Oakland, CA. Piedmont Ave, Eric Garner Protests

The internet tells me that the protesters in Oakland have split up a bit, and some of them are heading for Piedmont Ave. That's my neighborhood. I put on my coat and hat, grab my umbrella, and head out.

The Piedmont strip is still doing business, wet with rain and no sign of protesters. Except, across the street, the police have left one of those customizable street signs that now reads "LOCK VALUABLES IN TRUNK." I have literally never seen that here before.

The street itself is on a long, slow incline, the bottom facing toward downtown Oakland and the top up by the cemetery. The protesters could start downtown and come straight up, or they could loop around to the top of the hill and then come down, or both. But I can't track both, so I decide to head straight downtown, as the most likely approach.

Lots of these stores are still open as I walk past. The reused baby clothes and toy shop has a couple inside looking around, and further down a guy is getting his after-work haircut in a barber window. The boutique shop with special sizes of bra is not only open, but the door is literally propped open in welcome as I go by.

I make brief eye contact with everybody, still a habit. Pretty much everybody looks briefly and then away, basically the same thing I'm doing. Except, as I come up to an intersection, a woman makes eye contact with me and holds it. She appears to be mixed race, black and white, with a freckle on the cheek beneath her right eye, and she is quite beautiful. I nod a little as I walk toward her, still heading downtown, and she smiles and nods back. Eye contact does not bother her, and maybe she knows where I'm going.

Still further down, waiting at a light, I am beside and just slightly behind another woman. She is white and in sweats, with a little pack strung across her back, and she looks nervous. She keeps glancing obliquely at me. I have no interest in making anyone scared or unhappy, so I step to be slightly ahead of her, so that I cannot see her, and she can keep an eye on me easily.

Onward, faster, and the rain picks up again as I get closer to downtown. I have no idea where any protesters are. In the distance, I hear what maybe sounds faintly like a group of people chanting through the falling rain and the now familiar helicopter sound overhead. There is the sound of water rushing into a drain, and just past that a car is playing something very loudly with the windows down in spite of the rain. And then I am past the drain and the car, and there are people. A hundred of them maybe, coming up the street, chanting.

I do the quick count where you space five and then replicate that space over the crowd. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, and get up to about eighty five at the back of the crowd as I fall in, marching up the street with them.

This next part is hard to describe. I do not feel like a protester. I do not feel like a part of this group even though I am now walking side by side up the street with them. I feel like an observer, and I feel like weeping. I just have to be in this street right now.

My foot hits a puddle. I am not weeping, and I am not fainting. There are brake lights ahead of me. A man takes cell phone pictures. It sounds like the audio of the world has been turned way down. I am furious, and incredibly sad. I have decided not to cry here, but I want to so much. There is a helicopter overhead. We have walked one block. My foot hits a puddle that looks to me exactly like the other one did. I know that can't be right.

I am broken out of my reverie by a change in the chanting which, until this moment, has mostly been "The people united can never be defeated."

Now, from behind me, a woman is loudly shouting "The people united can never be DIVIDED." She is trying to correct the chant so that it rhymes, roughly. My senses rush back to me. Her chant is also kind of a tautology. As long as you're united you can't not be united, that's true. My brain is doing this thing now. The irony of disagreement over a chant about being united also percolates.

Almost everybody is ignoring her and still chanting "The people united can never be defeated." She gets louder, and sounds increasingly annoyed.

There is a guy to my left. He is Latino, wearing a hoodie, and is boyishly good looking. He could model, and will probably get carded late into his 30's. He also looks amused, with this big grin on his face, and in a lull between chants he breaks loudly into the same chant, but in Spanish. In Spanish, see, it not only makes sense, but it rhymes too. "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido." Nobody else says anything.

He says it again, louder. A street full of people listen to him yell in Spanish, with a kind of joy in his voice "El pueblo! Unido! Jamás será vencido!" It is so much more beautiful in Spanish than in English. Someone hugs him. The crowd finds a new chant, and walks on. We are getting closer to my neighborhood.

There is brief siren burst from behind us. We are very close to a hospital, and an ambulance is trying to get through the crowd. The protesters move out of the way, quickly, and at the same time there is some sort of discussion. I cannot hear exactly, but it sounds like there are two groups and this one is now trying to rejoin the other group. It occurs to me that the second group must have gone up to the top of Piedmont, to come down it. I wonder if that's what happened.

I also really take notice of the police for the first time. I moved to the sidewalk to get out of the way of the ambulance, but on the side of the street away from where the others are standing. I am the only one over here. No, wait. Not the only one. Looking up at me from his squad car is now a police officer. I make eye contact and he makes it right back.

I find I am not worried. If the police wanted to take action against the protesters, probably that would have happened already. I nod at him and he nods back. Also I have something special memorized. I look around, and see that no, the police are actually clearing a path way out in front, while simultaneously trailing in a line behind. I stop and look at everything except the protesters. The police are forming a moving safety ring that keeps traffic out, and is close at hand if things turn ugly. Cars, motorcycles, foot police, and the helicopter are all more or less chaperoning the protesters up and down Oakland.

As we go on, there is a Y-intersection, with the right fork leading to Piedmont and the left fork leading away. We take the left fork, away from Piedmont. I notice this and say out loud, to nobody in particular "Piedmont is that way."

"Oh THIS group could NEVER make it to Piedmont," comes a voice to my left. I look, and here comes a kid with blond feathered hair, a thin nose, and a high nasal voice. He points to his sweatshirt. It says "Stanford" on it. He says "I'm from Palo Alto." He points again. "So I know about suburban cops." It occurs to me that he doesn't know shit about shit. I do not say this, but just shrug and walk on.

We do not get terribly far, though, before we spot the other group, coming down toward us. There are cheers on both sides, and the chant goes straight to "The people united can never be defeated," again. Friends hug one another in the street. The few officers who were out in front of our group, and the officers who were out in front of the other group, have hastily gotten out of the way. There is a kind of little reuniting celebration.

The groups merge and shift a little and mingle, then kind of collectively make up their minds, turning and meandering back toward downtown, back the way we came. I wait a moment, not going with them. The kid from Stanford notwithstanding, it is totally possible that the other group came down Piedmont, then shifted to this other street to meet us. I have to know, which means that I have to find someone to ask. Also, I want to see the police line, as the cops shift ranks to match the shift in the protesters. I want to scrutinize our chaperones. I follow along, but slowly.

The reunion of the two groups took place in front of a parking garage used mostly by the hospital staff. Now that people have started to clear out of the street, the garage attendant is giving the ok for cars to start exiting the building, but there is also pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. I'm still thinking, so I stand aside and gesture all clear to the car that's trying to get out.

"Thank you," says a bitter, hateful sounding voice. My attention zooms. It is an Audi, the seats are leather, she is blond with an expensive stylist and her skin is tan in spite of a week of overcast weather. On her right wrist is what actually looks like a diamond tennis bracelet. I am sure without seeing it that there is a large diamond on a ring on her left ring finger. Her teeth are nearly perfect and they are clenched. "I. Have been waiting. Long. Enough."

I remain out of the way, and gesture again toward the now clear and open street. She drives off, and while I do not wish her ill, exactly, I do not quite wish her well either. I let a few more cars go, then hustle after the police line, now half a block away already. As I get closer, I see an officer on a motorcycle, parked on a side corner, just waiting there until someone tells him to move again.

I go over and say "Excuse me, but do you know if the one group made it to the Piedmont strip? I live up there."

He says "Yeah. They went up Grand and Pleasant Valley to the top and came right down through Piedmont, then over to meet those other guys." He gestures at the spot where the meeting happened. I mull it over.

"That's a nice hat," he says. "Looks sharp." He gives me a genuinely friendly nod and a smile.

"Thanks," I say back, but I am already making decisions. I'm pretty sure I know how this one goes with the protesters. The rain kept away the people who are just out for kicks, who think that smashing stuff is a good time. The people who are here tonight are, for the most part, the ones who really care enough to march in spite of the rain. They are the ones who care. Probably they'll go downtown, keep at it peacefully for a while in the rain, and then go home.

Also probably nobody did anything on Piedmont, but I have to know. It's my home. I thank the officer again and head up that way.

Things are ok. No broken windows, no looted cars. There's still some people jogging on treadmills in the exercise place, and a couple of the people I saw in the coffee shop earlier are still in there. The boutique bra shop is closed, but the owner is still inside, apparently doing paperwork.

I do not know for sure why I am so fond of the shop that sells unusual sizes of bra. I have literally never been inside there. It is true that I have a pretty standard hetero-male fondness for boobs. It is also true that the shop had a kickstarter that was supported and cheered on by many of my friends here, some of whom apparently know the owner at least by reputation.

But, and this may sound corny, but I have also been an uncomfortable and odd fit, in a way, many times. Often. All my life, almost. And as the protesters make their way back downtown, where they will go on to stage an apparently loud but basically up-beat protest in front of city hall, I consider how I have nestled into this pocket by the bay, and seem, almost, to fit.