were surrounded by armored police and vehicles in phalanges two and three ranks deep. I like to think that I went behind bars for the cause, like Bonhoeffer and Berrigan and Esack and Tutu. Part of me did.
Let's get personal: I went to jail that night for a girl. Not one I particularly liked, while we're in the confessional.
One of the people at the core of the protest with me that night was a transgendered girl, a transient who was staying with some of my friends. She was deeply unbalanced, not a particularly healthy person to be around, but well-meaning. She had a lot of wild stories about a past escaping a cruel family, falling in with a cult, breaking free, moving on, finding herself on the streets, leaving behind a name she never told us. That night, over her more practical gear, under her satchel, she wore a tutu. She never did have much sense.
Let's confess: I was only a few steps out of the closet then, with anyone other than family and close friends. I had shoulder-length hair and looked fairly androgynous and didn't pass so very well even when I tried. That night, raw and haggard in a turtleneck and jeans, I looked male, and I had allowed that on purpose for protection, for privilege, to cover my ass. I still have survivor's guilt over it--but I'm getting ahead too far.
We were surrounded, two and three ranks deep, by masked men with covered names in black armor, with shotguns, with hands on canisters of pepper spray, with armored cars. I cannot tell you, if you have never looked on all borders of a space the size of a street intersection and seen this all around you, what it feels like. If you have not been there, I cannot really get across the feeling of looking at people next to you and trying to predict who will get hit first, who you might have to take a truncheon for, a bullet for, not knowing the intentions or the limits of whatever faces are behind all of that implacable, reflective plastic. I shed a lot of skin that night.
They announced, over a loudspeaker, the order to disperse. None of our guards moved; a small gap had been left on the southeast end of the box, as an escape route. The girl in the tutu got up, moved toward it, shrugged at the rest of us; it wasn't worth it to go behind bars, for her, I think. I was ready to get up and follow. She approached an officer, to ask him if that southeast gap was the way to exit, and could she disperse, as asked--I was near enough to overhear. He began to point, nod, confirm, when two more armored officers came up behind her, threw her to the ground, cut her satchel-strap and cuffed her. She was ground into the pavement as they hogtied her and carried her into a van belly-down.
I could not let her be the only one in there. Do you understand? We were the only two out trans women there, that night, in that place. She was not my friend, really, but I could not let her be the only one in there, alone. I linked arms and went nowhere; when they came for me, I stood up, I was polite, I announced the contents of my pockets and went civilly--but I went.
They split us up, as it turned out. I missed some parts that were related to me later. They put her in a cage--a cage!--first, apart from other people, poked at her, mocked her while she was under restraint. She was held out in the rain under a bridge, as I was, but for longer, and under a different bridge. Eventually, later that night, we were brought to the same precinct, where it got worse for both of us.
I keep wanting to move past the nausea and tell the bit about getting the other prisoners to sing "I Feel Pretty," the moment of queer solidarity I had in the holding cells, the way I small-town-charmed the detective who first processed me, before I was relocated. I want to tell the good bits. I want to keep my city lit up and lively.
Stop. Feel this moment.
She and I were processed one after the other. They read me as male; they read me as queer.
The sherriffs didn't stop at taking my shoelaces and my name. They cuffed me, surrounded me, and told me they would strip me down and lock me up with a rapist they had just arrested, who they described in graphic detail. They told me I would have no contact with a lawyer or the outside for at least three days, and that they could arrange this in the processing, that I would be alone in an isolated cell and they would ignore any cries for help. They told me in no uncertain terms that they would have me raped, even while I was cooperating, and they laughed. There were a lot of them, and I was alone, and they laughed. I was cold, and damp, and naive. I was very young. They did it because they could.
She was brought in after me, stripped down to her long underwear, and as they were throwing her to the ground and removing her piercings, she tried to bring up the local statutes preventing discrimination against the transgendered, the right to self-identification, hell, the right to remain silent. As they had told me, they told her these were "TV rights," and they knelt on her back and grabbed at her crotch and triumphantly announced that she was a he, and that he was a freak.
What did I think I was going to do, when I let myself be arrested? Did I think that I would be able to protect her? That my bearing witness would matter? There was that sharp, sick moment, where I tried to move, to intervene, to stop what was happening, as they dragged her in front of a medical examiner, harassed her, mocked her, shoved her around. There was that moment before I realized I was under lock and key, and being shouted at by armed people, and could do nothing to stop it. There was that moment where I contemplated the cowardice of not being beaten senseless and chose it.
There is a dull horror in watching and being able to do nothing. Maybe there's something I could have done, and I didn't. I don't know. I didn't. I froze and I choked on that feeling and did nothing. And I let it get selfish, because--
because--
It could have been me. Any other night, if I had worn a different shirt, if I had been further along, if I had--it could have been me, there. They threatened me; they carried out many of those threats on her, and I watched. I watched knowing that it very well could have been me, that for the rest of my life it could be, with no more option to hide things, soon enough. (I hear someone in my head, going, but there are laws. That kind of discrimination is illegal. Didn't you tell them?) I don't know what I thought I would accomplish, watching what they did to her, feeling it creep into me.
They locked her in a solitary cell and covered the window to isolate her completely. I was made to watch the foreign deaths that began that night on television, on repeat. Eight hours later, they let me out. Ten after that, they let her out.
There was supposed to be a suit against the bureau. She skipped town, moved on, scared, before her chance to testify. Records were, shockingly, lost, of who was on duty that night, of who was involved. The city moved on. The traffic was unblocked. Larger stories unfolded and the flurry of outrage was forgotten for a homeless, unbalanced young transsexual done wrong by people in uniform.
We never heard from her again. But let's be honest: this is a selfish exorcism. I don't know how she is, if she's even alive, but I know I'm stained, and that that night just won't wash out. No matter what stories, what themes, what global events were more important, no matter how many times I tell myself the context, no matter how many times I try to process it and get the traffic moving and get over the bridge we blocked together.
Stop.
It is spring, and the cherry blossoms are appearing, tree by tree.
Feel this moment.
Labels: my city, on the pavement, queer, remembered, trans, turning points
posted by little light | 10:29 AM
19 Comments:
i consider myself extremely lucky and privileged, to have never had this kind of experience. but i know more than a few who have, and i've come way too close myself, on more than a few occasions. yet, i still have nightmares like this - i can't imagine how much darker yours must be to have actually lived it.
thank you for sharing, for putting yourself out there, for taking the risks, and for your compassion and bravery.
Wow. That was quite an eye-opening story. Thank you for sharing it with us, in all of its detail and emotional honesty. Little Light, in spite of your saying otherwise, I think that your decision to face arrest was still a brave one. What happened at the hands of those vicious thugs was completely outside of your control.
There are a frightening number of stories out there of the police behaving like criminals. I’ve known a few people in my family and hometown who were members of the police force. They should never have been given badges. Some of them were emotionally unstable, some where extremely prejudiced, and some were both. I often question whether the very nature of police work tends to attract unhealthy people, or at the very least, creates an emotionally unhealthy workplace.
I’ve been in a few protests since I transitioned and I always worry about what would happen if I was arrested, and an errant gender marker was found during a background check. I’ve done my best to avoid arrest out of this fear. I’m not particularly proud of that fact, but there you have it.
It also seems that law enforcement focuses much more control over the portions of society with the least power: the poor, racial minorities, immigrants, disfavored political groups, sexual/gender minorities, etc. The more power a group of people has, the lower the likelihood of being subject to the surveillance and control of law enforcement.
One thing I did not mention in my last comment was the fact I grew up in a white, blue-collar family in a white, blue-collar neighborhood. Police work seemed to attract people from my particular demographic. There is a horrid irony in the fact that a group of people on the lower end of society’s power structure is often employed in controlling people with even less power.
An additional bit of information: blatant prejudice of many different kinds was interwoven into the very core of our local culture. So, not only were people from my demographic attracted to police work, but they were also carrying with them rather severe forms of prejudice toward those further down society’s rungs—people who were also more likely to come under their control.
This is not to say that every police officer out there is an untrustworthy bigot who abuses her/his power, but there does seem to be evidence of rather disturbing social patterns at work.
I wish I knew what to say to this story. It's truly horrifying what people do when ruled by fear and anger.
I'm really glad you are telling this story. It's not the first time I've heard it, but I was afraid it had slipped out of the wandering collective memory of the internet to be remembered only by a few. Thank you for telling it again and being a witness. I originally read what she had written about it herself in an e-mail that had been circulated amongst friends. I remember feeling so incredibly powerless and frustrated. I think she was already planning on leaving town, and Portland felt so far away. I vaguely recall that some of us in the corner of the net I used to hang out in back then tried to get together some money to send her, but there was definitely some confusion about where she was at. Friends of friends of friends... but such a small, marginalized social network to mobilize and take action. It still drives me nuts whenever I see how difficult it is to mobilize more people, especially nationally, around horrific fucking stuff that institutional authorities have no qualms about doing to us.
Meanwhile, huge letter-writing campaigns of outrage and public pressure manage to get underway whenever an asshole basketball player or television actor says something homophobic. Not that I think they should be allowed to get away with that; but those stories get 100 times the attention as this one, which is practically just a legend by now, or the brutal assault here on a trans woman by the manager of a McDonald's in midtown Manhattan, which resulted in HER getting charged by the police. You wrote a blog post about that last year, I think, and weren't sure how to find out if it really happened either. It totally did happen -- the lawyer who has been representing her is a very good friend of mine. But somehow the media spotlight never shines on this stuff, the story doesn't even get picked up and carried by grassroots means, except through blogs like this. And I hadn't even found your blog at that point, to say "hey absolutely yes, this did happen."
Thank you again for sharing that story, and your own part in it, thank you for going into that hell so that someone else wouldn't be alone. Thank you for continuing to tell these stories and spread the truth, in this world and these times where it's so frustratingly hard.
Yes.
that was quite something.
my thoughts are with you.
That was very powerful. Thank you.
We tend to forget that the pre-Stonewall persecutions are just a police precinct away.
You do your best in whatever situation you're in, and that's the best you can do. It's brave just to keep existing sometimes.
Thanks for sharing so much.
As a veteran of dozens of anti-war demos, I understand what you are saying. There is almost always a moment when you can make a choice: to stay and be arrested, or to leave and wonder what will happen to your comrades.
For a lot of reasons, I protect myself from that decision and stay safe.
For a lot of reasons, many of those who choose to be arrested are protected from the harsh realities you and your friend had to face. I know a lot of middle class white women who have participated in civil disobedience repeatedly without ever suffering the severe forms of harassment you describe.
What is awesome to me, is that you are talking about what happened, thinking about what happened and sharing what happened. Lots of people will not take that risk. Lots of people are unable to express themselves as well as you.
Lots of people like me may not be able to hear about this reality without people like you willing to share it with us.
So rock on, Little Light!
Sweetheart, I don't know you, and our worlds are very different, but I would like to send you all the love and blessing and healing I can over this, and also a deep sense of gratitude for your courage, and just that you're there.
Try not to add to your own pain by feeling guilt you do not deserve, easier said than done, I know...
Live, love and stay strong, Little Light.
Thank you, everyone, for your kindness.
I read this over again a few times, and your comments, and I finally remembered the "a parable" post I made a bit ago, and something finally clicked:
I am the girl in the story with her hands out. She is the one falling.
Patterns and repetitions--see?
I have spent all this time searching and searching my memories of that night for the person who tried to do the right thing, even if it failed, even if it wasn't enough, because that still matters, and it still matters to the one falling.
It was me. And I think it's time to forgive the absence of other hands, and to forgive my own frailty, and maybe get around to learning and keeping on going.
Stacym, I have to admit this-all is part of why my activism changed, and why I became a medic instead of running to the barricades at the drop of a hat.
Hell, I had a routine traffic stop back in October and nearly had a panic attack. And the officer had a grand time pointedly calling me "mister" once he saw my ID. He wrote me a huge, unnecessary ticket for a glitch in my registration, and when I came into court with proof I'd fixed the error, it turned out he'd never even filed the ticket. He was just screwing with me.
That said, I don't want to generally demonize police, here; that's not the point. They do an awful job where they deal constantly with the worst society has to offer, and it gets to them, I think, even the best of them. Yes, the profession does attract a number of nasty, power-hungry brutes who really want to carry a gun and lord it over people--the two biggest school bullies I remember from the beatings and abuse I used to take in the locker room are cops now--but it also attracts people desperate to protect their communities who see law enforcement as the way to do it.
It's just that even they get ground down, as social workers and paramedics do, with the sheer weight of societal corruption. Add to that the tribal nature of police bureaus--young cops working ridiculous shifts, with their families taking each other's kids in, putting your life on the line next to some coworker you might not even like, it produces a very us-and-them mentality. And "them" is mostly criminals, says that filter, and "them" is unfortunately you and me.
Then it gets ugly.
Holly, further proof that you and I are apparently local franchises of each other.
Thank you, for all of what you said.
As to your friend's case, yeah, I did post about it a ways back, and helped distribute action-call emails, some of which made their way to New York, but it took me a while to find verifiable sources, which I then linked to so everyone over here had access.
...and then heard nothing. I hope it's going well.
It seems to me that you acted bravely. I don't think we are required to be willing to risk our lives in a situation in order to have shown courage. I can think of many times in my life where I was going through a rough time and found comfort in the fact that someone was there and at least if at some point in the future I needed to talk about what happened, there would be someone who was there and I wouldn't have to wonder whether they believed me or truly understood what happened to me.
Thank you. You are brave in so many ways.
little light wrote:
That said, I don't want to generally demonize police, here; that's not the point. They do an awful job where they deal constantly with the worst society has to offer, and it gets to them, I think, even the best of them. Yes, the profession does attract a number of nasty, power-hungry brutes who really want to carry a gun and lord it over people--the two biggest school bullies I remember from the beatings and abuse I used to take in the locker room are cops now--but it also attracts people desperate to protect their communities who see law enforcement as the way to do it.
Thank you, little light. You're right, dealing with the worst society has to offer will get to anyone, and I know this from personal experience as a police officer. In your post, you went out of your way to emphasize that officers are individuals who should not be tarred with a broad brush, and you touched on some aspects of the profession which act to produce that us/them mentality.
I am also impressed by your original post. I am in awe of your unflinching public critique of yourself.
Posts like that are difficult for me to read. I don't deny your experience, and wouldn't want to, but accounts like that always sadden me. I am a trans woman, early in transition, and so I participate on a few trans groups and read some blogs which have trans content. Because so many trans people have had bad experiences with the police, stories like these are everywhere in trans circles. (Frankly, they're pretty common in most circles, but the trans accounts are often among the most horrific.) It can be hard to stay with the conversation when it starts into the cop-bashing, as it often does.
So, thank you for your even-handedness, even in the face of what you experienced. I'm enjoying going through your archives. I also enjoyed "the seam of skin and scales" very much. I read it aloud to my family.
Grace
Thank you for writing this.
Like some of the others who wrote here, it's hard to know what to say in response to such a difficult but emotionally honest story. I do think that there is a certain courage in opening up like this that is worth something in its own right. It is a way of bearing witness ... which by itself may seem a tiny thing, but when people read and are touched by your words and go out into the world perhaps a little more attentive to the ways that lack of privilege can make transgender people more vulnerable to these kinds of abuses ... I hope that some day, that accumulative increase in awareness might make a difference.
I'm posting this comment, despite being a few years late with it, just so you know these words are continuing to reach some readers (like me) and to touch them in some way.
I came here via a link from Questioning Transphobia.
i... just want to let you know i read this.
<3
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