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"Our aim is to make visisble the violence of the status quo..." -- Marv Davidov |
"If you bring forth what is inside of you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't forth what is insde you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you." -- Gospel of St.Thomas
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As I biked up to their offices, a crowd of about 300 people were gathered in a parking lot, listening to Robert Bly speak. As I got close enough to hear what was going on, Robert passed the bull-horn to Marv Davidov, the main organizer of this demonstration. Marv ranted for about 15 minutes about the evils of landmines and about how, "if one is to be morally and spiritually alive in this time, one must be subversive."
After standing still for a few minutes, the 35 degree temperatures started to let me know that I should've worn more than just a thin windbreaker. The cold combined effectively with my nervousness to give me a slight, constant shiver. I was considering risking arrest for the first time in my life and I was uncertain if I would go through with it. I was also uncertain what the consequences of this potential arrest would be.
A friend of mine had told me a few days before that there was a point where external laws stopped guiding him and his conscience began. He thought that it was healthy to express that distinction sometimes, to keep your conscience alive. He was planning on attending the demonstration and getting arrested. When I arrived, I eagerly searched him out in the growing crowd, knowing that his company would probably calm my nerves and re-focus me on why I woke up way too early that day.
But I couldn't find him, so I kept meandering through the crowd and shivering. As Marv finished speaking, he asked us to form a single-file line and get with our "affinity group", people we knew well who would stay together and support each other as we approached the building. The plan was to block all of the doors (there were about 15 of them) to the offices. The employees normally came into work at 7:00, and we wanted to be present to, at least symbolically, let them know we conscientiously stood in the way of any production of landmines. It turns out that the company had asked most of their employees to come in 2 hours earlier that day to avoid any difficulty with the demonstrators. But the blocking of the doors was to be done as much for our sake (to express what we needed to say) and for the media's sake (to let other people know what was going on), so we marched, single-file, towards the front doors.
Since I didn't know anyone present that well, I kept wandering up and down the line, looking for my friend or at least a place that felt right to join the line at. Before I found this place, the front of the line (Robert & Marv) reached the front door. Based on what I know about the planning, we had expected the company representatives, private security guards (there were probably 50 of them around), and the police (I just saw 4 or 5 cars at this time), to let people sit in front of the doors for a few hours -- giving people plenty of warning before anyone was arrested.
But as soon as people began sitting down in front of the door, they were arrested and taken into a bus that was waiting a few feet away. As the key organizers were arrested, the crowd lost some of its focus and momentum. Many people, including me, stood a little way back from the front door to see what was happening. Others proceeded around the building, dropping off some people at each door. It was rather anti-climactic. In a few minutes there was a fellow demonstrator going around asking if anyone else wanted to be arrested. She thought that the opportunity might be passing, since the bus carrying the arrested people was getting full and the Police seemed almost ready to leave. Those wishing to get arrested would, essentially, wait in line next to the office door, waiting for the police to take the previous people to the bus. As the police took each person away, the crowd would cheer for them.
The applause turned me off. My choice of whether or not to get arrested felt, at the time, like a private and sobering one. The crowd's encouragement reminded me of a high school pep assembly sending the football team off, and that didn't fit with my motivations.
So I shied away from that door and walked around the building, surveying what other's were doing. In front of some doors, there were small groups of friends, holding hands, singing, or reading to each other. Another small group were wearing puppet costumes and enacting some ritual with a hoe that I didn't fully understand. At the opposite end of the building, a group of about 100 people were surrounding another main entrance. People chose to get arrested occasionally, somewhat more conspicuously than at the other door.
Two buses (of about 40 people each) had been filled with arrested demonstrators, and about an hour had passed. I hadn't seen my friend, but I had found a few people I knew vaguely, all of whom had previous experiences being arrested and were somewhat involved in planning the day's action. None of them seemed to share my sense of nervousness or unease. Talking with them and hearing their clear focus on voicing challenge to landmines, I was reminded that this morning was about more than the way I felt and more than an interesting dance between some polite protesters and some friendly police.
Other people in the Twin Cities are going to work everyday and making landmines. These mines will probably end up scattered throughout fields in third world countries, easily triggered by kids running by for years to come. The work people here do to just get by can have a profound effect on that kid who'll lose his leg. But the person in Minneapolis who put together that landmine didn't chose to hurt that child.
As I've been looking for a job in the past couple months, my motivations for the kind of work I want to do has been unclear at times. But as I look at different work options, I am repeatedly reminded that the work everyone does has a concrete effect on the rest of the world, even though we can't see many of those consequences. I need to claim the power that comes with looking for the consequences of the work we do.
This is a pretty clear cut issue to me. I don't believe that the U.S. government should be producing and selling millions of landmines, which will be killing civilians for years to come. Obviously, one demonstration at this company's headquarters is not going to stop the U.S. from continuing to make landmines. But it will bring some attention to landmines and make some people think about the consequences of work quietly done here in the Twin Cities. And I choose to act on the belief that our work does have consequences. And the work I am most compelled to do is give voice to non-violence.
So as the crowd was starting to dwindle, I stepped in front of the employee's entrance at Alliant. As I moved in front of the door, the shiver I had had for the past hour subsided. I knew I was in the right place. Several hours after getting out of bed, I finally felt awake, and I noticed that it had became a pretty warm day.
About 30 seconds after I blocked the door, an Alliant employee came up to me. Someone from Alliant needed to warn me I was trespassing before I could be arrested. But he didn't. He said "Sorry, but I think you'll have to wait awhile." Apparently, the police were waiting for another bus to come before they arrested anyone else.
So I waited. As I stood in front of the door by myself, demonstrators standing around me clapped sporadically. I began to shiver a bit again. Some Alliant employees came up to the door. I smiled and gently stepped out of their way so they could enter the building. None of them looked directly in my eyes. Since it was national "Bring your Daughter to Work" day, some of the employees had children with them. What did they tell their daughters about what we were doing outside of their office? What would I tell their daughters if they asked me why I was standing in the way of their parents?
After about five minutes, I stepped away from the door to see what was happening elsewhere. As I eased back into the crowd, I bumped into someone else I knew. I wasn't sure what to say when she asked if I was planning on getting arrested. I didn't imagine that I would have to _try_ this hard to get arrested. I wasn't even sure if I could anymore.
As we were talking, I saw the police approach three older women who were sitting at another door. As the police began to pick them up, one of the women asked if they could first finish the song they were singing before being arrested. The policeman agreed and kindly stepped back to listen. They sang pretty quietly, but I kept hearing the refrain, "... and like a mountain, we shall not be moved".
After they finished their song and were escorted to the bus, I stepped up to the door again. This time the company representative immediately told me I was trespassing and asked if I was going to leave. I said "no", and the police officer standing next to me put some plastic handcuffs over my hands and wrote his badge number on my hand with a marker. He walked me to the bus, and I stepped into the nicely heated bus and was warmly welcomed by the dozen or so other people who were already there.
As the bus drove away, the two police officers who were with us seemed jovial. They were joking with some of the people who were arrested and commenting about how the last bus of people had sang songs. The police asked if we would sing for them also. We obliged with a modified version of "Old McDonald's Farm", with the words changed to include landmines and other munitions on the farm.
The bus drove about a mile and pulled into the parking lot of the Hopkins Community Center. We walked inside and sat on some bleachers above a hockey rink. The bleachers were about half full -- 85 of us all together. We went down in groups of 5 or 6 to the tables set up next to the middle of the hockey rink (the ice was covered), showed a police officer our driver's license. We each received a simple citation, with instructions to call within two weeks to set up a court date. After that, we were free to go. Most of the other people who'd been arrested gathered for breakfast at Baker's Square, but I was looking forward to the solitude of my hour bike ride home, so I headed home.
I'll have a court date in a few weeks with the other 84 people that were arrested, and our "sentence" will be determined then. The maximum penalty for trespassing is a $700 fine and/or 3 months in jail. But in the history of civil disobedience in Minnesota, no one has spent more than a week in jail. Six months ago, people were arrested at a similar demonstration at Alliant. They each got a $50 fine and the fine was "stayed" (meaning they didn't have to pay it unless they got arrested again).
At the trial, I will have a time when I will be asked to explain what I did and why I did it. That is one of the reasons I wrote out this description of what happened. Although my feet and voice might be shaky in the way I said it and will say it, I'm very grateful for the chance to put into words and actions my belief that human life is sacred and that we each are responsible for the work we do.
I want to first be able to express this to people I love before I say it to a judge. I'm not looking for uncritical approval of what I've done or believe. I am looking for people who will listen closely to what motivates me, even the part I can't fully and clearly articulate. I thank you for your listening and invite any questions, challenges, or support you would like to offer.
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