RNC Arrest Part 3

The hours passed slowly. Sometimes we called to each other from the cracks beneath our cell doors, checking to see what time it was or if anyone had heard any news. I had found a shitty Dean Koontz novel in a rack of old books they let us choose from. At a certain point in my life it would’ve been a real score, but now? Not so much. Cliche plot, simple characters, and a lot of rehashed pop culture concepts, but it was enough to take my mind off things.

During breaks from the book I thought about the Convention and how people out there were being treated. Today was Tuesday and my good friend B. Dolan was playing the big show on the Capitol lawn with Dead Prez and many other acts. Different stories were circulating amongst the arrestees, it was rumored that Rage Against the Machine might be playing a surprise set and also that many more people had been arrested over the course of the previous evening.

We tried to keep morale high and made sure everyone had spoken with a lawyer. From speaking with attorneys and family outside we learned that legally they were only supposed to be able to hold us for 48 hours without bringing us before a judge, but when did that 48 hours begin according to the Sheriff of Ramsey County? Had they found some loophole to keep us in for longer? Would I be out in time to cover the next day’s events or the final day of the Convention, Thursday?

We got an unexpected answer to how the show went later that day. The march that left the Capitol after the concert ended up passing by the Ramsey County Jail and cheering ferociously for the prisoners within. Sound bounced off the buildings on the street and the guards looked alert, as though maybe a siege of ghosts belonging to any innocent person who’d ever spent a night in that unforgiving place had suddenly risen and was now crashing down upon them. The people in our Pod cheered back, it felt like a rescue scene in a movie. But needless to say, this wasn’t Hollywood and no matter how much the people in that crowd wanted their friends, family, and any other innocent people freed immediately, no one would be let out today. Nevertheless, it felt good knowing that so many people understood that we had been taken and were making an effort to be supportive. Was B. out there cheering with them? I forgot the cage around me for a moment and smiled to myself, thinking of all the events he and I have covered together through the years and hoping that the storm troopers outside hadn’t got their grubby mitts on him.

Day faded into night. My roommate was a photographer and one of the most friendly people I’ve ever met. We talked for a long time about the election in November and the dangerous ways in which things were changing for America. It was quite obvious to both of us that authorities are using more and more Riot Police in more and more unnecessary situations all the time. That riot police seldom de-escalate any situation, but rather, are much more likely to create tension and often intentionally provoke a negative response from the crowd. All the gear, body armor, and high tech weapons? The rubber bullet guns, helmets, visors, knee pads, shin guards, utility belts, batons, mase hoses, bean bag guns, tasers, hydration back packs, radio equipment, riot vans, etc? All the over time pay? It must cost the taxpayers millions, and where does that money go? Well, the more situations that occur where authorities successfully demand that the use of riot cops is necessary, then the more laws will change in favor of mandating the use of paramilitary crowd control in nearly any situation they want. At which point, more and more riot gear and equipment will be needed. The more riot gear and equipment is “needed” then the more corporations that manufacture weapons them will produce them.

We all know that weapons companies have more lobbyists in Washington than any one us wants to believe. So now we’ve got lobbyists pushing for legislative changes that require the use of riot police in more and more situations, multiple different Defense Department programs needing to create problems in order to justify their bloated budgets, and an Administration bending all of its will toward convincing America that there are terrorists around every corner. Put it all together and it means there’s a strong chance we all be seeing many more lines of heavily armored officers on our streets for a long time to come.

They’re already using riot police at anti-war protests and immigrant’s rights rallies. Riot police called in to “keep Boston safe” during the American League Championship Series in 2004 killed an innocent 21 year old student at Emerson College named Victoria Snelgrove when she was shot in the face with a supposedly “non-lethal” projectile rifle. Should we expect lines of heavily armed riot police called in during peaceful Labor rallies or Marriage Right’s press events outside of the State House? Will we then see riot police at holiday parades and any public concerts? College sporting events and Little League games too? We are on a very slippery slope and it isn’t difficult to imagine how things could go from bad to worse in a relatively short time.

We eventually fell asleep but were woken up promptly at 3:30 a.m. which is when they serve breakfast in County Jail; all part of the program to keep prisoners disoriented, dispirited, and obedient. To the best of my knowledge, the logic is that if you wake people up to eat at 3:30am then they’ll do it quickly and go back to sleep. Then you wake up hungry and looking forward to lunch around 11, have dinner at 5, and are docile and ready for bed around 9 or 10. Eating breakfast 2 hours before dawn is early, even by a farmer’s standards, but there wasn’t any choice so we ate.

A guy who had been picked up by RNC security forces days before us had been moved unto our pod during the night. He was scared and told his story to anyone he could. We had spent two nights in jail already and everyone seemed alarmed at the prospect that we might actually be staying for many more. The new pod member said that he had been arrested on Saturday afternoon, which meant he had already been in custody for over 4 days. It was terrifying. The news spread from cell to cell like a dirty secret and before lunch all the arrestees on our pod agreed to collectively refuse food until we were allowed to see a judge or be let go. Lawyers and family members were alerted on phone breaks that we would be hunger striking. This was done in order to make our intentions clear and also to indicate that additional medical attention might be needed.

As morning crawled along and the afternoon light of late summer touched down on the outside pane of my glazed window I tried to put the prospect of skipping dinner out of mind. It was low quality lunchroom food (under cooked rice, white bread, canned apple sauce, and maybe a packet of high fructose peanut butter) but I had foolishly missed breakfast on the day of the arrest. That, matched with 2 days of these prison meals, had me feeling thin and weak. Suddenly there was a clamoring in the cells and my roomy and I flew to the door quickly pressing our noses against the small window. There were now guards walking in with paper work and voices coming from arrestees out of door slots. They seemed to be taking us out one cell at a time. Finally, almost exactly 48 hours after we’d been taken from the park, we would be brought before an actual judge.

We all cheered and the guards bellowed for us to shut up. But after 2 days on 23 hour-a-day cell lockdown the excitement was not containable. Visions of stretching my legs, breathing fresh air, getting a real meal, and holding Rheanna’s hand were all I could think of. Rheanna is one of the friends I was watching the concert with when we all got arrested and thought of her made me shudder. Since that point it had been 48 hours surrounded by men, being cramped in room after room overcrowded with men, being led down hallways in long lines of men, all guarded by men, and supervised by men. We were held in a cell the size of a walk in closet for 23 hours a day with a man and then, for 30-40 minutes a day, let out into a small rec room full of more men. Men brought us our food and men spoke to us through the intercom, and nobody had known when we were getting out at all! Our worst fears had me wondering if these conditions wouldn’t remain constant for a week or longer, and at the moment I felt as though I would’ve agreed to almost anything to feel a woman’s arms around me, to smell the skin on her neck, or even to just to hear a female voice.

Excitement was high at first, but it eventually leveled and crashed. We realized getting off the pod didn’t really mean much for the immediate present and that this process, too, would also take a long slow time to unfold. We were moved from room to room, again, and then finally wound up in a big holding cell next to meeting rooms where a bunch of ACLU affiliated attorneys and Public Defenders were waiting.

Slowly but surely they packed the holding cell with nearly 50 people and one by one we were allowed to speak with a lawyer. The attorney I’d been working with called me out and explained that this was basically just a bail hearing and it would be very fast. He said that my friends were waiting to bond me out but that I might not actually be released till later on that night. It all depended on how quickly they processed me and whether or not the cops had specific plans to stall our release. I was so ready to go home I could almost taste it. Three days of eating peanut butter and jelly on the lowest quality white bread known to man, suspect looking fruit, and that thick, dry rice… my mind went wild thinking of all the things I’d eat when I got out.

After I was done speaking with him they brought me back to the holding cell to wait again. Shortly after a guard led me toward the courtroom. He opened a door, push-steered me through it, and then very quickly closed it behind me. I soon realized that I was in a small prisoner’s alcove sectioned off by a high wooden wall and thick clear plastic above. The whole courtroom turned and stared at me in my orange Ramsey County prisoner’s jumpsuit. The prosecutor wanted bail set at $4,000. My lawyer got it down to $2,000, and the judge ordered me back to court on September 30th. The whole thing might’ve taken 90 seconds and I didn’t even get to speak. After all that time in the cell and all that emotion, I felt like I was owed some sort of expression, but it was just a bail hearing and they weren’t even accepting pleas. I felt disenfranchised, humiliated, and enraged all at the same time.

Back in the holding cell everyone was talking and sharing details, trying to figure out what was going on. A few local people had gotten really low bail, but most of ours had been set up around $2,000. There were a bunch of younger guys in there with us. One of them was really scared and on the verge of tears. He was white trashy like me, reminded me a lot of my neighborhood growing up, and it seemed he had misunderstood what the public defender had said to him. He was anxious and shivering, thinking that he wouldn’t make the money for bail and would have to stay in County Jail after all of us had already gotten out. Said that his parents didn’t have the money and none of his friends did either. He swore he hadn’t done anything illegal but started talking crazy about taking a guilty plea to anything they offered. My roomy and I sat him down and explained how the bonding process worked, and that it wouldn’t be hard for him to get someone to throw down 10% of the bail. He just had to keep his head and hold on for a little longer. We borrowed a pencil from a guard and wrote down the number for the bondsperson my lawyer had given me. The boy squared his shoulders and shook my hand. Much of the frantic look had left his face, but he still seemed so small. So crushable. I continued to worry and kept an eye on him for the rest of the time we were in the same cell.

Shortly after, they began moving us from room to room again. It was irritating but the idea that we were actually being processed out began to set in and my spirits rose. Also, for a short while, we were placed in a room across the hall from a bunch of the girls also taken at the park, and others from “the parking lot” (which we had found out was the location of another mass arbitrary RNC arrest site.) We could hear them singing and it felt good; good to know they were safe, good to know they were weathering this whole mess seemingly much better than we were, and good just to hear the sound of their voices. They peeked in the door windows and smiled at us. It was unquestionably the high point of the preceding 40 or 50 hours.

However, much to my shock and dismay, when I was finally called out of the cell I discovered that I wasn’t being released. Rather, I was brought back down the same dark hallway full of shower stalls without faucets from 2 nights before. Instead of giving me my clothes back, I was actually subjected to a second strip search only to then be brought back out to a different pod and placed in general population.

I could feel the heat rise into face. Standing completely naked, once again surrounded by that dirty meat smell, with my hands on the wall. Déjà vu. The internal struggle to rebel all over again. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was made to turn around, bend over, and display my genitals from all angles before another huge guard and his gun… all over again.

Part 4 coming soon…