My May 1st

I arrived at Westlake around noon on May 1, the sun was shining. Youth Speaks was performing amazing songs and dancers were breakdancing on the concrete spontaneously. It was a joyful sense of celebrating creativity, resistance, and talent. I was particularly thrilled with the voice of a young man named Lorenzo. The sign behind the dancer says “Decolonize”

I was surprised there weren’t more people there. Suddenly a lot of people arrived who had been marching a few blocks through downtown. The change of mood was immediate. They looked shaken and angry. A man on the stage spoke of what had just happened, but the group was still going forward with the demo. One friend I talked to said, oh yes some tear gas. But I felt the sense of dark anger. Later I learned that as I was enjoying creative expression in Westlake, the “black bloc” had broken windows and aroused the police to tear gas. Who is this black bloc???? Supposedly they are “anarchists” but the anarchists I talked to said they had nothing planned like that. Are they skinheads mascarading as anarchists??? It certainly seemed like that, in spite of their “anarchist websites” sited in the paper.

The result was anger among the other marchers, but certainly their spirit was not broken at all. The Occupy will continue to be non violent. I was impressed that the news media actually distinguished these people as vandals that weren’t from Occupy

So then I went onto the immigrant rights march which started at Judkins Park at 5PM. I went with a young woman who is out on bail from detention, having been held because of an expired license. Her family managed to raise the enormous sum of $5000. And she was reunited with her small daughter after three weeks, but deportation hangs over her head if the police decide to question her for any reason at all.  She doesn’t even have to have done anything. She was told to stay at home. She can’t work because she doesn’t have a work permit (which she is trying to get).  They took away her drivers license, so she can’t drive. Veracruz, where members of her family live, is riddled with gangs, and incredibly dangerous. She has lost cousins who have been murdered.

We looked for groups at the march who might be interested in her situation (she is fortunate to have legal help also). She wants to be public about it, which is incredibly brave. All of a sudden the march was very real. It was a protest, but also a lot of people fighting for a life with work, family, and hope for a future. Simple ideas. Simple hopes. But in the last few years, the immigrant situation has deteriorated severely. Deportation has escalated . 46,000 people were deported last year who have US children.

 

No to Deportation League of Women Voters

Cease Subsidies to Prisons

The mood of this march compared to the first one I went to in 2006 was somber, resistant to giving in, full of chants “the people united can never be defeated.” It was large, several blocks long.

When we reached downtown on Union street and headed west toward the federal building, a huge crowd joined us! It doubled the size of the march. Probably they were from #Occupy and the Westlake area? It was exciting even as it started to pour down rain.

Unfortunately the news was dominated by the “state of siege” downtown, lots of reactions, boarded up stores etc, rather than the important messages of these two groups of people: resisting corporate power, and standing up for a life free of surveillance and pursuit. But really, the people who were in these events felt the strength of numbers, felt the power of the people, and I personally felt the joy of creativity among the dancers and singers  and art making that I saw at Westlake at noon.

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