The Lone Protester

A powerful statement can be made by one lone protester. People often think they have to wait to *follow* someone else leading a protest, or they need to wait for someone else to *join* them, before they can protest properly. But my street performer mentality says there is no time like now to launch a protest, anywhere. Street performers do not like to *wait* for someone to tell them where they can perform. There are hordes of “musicians” holed up in basements claiming the reason they are not performing in public daily is they don’t have gigs. Buskers don’t play that. We *make our own gigs* wherever we are. And it would behoove the honest dissidenter to embrace similar sentiments.

Long ago, I wanted to protest a local Seattle beauty pageant. It had been going on for 42 without one protest and now it was having the crowning ceremony on the campus of the University of Washington, where I was a Women’s Studies and Political Science major. It seemed *wrong* to let that opportunity on my doorstep pass by unfettered. But I wondered, what would it look like to have one lone fat chick protesting a beauty pageant?! That looked kinda scary from several angles. I called Ann Simonton, Queen of Beauty Pageant Protests, and asked her advice. She told me to go out there and protest the hell out of that thing, by myself, if I had to. She said the media would just as likely cover one woman protesting it as they would a crowd.

So I prepared to launch my one woman attack on the Miss Seafair “beauty” pageant. I brought props, I was ready to sledgehammer bathroom scales out front while singing flagrantly anti-consumer messages aimed at the “beauty industry.” But to my surprise, many others joined me! Instead of me being alone out there, the announcements I had sent out to the Women’s Studies classes paid off! And I also grabbed some wildcats I knew from an old anarchist pizza joint I used to work at, and we had ourselves a circus in no time. We all wore little New Year’s Eve crowns and banners with things like Miss Ogyny and Miss Behavin’ on them, and began handing out baloney on a platter, announcing “free baloney” out front...but the point is, I was *willing* to do it alone, and proceeded in that manner from the beginning. If everyone thinks they are going through with a protest, whether anyone else shows or not, that ends up a pretty damned determined protest crowd.

In Crimethinc’s (http://www.crimethinc.com) guerilla film series’, “The Miami Model,” a very brave attorney stands between lines of riot police and protesters during the 2003 FTAA protests. She is dressed in business attire, with nylon stockings and heels. She is holding a handmade sign and as the riot police announce with a bullhorn that no violence will be tolerated, she begins to yell back at them, “What about police violence?” She is relentless, yelling this over and over at them. The riot police move forward and she stays on them, alone in the street, her and her sign against a sea of approaching pigs. The image is very striking and it stays with you. The police brutalize her in front of the cameras. The police shoot her after about a half hour with a rubber bullet in her leg. Then another time she is crouching, alone in the middle of the street, in front of all these heavily armed Robocops, and they shoot at her head with rubber bullets, it seems. They destroy parts of her sign with their shots too. It is really a weird sight, and her aloneness out there really shows how exaggerated this police response is. Here is a nicely dressed attorney woman, alone, unarmed in the street, holding only a sign. She is an example of free speech if I ever saw one. And she is attacked by police. There is no question what happened on the street that day when you watch this Crimethinc video. Indy media photographers such as those that caught this interaction with her alone and those riot cops in Miami are to be honored and thanked. Bringing our own cameras and reporters to events has definitely changed the face of “the news” forever, as we can now bring home scenes such as these.

The Katrina disaster was too much for me. I was unable to *wait* any longer for some type of protest to be planned or permitted in Seattle. After a while, I *had* to go protest, on public streets, even if I was alone. I wrote an article about my lone protest of the Katrina crisis (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagekatrinabringsoutwhitepride.html) in Seattle on Sept. 2, 2005. I detail white male after white male threatening me with physical violence and spewing hatred at me. Yet that told me I was doing the right thing, honestly. I got positive affirmation from people of color I encountered, and got seething hatred from cowboys and white middle class men. Okay, that sounds about right.

When George Bush, Sr. was inaugurated, I also had that feeling that I could not just *sit* and let that go on without public protest. I lived in Santa Cruz, Ca. at the time and asked people I knew to do a GBush anti-inauguration protest with me and everyone said I was nuts. So, alone, once again, I made up this large sign with newspaper clippings of all the scary and weird shit GBush did as CIA Director, and detailed his past in Skull and Bones and other affiliations of note, and I walked up and down the Pacific Garden Mall with my sign. My friends saw me and called me crazy. People laughed, some read my sign...but you know what? The *real* thing that I, myself, got out of that was, I can look back and say, on GBush, Sr.’s inauguration day, I publicly protested it, myself. And I can live with that.

The day after 9/11/2001, I felt very personally compelled to protest the rampant racism that unleashed. I made a huge sign that said “Racism Is Not Patriotic” and stood on a busy street in Seattle, in a nun’s costume, holding the sign for cars to see. I was nearly killed. People were screaming obscenities at me. Cars were swerving with people hanging out the windows flipping me off. And remember, I was wearing a nun’s habit, so they thought they were doing all this to a *nun*, no less! I can only imagine the danger I would have been in without the assumed protection of the cloth, so to speak. Finally a cop made me leave saying I was causing traffic jams and would be ticketed if I did not leave! But I can live with that. I learned a lot from that little protest.

What has made me want to do weird and/or courageous things like lone protests? Why don’t I seem to care *what* people think of me, in deference to my own conscience? I think this must have come from watching my mom function within the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Even though we lived in a lower middle class white suburb, and my mom was white, she was also a well-traveled stewardess and somehow she was very adamant in her anti-racist stance. I remember her anti-racism disgusted both her own family and my dad as well. She was outspoken and would not back down over racism issues. She put her own physical safety in danger repeatedly over this issue, amidst angry whites, and I guess I came to see that as pretty righteous behavior on her part. She taught me to stand up for what you believe in, even if no one else around you validates your beliefs. I will never forget when we were evicted from our apt. for hosting a Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) meeting and for having everyone go swimming at the apt. pool afterwards. Here we were in this white suburb, and my mom invites pretty much all black folks over, *militant* black folks even, and we all went into the pool area and it was like white people ran in terror with their kids! It taught me so much watching this as a white child at age 5. This was 1965 in Los Angeles, Ca. The following day, they drained the pool and refilled it and we were evicted. And my mom made no apologies and called them all racist pigs to their faces.

I also remember once in about 1964 when a babysitter acted in a racist manner and my mom was visibly disgusted. Mrs. Dillon was her name. She was about 70 years old and watched the neighborhood kids. We were all playing in her backyard at dusk one night when she freaked out, came running into the yard and made all the kids come inside and hide! We had no idea *what* was going on but it was scary. There was a black man knocking at her door, that is all I remember. About 5 minutes later, with kids still huddling in terror inside with Mrs. Dillon, my mom showed up. Mrs. Dillon let her in and my mom asked her what was going on. Mrs. Dillon could barely speak and was still shaken and my mom got ANGRY when she heard that all this was merely about a black man knocking on her door. I remember her scolding Mrs. Dillon and my mom actually gave the kids there a lecture on how stupid and racist Mrs. Dillon had behaved! It was a really bizarre moment as a 4 year old. My mom bitched about racism and Mrs. Dillon the whole way home and I never returned to her.

But I guess I learned from my own mom, to say what I think needs to be said, politically, no matter what the circumstances, on the whole. Because I learned that the convictions of the heart matter more, and are a stronger foundation, than mere status quo thinking That is a mighty solid foundation, indeed, to be able to trust your own heart and to not have to wait for others’ approval to begin your public dissent. And let me tell you, it is a powerful thing for others to watch and see, as well. One person, standing alone on his own conviction, is a moving piece of art. It is a public service to be brave and lone protesters are brave, and they are also doing a public service. Is there something bothering you, that you have been *waiting* for someone else to do something about? Don’t wait to follow, be a leader; you can start your lone protest today!