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1/16/2004 An Ollie North Experiential Omnibus Amid the shouts of 'Ollie North, Shame On You...' all I kept thinking was, 'Ollie North, Where Are You?' As the van pulled out of Madison on Wednesday at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon the waves of anxiety and frustration slowly ebbed. I was going back to my own community and as infuriating as it can be it is my own community. One of my friends was sleeping with his head resting against the head rest in the front seat, the other was reading a book. I rested my face against the spare tire sitting next to the back seat which had been bungey strapped down and napped intermittently. I had brief dreams about what had occurred in the previous 24-hour period. Vivid dreams that were a simple reliving of the situation. As I slept... we got into Madison around 5:30 on Tuesday night, we were all a little excited, if for nothing else than to be escaping the dolldrums of our regular lives in our hometown. We had some coffee and then went to the area of the protest, around the Hilton right by the Monona Terrace. There were already about 75 people there marching around and around in front of the building, chanting. This quickly became monotonous so I stepped aside and talked with a few of the friendlies I know from Madison that were standing around an inflatable 'the scream' doll covered in phony money. I snapped some pics in the hopes of including them for a story on Indy. I got a sense fairly quickly that perhaps things were a bit askew in the conveniently nicknamed Madtown when I was taking some pics of counter-demonstrators from the campus conservatives at UW Madison. An older man covered in buttons who was protesting North came up to me and started questioning: him: Where are you people from? me: (looking around) People? him: Where are you from? me: Why? him: I want to know where you pro-Olly North people are from. me: I'm not for that son-of-a-bitch. I'm taking pictures of them for indymedia. Why the interrogation? him: (walks away) I was a little perturbed by that interaction. Granted, I didn't look like the typical person that was at this protest, wasn't covered in buttons or carrying a sign and have long since grown weary of shouting at buildings, so nope, no chanting either. On the other hand I didn't look like one of those pro-Olly North people either. Their clothing was much nicer than my dirty, ripped up jacket and hand-knit hat. The tremors of something a little amiss in the 'scene' were making themselves noticeable. After getting frustrated that the flash on my camera was not adequate enough to take decent pictures at night, I regrouped with my friends and we decided to take the sky walk into the hotel and see how far we could get. We encountered no resistance. There were no police, no security and no hotel staff to greet us with that fake ass, "i'm sorry sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave." There were just two security cameras. We used the bathroom. We walked through the bar. It was a little suspect. Why was the hotel not offering any security for an 'honored guest'? What the hell was going on? We chatted about it a little bit and then got creeped out by all the suits and left. The only thing we could think was that perhaps the event had been moved. Surely security was watching us cross the sky walk. Also they probably had us on camera the whole time we were in the hotel. (Ollie North, Where Are You) After this we went to Nick's cafe on State and had some drinks and chilled out. We were still positive about the possibilities for the next day. Later we met up with some great people that put us up in their house and went out for drinks with them at some bar where you can throw your peanut shells on the floor. We had a nice time and were treated as if we were honored guests by these people. We woke up in various states of grogginess but Big Mac and I were feeling just fine. We went to some blinding white hell hole for bagels and coffee and Mac and I chatted while the other two stared at the walls. We teased them. The bigger wall-gazer of the two wanted to go to the protest right away. I tried to shed light on the fact that it was still 2 hours away but he was unstoppable. A man craven and demented as he is you just don't get in the way of. We went to the terrace and saw a small crowd beginning to mill about and walked right by them and went into the terrace. We walked up stairs, down stairs, through parking garages, out the back, waved at a woman who was ice skating with a protest sign on the lake, reflected back on the occupation of John Nolen Drive during the mayor's conference some two years prior and then went back into the building. We eventually found our way back out to the area near where the protest had been occurring and saw the people had moved right up to the doors but failed to come in. Big Mac looked at me with his patent anger-confusion mix and opened the door and began inviting our fellow protesters in. They were timid as rabbits, jumping in and out, finally enough came in and we walked through the fourier into the main reception area. It was ridiculous, the security there made a half-assed attempt to stop us, but quickly gave up. So there we were with about 75 people and they were doing the whole chanting, sign waving thing. Big Mac and I were a little bored by all the noise and we started cracking jokes. Madison police filed through and stood behind the security. We cracked more jokes. Some sad-eyed woman kept giving me weird looks but I didn't think much of it, some people just aren't keen on the biting cynicism and sarcasm that peppers our conversations. Our wall-gazing friend leaned against the wall, doing more wall gazing. I took some pictures of the cops, security, and some guy named Chuck who was part of the conference who kept taking pictures of us. Then I see the sad-eyed woman come back and she's got that guy Al or Allen or whatever with her. We had taken to calling him Papa Allen the night before because he seemed to try to lead the whole protest scene in Madison in a staunchly patriarchal sort of way. So Papa Allen comes up, and starts asking people around us if anyone has a camera. I hide mine because I figure he wants some assinine picture that I just don't feel like taking. Then sad-eyed woman points at us, and I he pronounces with much vigor: Get pictures of THOSE guys!!! What? Let's stop a minute here. Did he just point at us? In seconds, toadies lusty to follow orders begin sticking their cameras in OUR faces and snap tons of pics, who knows how many. Suddenly I understand why celebrities punch members of the paparazzi. I want to punch members of the protest paparazzi. Big Mac is dumb-struck, his only defense is to give an exasperated thumbs up to the cameras. I wake up and we're 28 miles away from home. I am angry all over again because I had to relive that ridiculous experience. Later I found out that Papa Allen suspected us of being, "pigs." He said, "I must have got a bad read on one of your people, he looked like a pig." Police do not wear old, tattered clothing, even when they are undercover. Police have never in my experience looked as shabby and disheveled as we did on that day. This mentality is evidence of extreme paranoia and xenophobia. Were we not people who had been activists for years prior, say we were new to the 'movement', this might have chased us away for good. This was however the first time any of us had been singled out as 'pigs' and it sucked. The potential repercussions of this are huge. People who don't know us but recognize us from this event will forever feel uneasy around us at future actions because of one frantic man. Coming from a different community to add support to this protest, I can't help feeling like outsiders are not welcome. We were not involved in a direct action where elements of security culture are indeed necessary. We were in a protest and a boring one at that. As we were coming into the city one of my friends pointed out something I hadn't considered. Something that made the whole van explode with laughter. He said that this was probably the first time that four Wobs were accused of being cops.
posted by Nathan Hall at 1/16/2004 02:53:00 PM link |
