skygiants | (no subject)

On Monday,

genarti and I left work a bit early to drive to a Black Lives Matter vigil in Roxbury. This turned out to be in the fancy bit of Roxbury and consisted of a lot of families with kids and dogs, mostly white, arranged around a rotary . There were a fair number of people but the way it was set up made it pretty easy to socially distance. It was all fairly chill, though several groups of cops from areas around Boston made a point of showing up -- the most notable was a group of motorcycle cops from iirc Quincy (Beth correct me if I'm misremembering) who made a point of making a circuit through the rotary -- and after about 45 minutes a woman came around and thanked us for showing up in a way that made it clear that it was Time To Leave Now, so we left. There was a cop car blocking the main entrance to the rotary on our way out, but not the exit, and it seemed like the purpose was mostly to prevent cars coming into the rotary and doing the honk of support.

I didn't expect this to be a major or dangerous event -- these kind of vigils have been going on around Boston on and off since 2015 and I've attended a couple of them -- and indeed it wasn't, but the very heavy cop presence made it clear that this even this very suburban event was very much not business as usual.

Last night, we went to the protest in Franklin Park. The protest started at 5, with a die-in, a march, and then a rally; we couldn't leave work early enough to make the beginning, so we planned to drive there right after work and make the rally in the park. It took us a while to find parking, so we got there probably around 6:15.

It was HUGE. Thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands - I haven't seen a protest that big since 2016. We were all the way at the back of the crowd and definitely could not hear anything that anyone was saying, so we did the thing where you shout when chants trickle back to reach you and hold up signs and generally try to show support and be counted. Around 6:45, people suddenly started leaving en masse, which surprised us because the event had been listed as going until 8, so instead of going straight back the way we had come, we followed the largest stream of people through the park. This eventually became an impromptu march. (I think impromptu, at least -- it's possible that this was planned and we just didn't know it because we couldn't hear the speakers. But there had definitely been people headed in all directions towards all the exits, this was just the biggest group, so I think it was just so many people all at once that it was natural to chant, and once you're chanting it's a march, and then you just keep going.)

At this point we hadn't seen any cops, although there were drones and helicopters very loud overhead. While we were marching back through the park, though, a troupe of cops came through on motorcycles, followed by a troupe of cops on bicycles, followed by a cop car. Protesters got out of the way in an organized fashion for the motorcycles and the bikes, but peacefully blocked the cop car for a while as the cop driving loudspeakered out at us that he was just answering a call and had to get through -- which was obvious nonsense, there's zero reason to go straight through a protest in a park with a full escort of motorcycles and bikes if you're just answering a call -- but eventually one of the marshals encouraged people to move aside for the cop car as well, so everyone did, very slowly, and it made glacial progress through the crowd and our bit of the march started marching again.

That was the only time we actually saw the cops on the march. After we emerged from the park, the march took over the main street right outside it and we stuck with it for a while, and then peeled off when it started to pour rain and we realized we were already a couple miles away from where we had parked the car and only getting further. On our way back, we passed what had clearly been an cop violence incident that we just missed -- a few people were standing around asking if anyone knew the name of the person who had just gotten arrested, and two other people had clearly just been pepper-sprayed or tear-gassed and people were helping them clear out their eyes with water. We stuck around there for a bit to see if more water was going to be needed, and when it seemed like it wasn't, went on again. I do think it's notable that the evidence of cop brutality that we saw was clearly inflicted on people who had already been leaving the main march, and trying to get home.

After we found the car, it wasn't hard to drive home -- there were no blockades or anything. We were doing our best to keep at least a few feet of distance between people as much as we could, and everyone was wearing masks (the only time I saw people unmasked was on the dispersal), but obviously given the number of people there were a lot of times when it just wasn't possible. So we're going to be self-isolating for the next week or two to make sure we didn't catch the Rona and won't be spreading at the next event we attend, where and whenever it may be.

At one point on the walk home I heard a couple of other protesters, black, also leaving the event right behind us. I wasn't listening to their conversation, but I did hear one of them say to the other, "I don't know why, but this time it feels different."

They sounded hopeful. I really hope they're right.

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vass

<3 I hope so too.

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(no subject)

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