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Excerpt - Chapter I - 1982 Livermore BlockadeDirect Action: An Historical Novel, by Luke HauserThis website and all pages and contents ©2003 GroundWork, San FranciscoView photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade!
Monday, June 21, 1982
As we pulled off the freeway and passed through the sleeping town of Livermore, a cloud of foreboding crept over me. Was it a premonition, a warning to stay on the sidelines today? Or a projection of fears that I needed to face? It was still dark as we stopped along a country road outside Livermore. I groped my way out of the car, and could make out a ditch and a field beyond it. "The Lab is down this road," Hank said as he squeezed his big frame out of the car. "It's an easy walk from here." Change of Heart was part of the first wave at the East Gate, and I wanted to get up there and see what the place looked like. The sooner I got to the site, the better picture I'd have of my options. "Don't worry, we're way early," Cindy said. "It's only four a.m. There won't be anyone to blockade yet." Cindy was a special-ed teacher in her mid-thirties, and she herded us together like we were kids on a field trip. She pointed down the road, away from the Lab. "We should go that way and block the road leading in. The police are expecting everybody at the gate. We could blockade a lot longer out here." "But there's media and support people at the gate," someone argued. "The police can't be as rough." I silently nodded. Going off on some unknown adventure made me nervous. Of course, if I weren't getting arrested, it wasn't my decision to make. But I still hadn't quite ruled it out. "We agreed on the gate at our prep," someone else said. "It takes a new consensus to change our plans." "If we're serious about shutting down the Lab, we should go down the road," Cindy persisted. But only Hank backed her, and they gave up. We walked quietly up the road toward the gate. My angst had subsided. For most of us it was our first time at the Lab, a two-square-mile complex of office and research buildings surrounded by an eight-foot barbed wire fence. Even though I knew what went on at the Lab, it was hard not to be awed by this bastion of "scientific research." We arrived at the gate, a simple two-lane asphalt entrance road with a chain-link fence on either side. A couple of hundred protesters were already bunched along the sides of the road. The police had set up barricades inside the gate, and were standing nervously at ease, waiting for the blockade to start. People were hurrying around making final arrangements and saying goodbye to friends. The AGs from our cluster, Change of Heart, congregated in the gravel area to the left side of the Lab entrance. Two other clusters formed the balance of the first wave at the East Gate. Before our AG arrived, there had been a coin toss to see which cluster would go first. Sonomore Atomics, a cluster from Sonoma County, won the toss. Change of Heart came in second, which meant that there were fifty or so blockaders ahead of us. Good, I thought. Gives me time to see how it all works. The affinity groups within our cluster needed to meet to determine the blockade order. Tony, the plumber from our AG, volunteered to be the spoke. The rest of us pressed up to the road. A row of police were stationed right at the gate, and some protesters harangued them about the arms race. Although it was barely dawn, a few cars were arriving, and everyone wanted the action to begin. Chants kept breaking out, then dissolving into shouts and applause. Finally, the first AG from Sonomore Atomics strode into the street. A cheer went up from the crowd. Several dozen California state troopers buckled down riot helmets and pulled on leather gloves. The blockaders situated themselves across the Lab entrance and sat down in the road. The rest of their cluster chanted, "Shut it down! Shut it down!" A couple of cars pulled to a stop. The drivers leaned out of their windows, chagrined. A squad of troopers marched in and surrounded the affinity group. "You are obstructing a public roadway," blared their bullhorn. "If you do not move immediately you will be subject to arrest." "Shut it down! Shut it down!" the crowd yelled back. One by one the protesters were led away to an open area just inside the fence, where they were frisked and handcuffed. The lone non-cooperator was dragged by the arms. As soon as the first AG from the Sonoma cluster was cleared away, a second took its place, followed soon by a third and a fourth. Lines of cars were backing up in both directions. As the drivers stopped their engines and settled in for the wait, protesters handed out leaflets. Some workers accepted them, some angrily threw them away. View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! Hank and Cindy and I stood at the edge of the road taking in the panorama. "We'll be up in no time," Hank said. "Yeah," Cindy answered. "It's going too fast." Too fast. My chest tensed. Should I do it? Why not? Well, for one, I hadn't actually asked for any time off work beyond today. I'd have to cite out after a day or two, and break solidarity. Let it go, I told myself. Don't be impatient. You don't have to get arrested at your first blockade. Use today to watch and learn. I craned my neck for a better view as a man in a wheelchair was hauled away by several police. The arrestees were being handcuffed with flexible plastic strips, disposable cuffs that looped together behind the back. The police must have figured they didn't need to handcuff the guy in the wheelchair. But as soon as they turned away, he steamed back into the intersection to the cheers of the crowd. The second time, the police cuffed his chair to the fence. Fifty or so people were now in custody, and Change of Heart's turn was rapidly approaching. The last affinity group from the Sonoma cluster took to the street: animated high-schoolers with painted faces, balloons, and bright, hand-lettered signs pleading for the future of the planet. The police seemed reluctant to begin the arrests. When they began busting the teens, booing and cries of "Shame!" filled the air. Tony, our spoke to the cluster meeting, rounded us up for the final briefing. "We drew straws, and we're the fifth AG," he said. "We're after Fish Without Bicycles, and before Duck and Cover. Look, there go the first people from our cluster." A dozen people from Short Meetings AG stepped into the road, holding hands. The rest of Change of Heart applauded them, then joined in the old Pete Seeger song, "If I Had a Hammer." We sang through several verses as the police arrested them one by one. I tried to picture myself seated on the concrete. Should I do it? If you're not sure, it's better to wait. Focus on supporting those who are arrested. Next to me, Hank fidgeted and shifted around. "It's only been a half hour, and they've busted eighty people," he said. "It's barely dawn. We're walking right into their arms." "It's kind of late to change our plans now," said someone else from Spectrum. "No, come on," Cindy said. "Let's go back up the road. We could be way more effective if we got away from the cops." As other members of our AG joined the debate, though, it was clear that most preferred to stay at the gate. People talked about their blockade plans. I drifted out of the discussion, having spotted Holly fifty feet away, circled up with Duck and Cover. They had their arms around each other, and looked very close-knit. I felt happy for her, but wished their meeting would break up so I could go talk to her before she got busted. A woman from Fish Without Bicycles came over to us. "We're going now. You're next." A current ran through our group, blockaders and supporters alike. We huddled together. People grabbed drinks of filtered water, took vitamins, and got a final round of hugs. "One of our support people should go tell Duck and Cover that we're going," Cindy said as the moment approached. "I will," I volunteered, seizing the opportunity. I hastened over to Holly's circle. "Spectrum is going next - then it's you," I told them, looking right at her. Holly looked back at me and smiled. "We're still discussing what we're going to do." She pointed past me. "There goes your AG. You better hurry!" Sure enough, Spectrum had just walked out into the road. I looked back at Holly, still smiling at me. I held her gaze, and suddenly it was completely clear. I turned and headed toward the blockade. "Come on," Hank hollered as he saw me hustling after them. I caught up and grabbed his hand as we circled in the intersection. In a glance I took in the faces of the others - excitement, fear, pride, concern. I shared all their feelings, simultaneously. We barely got seated before the troopers surrounded us. Photographers darted in and out. We started singing a song we'd learned at our prep: "Circle round for freedom, Circle round for peace...." My heart pounded, but I brimmed with confidence in what I was doing and in the people I was with. How could I have doubted that I belonged here? We gripped each others' hands, letting go only as the police pulled someone up. The first few stood and were led away, but when they came for Hank, he remained seated. "Come on," came a cop's gruff voice. "You're under arrest!" Hank stared straight ahead. The rest of us kept singing nervously. A helmeted cop bent over and wrenched Hank's arm behind his back. Hank leaned forward to ease the pressure. The cop yanked the twisted arm up and forced Hank to his feet. I sang in a thin voice, embarrassed that I planned to cooperate. Our song faded. Heavy boots scraped the concrete behind me. "You're under arrest." Leather gloves gripped my arm. I staggered to my feet, scared and excited. On either side an officer held my lower arm, ready to twist. I walked with them to the waiting schoolbus, where other Change of Heart people yelled support through the windows. My wrists were pulled back and cuffed. A wave of elation swept over me. I was doing it. View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! The police did a cursory pat down, then pushed me up the stairs into the bus. There was a guard at the front, but otherwise it was all blockaders. I made my way past rows of laughing, shouting people to the back seats where the rest of Spectrum had gathered. A woman from Short Meetings came toward us brandishing a pair of nail clippers. "Who wants out?" Hank stood up. With a few quick snips, the clippers cut through his plastic handcuffs. He yanked free and massaged his shoulder. "Damn, I think they sprained it." I leaned up in my seat, taking in the scene, joining in the songs and chants that kept bursting out. Karina from Noah's Ark was kneeling on the seat in front of me. Her hands were free, and she stuck a piece of granola bar in my mouth. "You want out?" "No," I said, wriggling my bound wrists behind my back. "If I'm going to get busted, I want the total experience." I settled into my seat as best as I could, and a feeling of satisfaction wafted over me. We'd closed the weapons lab. They had to arrest us. It was official now. The bus pulled out and headed across the Lab grounds. "They're taking us out the back way. I'll bet they have roads that aren't on the map." We cruised on for a few minutes, then came to a stop for no apparent reason. We were still yelling and singing, and it took a while to realize we weren't going anywhere. "What's the delay?" griped Karina. "I want to get to jail." "Yeah, come on," called out Hank. "I need to use a toilet!" But we sat. The cop at the front of the schoolbus refused to answer questions. Karina opened a window. She leaned out, then ducked back in and hollered, "It's blockaders! They're blockading our bus at the edge of the Lab!" A cheer went up and we pulled open more windows to shout encouragement. It took ten minutes to clear the road, and we resumed our journey to the county jail. When we got there, we were led off the bus and into a small gymnasium to be booked. "Women this way, men over there!" yelled a guard. People quickly hugged whoever they were standing closest to, and we said goodbye to half of our cluster. The guards clipped the plastic cuffs off the few of us who still had them on, and formed us into a long line facing a row of makeshift booking tables. "Where can we go to the bathroom?" someone asked. "Out there," a guard pointed. "Against that wall?" "Well, there's nowhere else," he shrugged. A few of us started that way, but someone called us back. "Don't! It's a trick, they're gonna bust you!" I hesitated, but Hank waved the guy off. "Come on, we've already been busted." Apparently the guard wasn't tricking us. "There's our first lesson in arbitrary authority and the prison system," someone half-joked. Booking went just like the role-play in our nonviolence prep. We gave our names and addresses, got weighed, measured, and photographed, and then were led to a long table where a row of deputies were waiting with ink pads and fingerprint cards. "Right hand first. Just relax your hand and let me roll the finger over. Now the thumb." This was the creepiest part. I recalled how as a Boy Scout I had started working on the fingerprinting merit badge, but never got around to the final challenge: submitting my prints to the FBI. How lucky, I later thought. If I were ever involved in any illicit radical activity, my prints wouldn't give me away. So now here I was, donating a complete set to the government. "Left hand, all four fingers together. Okay, wash up over there." The deed was done. As I wiped off my hands, I felt an unexpected wave of pride. No more hiding, no more dreaming of some hypothetical act of resistance. I was officially a protester. After booking, the men were led back to the bus and driven across the Santa Rita jail grounds. We peered out the windows at the decrepit facility. To my right, behind a tall barbed wire fence, I saw a row of barracks. Our bus drove past the barracks for a quarter mile or so and stopped in front of a big warehouse. "The inmates are kept in the barracks," someone said. "But they don't have room for us. We're probably being kept in this warehouse, and the women in that gym we saw." The bright morning was rising over the valley as we filed off the bus to a round of applause from the fifty men who preceded us. The guards handed each of us a sheet, a blanket, and a paper bag. I opened the bag in search of breakfast, but instead found a toothbrush, soap, paper, a pencil stub, and a shiny New Testament. "That's going to honk some people off," Hank said, holding his book at arm's length as if avoiding contamination. View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! The warehouse, which had a thirty-foot ceiling, was lined with row after row of olive-green army cots. We made our way down the narrow aisles and staked out a corner for our AG. Other Change of Heart AGs settled nearby, and we did a quick check-in to see if everyone in the cluster was accounted for. "Wait," someone said. "There's only eight AGs here. We started with ten." "Fish Without Bicycles was all women." "But where's Duck and Cover?" I looked around. Sure enough, the men from Holly's AG were missing. "We were supposed to blockade after them, but they were still discussing what to do, so we went ahead," someone from another AG said. "They're probably on the next bus. There it comes now." We yelled and applauded as another thirty men disembarked and checked in. But there was no sign of Duck and Cover. Several more buses arrived, and we hollered ourselves hoarse greeting them. The warehouse was filling up fast, but still no Duck and Cover. We asked the later arrivals if they knew anything. "They were at the East Gate?" someone said. "Isn't that where the Oakland motorcycle cops were?" "Oh, great," Hank said. "They can be real pigs." It was hard to picture someone as tranquil as Holly tangling with motorcycle cops, but I was starting to worry. Once trouble started, everyone in the area would be in danger. Another bus arrived, and I went out to ask if anybody had been at the East Gate and seen what was happening. No one knew specifically about Duck and Cover, but people talked about the cops getting rougher as the blockade went on. The next bus pulled in, and I was hearing the same story, when suddenly the men from Duck and Cover emerged. "Where were you?" I asked a young guy from the AG. "The rest of us got here an hour ago." "We saw how fast the cops were scooping up people at the gate," one guy said. "So we hiked down to an access road and blockaded there. We shut down traffic for a long time before the police got it together to come arrest us." Later in the morning the guards opened the doors of the warehouse and let us out into the yard, an old asphalt parking lot broken apart by sun-bleached weeds. Bales of hay served as the only seats. A token coil of barbed wire demarcated the yard. Obviously no escape attempts were expected. "We're overflowing the warehouse," Hank reported. "There's more of us than they have beds for." "They're putting the rest of the men in holding cells in the main jail," someone told us. "There must be over a thousand arrests." We felt great about the numbers, but it wasn't yet noon. A thousand arrests, and it would be over by lunchtime. I thought about Cindy wanting to go up the road to blockade. "It would have been more powerful if we kept them out for the whole day," I said. "That wasn't the point," said a man from our cluster named Antonio. He was in his forties, with sharp eyes and a precise, impassioned voice. "We reached their hearts. They may get into the Lab, but I don't believe they'll get any work done today. They'll be too busy talking about the blockade." The shriek of a diesel horn almost drowned out his last words. Highway 580 was only twenty feet beyond a double fence at the edge of the yard. One protester was out by the fence pumping his arm at the trucks rolling by, and every few minutes a driver would blast his support. I sat down on a bale of hay. I was finally winding down, and for the first time, the expanse of dead time hit me. An entire day with no guitar, no books, no baseball game on the radio, no beer or candy bars. I thought about what I'd eat when I got out. A burrito. No, a hamburger. And a big bowl of popcorn. Some guys were talking to a guard behind me. "You wouldn't want to be in the general population," the guard was saying. "Those guys would hate you." "Aw," someone argued back, "We passed a truckload of inmates going out on work detail and they were all cheering us. Well, except one guy who flipped us off." "No, you'd see," the guard insisted. "The Blacks and Whites and Latinos, they all hate each other. It's a jungle. You're lucky to be out here." Around eleven a.m., Change of Heart gathered for a cluster meeting. We reviewed the legal situation, which was simple. We were charged with a misdemeanor, obstructing a roadway. People who non-cooperated had an additional charge, but no one seemed to think it would stick. Then we did a go-round to see who from our cluster needed to cite out. "They're expecting me on a job tomorrow," said Tony, the plumber from Spectrum. "But I could call the union hall and get someone to cover it. I'm good for at least one more day." As my turn approached, I wished I'd told my boss that I might get arrested. She was pretty conservative, though. Probably best not to bring it up if I didn't have to. "I could take one more day off my repair job without having to explain where I am," I said. "After that, I might need to cite out." View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! Moonstone, who had been leaning back on a cot, sat up slowly. His tie-dyed shirt stood out against the muted canvas cot. Moonstone looked to be in his early thirties, with a long ponytail and a scraggly beard. "Time-wise, I could stay. But unless they serve vegetarian food, I may need to get out after a couple of days." "Maybe we should make it a demand," someone suggested. "No, we shouldn't ask for special treatment," answered Doc, an intense man with flowing hair and a long, graying beard. He was in Enola Gay, a self-described "faggot" affinity group. "We shouldn't ask for anything different from what the regular inmates are getting," Doc said. "But you could trade meat for bread or cheese." Moonstone's AG, Deadheads for Peace, included a few CD veterans. They suggested that our cluster consense on some basic solidarity points to be considered at the first jail spokescouncil. "At Diablo last Summer," one guy said, "everyone agreed on 'no fines, no probation, and equal treatment.' No fines because it's economic discrimination. No probation because it keeps us from getting busted again. And equal treatment for everyone, including non-cooperators." There was a bit of discussion, but we consensed to the solidarity proposals pretty quickly, and chose a couple of guys to be spokes at the meeting. A little later, lunch was served - balogna and American cheese on white bread, plus an apple and Kool-Aid. I bartered for a triple-balogna sandwich, trading my apple to Moonstone for his cheese and balogna, then swapping both cheeses to another vegetarian for his balogna and Kool-Aid. "Can we have your cup?" someone asked. "We're making a peace sign." A few guys were collecting all the styrofoam cups and wedging them in the chain-link fence to create a giant peace sign facing the highway. "If we get enough we can spell out a message." After lunch, four of us from the cluster sat down together on a couple of cots: me, Hank, Antonio, and a guy named Daniel. Daniel looked and spoke like a college professor. "As impressive as this blockade is, it could be the seed of something greater still," he said. "What if each of us were to bring in five new people next June?" Next June. It was in the air already, almost taken for granted. "Yeah, we should blockade again," said Hank. He was leaning forward, lacing up his hiking boots. "We oughta do it earlier in the Spring, though. Doing it on the Solstice is too new-age for a lot of people." Antonio sat up on his cot. "No, no, we have to stay with the Solstice," he said. "It's a truly global day, beyond any one movement or nationality. It's in tune with the natural rhythms of the planet." Hank started to reply, but Daniel preempted him. "We should call on other people to join us next June - locally and across the country - to band together on the Solstice to protest nuclear weapons. It's an idea whose time has come." "Why focus just on nukes?" I said. "It would reach more people if it covered more issues, like the environment or unemployment." "Nuclear weapons are the fundamental issue of our era," he said. "I absolutely agree," Antonio chimed in. He ran a hand through his silver hair. "Other issues divide us. Nuclear weapons are the one issue that touches everyone. We're all at risk. People who would otherwise never be in the same room can make common cause in opposing nuclear weapons. We have to set aside our differences and join together. If we can't stop the nuclear madness, no other issue will mean anything." Hank tried to say something, but just then a cry went up from the yard. "Out to the fence! The guards are trying to tear down the peace sign!" We jumped up and hurried out into the yard. Several hundred guys were packed against the tall chain-link fence, squared off opposite a dozen guards. Everyone was arguing about what to do, but we finally managed to choose two guys as spokes. They went over and conferred with the guards while the rest of us determined to go limp and non-cooperate if the guards tried to clear us away. The spokes came back. "The guards say they have orders to remove the peace sign. They don't want to force us to move, but they have to obey their orders." I was amazed that the guards would admit their reluctance. It was like confessing they were human. People started arguing again as the guards eyed us nervously. "Let's not polarize the situation," someone said. "It's not their choice. This order came from higher up. There's no point in turning this into a confrontation." "Let's just sit down in front of the sign," another guy suggested. "What can they do?" Hank laughed rudely. "Step on us!" Ideas were flying every which way, and the guards were getting itchy. It looked like we would never reach consensus, but Doc raised his voice to get people's attention. "Maybe we should take the sign down. That way we defuse the conflict, but keep the power of action ourselves. We don't turn it over to them." Not everyone agreed, but no one had a better idea. The guards seemed mollified, and backed off. Slowly, one cup at a time, the peace sign was removed. As the last cups were taken down and turned over to the guards for proper disposal, someone started an "om," and it caught on. Several hundred men linked arms and formed concentric circles. The "ommmmm" filled the air, swelling and fading, swelling and fading. Here and there men let their arms float upward, reaching for the sky. As the tones finally faded, some people knelt and spread their palms on the ground. "Returning the energy to the Earth," one man explained. I nodded to myself. That was an interesting way of seeing it. View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! Eventually people drifted away, but a few men stayed behind and built a small monument of stones at what had been the center of our circle. A legal spokescouncil convened in mid-afternoon. I wanted to be right in the center of the action, and was hoping to be one of the spokes for Change of Heart Cluster. But I didn't want to nominate myself, and two other guys were chosen. I wandered outside to watch. There wasn't much definite to discuss at the meeting, although we had heard some rumors from guards and late arrivals. One account had us getting a week in jail or a $500 fine. Another had our charges being dropped to an infraction - a jaywalking ticket - and all of us released with sentences of "time served." "Rumor control, rumor control," called out Claude, a tall guy with graying hair and a long, sharp nose. Hank had pointed him out as one of the artists who had painted the great La Pe–a and People's Park murals in Berkeley, so I was especially inclined to trust his opinion. "This is all speculation. Let's stick to what we're sure of," Claude said. The main order of business was determining what sentences we would consider acceptable. As the forty or so cluster spokes weighed in, I looked up at the stark sun. Compared to coastal Berkeley, the parched Livermore valley, with little shade and no cold water, felt like a desert. As the meeting stretched on, I heard someone behind me mutter, "junior lawyers." I turned to see an older guy I'd met at lunch. He had been part of "peace navy" actions during the 1950s, sailing into restricted areas in the Pacific to delay atomic tests. His remark about junior lawyers stung me, since I had wanted to be a cluster spoke. "What's the option?" I asked him. "We have to make decisions somehow." "No, we don't," he tossed back. "Why not just sit in jail until the government throws us out? This legal dickering is just playing their game, playing by their rules. No matter whether we plead innocent or guilty, they win. We acknowledge their right to arrest and prosecute us. But suppose we said, 'You don't have that right, and we're not going to cooperate with you in any way. We're going to sit in jail until you get sick of us and throw us out.' What could they do? They'd eventually be forced to let us go, and that would be like admitting they were wrong to arrest us in the first place." "They can force us to go to arraignment," I answered uncertainly. "You think so?" he laughed. "If we refuse to cooperate every step of the way, do you think they can come in and force a thousand people to go to court? We've got them over a barrel. All this legal nonsense is just weakening us." "Why don't you say that to the spokescouncil?" "They don't want to hear it. They're too wrapped up in their own importance." He turned away. It was a lot to take in. With a little less ardor, I refocused on the meeting, which was trying to discuss specific demands to make to the judge. A lot of spokes thought we should plea-bargain to get the charges dropped from misdemeanors to infractions, with a sentence of time-served. "We'd probably get out in less than a week," someone said. But there was a sizable group of people who were demanding a mass arraignment, all thousand of us at once, prior to any plea-bargain. The most vehement proponent of this tactic was a man with a weathered face and white hair named Pilgrim. I heard he had been arrested over thirty times, and he certainly had the attention of the meeting. "Holding out for a mass arraignment might cost us an extra day or two in jail," Pilgrim said. "But it would get as much media coverage as the action did. If they refuse a mass arraignment, we'll all plead not-guilty and demand a thousand separate trials." The proposal caused a buzz, but most people favored a plea bargain if it would get us out sooner. Someone pointed out that we didn't all have to do the same thing, but the overall sentiment favored unified action. "We have to stick together," Doc said. "Their whole strategy is to divide us." The meeting continued until dinner, which was a warm plate of pasty spaghetti. I saw Doc talking with Claude, and went over to join them. I worked across the street from one of Claude's murals on Telegraph Avenue, and I couldn't help putting him on a pedestal, "the great Berkeley political artist." Claude and Doc each looked to be twelve or fifteen years older than me, and I imagined them to be veterans of the Civil Rights and Vietnam eras. Both had worked on LAG all Spring, and they were talking about what would happen after the blockade. "Do you think LAG will organize more actions?" I asked, hoping it was the right question. "That's assumed," Claude said in a nasal voice. "I didn't spend the last six months of my life working on a one-shot coalition." I nodded, trying to catch his eye. "A lot of people will want LAG to keep going." Doc furrowed his brows. "The question is, what will it be? Will LAG be an affinity group network, or will it turn into one more 'progressive' organization with an office and a permanent staff?" "It has to go beyond affinity groups," Claude answered. "It's time to think in terms of building a movement, not just doing actions. LAG is the first step, a group that lasts beyond one action." I was going to second that point, but a commotion at one side of the yard interrupted the discussion. A hundred men were already clustered around, and more were hurrying over. View photos of the 1982 Livermore blockade! "It's the lawyers! They let the lawyers in!" We finished our scant meal and headed over to where two members of LAG's volunteer legal collective were being mobbed. Walt, a recent law school graduate who was in one of the Change of Heart AGs, stepped up onto a bale of hay. "We really don't have anything solid to report. We just wanted to check-in with people." Someone called out, "We heard that the two local judges have disqualified themselves and that there would be a new judge appointed." "We heard that rumor too!" Walt laughed. "But that's all it is." "Has there been an offer to negotiate?" "Nothing definite yet," Walt said. "What was the total number arrested?" Kathleen, a short woman with wavy brown hair and a sharp jaw, waved some papers. "We show a little over thirteen hundred -" A cheer punctuated her remarks. "- And I've heard there might be fifty more tomorrow. There's a meeting tonight for people who want to get arrested." There were more cheers from the hundreds of guys clustered around the lawyers. I wondered what the largest-ever anti-nuke protest was. I'd heard people talking about Seabrook on the east coast, and Diablo Canyon in southern California, but I didn't know much about them. Maybe we'd broken the all-time record. I surveyed the five hundred men crowded around the lawyers, and suddenly felt the need for some privacy. Some room to think. I drifted away from the gathering, laid down on my cot, and mulled over the situation. How long would we be here? Could I really cite out? It would be hard to leave before the action was over. Maybe I should call in sick for the extra days. Or just tell my boss where I was and hope she'd be cool. I looked around the warehouse. I had expected the average age of the blockaders to be mid-20s, but it seemed more like mid-thirties. Hair styles ran the gamut from blow-dried professionals to home-cut dropouts. Regardless of age and appearance, a pervasive politeness and tidiness made me think of my own middle-class upbringing. Most of the men were White, with a smattering of Asian Americans and Latinos. I'd noticed two Black men earlier, both middle-aged. I wondered how they felt about being in such a minority. Had they expected it all along? I thought about the "real" county jail, where most of the inmates were Black. In the February action, the one hundred seventy arrestees were mixed in with the general population. What a different experience that must have been. A loud voice cut short my daydreaming: "You too can be ssssssssssssucked up in the Tornado of Talent!" Earlier in the day, Wavy Gravy, a longtime activist who was a Merry Prankster in the 1960s and an emcee at Woodstock, had posted a sign-up sheet for an evening talent show. I had taken a slot, figuring to share a song, but I hadn't given it much thought through the day. Now, as Wavy assembled us for the show, I hurriedly hummed a few scales, trying to get loose. The names were drawn out of a hat, and I wound up with slot number one, which seemed like a tough assignment. Luckily, Wavy warmed up the crowd. We packed onto the cots in the center of the warehouse. Knowing that we had all chosen to be there together, it felt like a big state-sponsored Summer camp. Wavy was the jovial head counselor, and the guards, who were standing off to the sides, seemed like the maintenance staff relaxing at the end of a long day. Wavy told a few jokes, then launched into a story from the Sixties, when he was in Washington, DC, for a Vietnam protest. "I went inside a government building and found an empty room," he told us. "I took off all my clothes and hid behind the door." Wavy pantomimed the scene. "Then one of my friends called in a bomb scare. They emptied the building, and the cops went room to room searching for the bomb. When they came to my room, I jumped out and screamed - scared the daylights out of them!" I was on. I planned to sing one of my own songs, "After the Nuclear War." But as I stepped onstage and faced five hundred expectant faces, a different inspiration seized me. I grabbed a breath and launched into Elvis's "Jailhouse Rock." With no guitar, no harmonica, and no microphone, I had no idea what to do with my hands. I nervously snapped my fingers. Instantly dozens of people picked it up, and the raucous cheering as I finished told me I'd hit the mark. Skits, poetry, mime, comedy, songs, magic, and dance filled the next two hours. "And this is only the first night," Wavy said late in the show. "Wait till we get warmed up!" We ended the evening in a huge circle around the perimeter of the warehouse, holding hands and singing the old Civil Rights-era standard, "We Shall Overcome." Finally we reached the end of the longest day of my life. The blockade that morning was distant, and the previous night - before I'd been arrested - seemed like a prior lifetime. We talked in lower voices as we settled in for the night. No one wanted to let go, but finally the guards insisted that we be quiet. They turned off a few of the overhead lights, but it was still pretty bright. I tried to get comfortable. The canvas cot was barely as wide as my shoulders. The building wasn't insulated, and the chill night air seeped through my army blanket. I pulled the blanket tighter, then decided to use the portajohn one more time. I got my shoes on and trekked to the far end of the warehouse. A dozen other guys had the same idea, and were lined up at the door. "They're only letting us go one at a time," someone told me. "Why? There's eight portajohns." "Right. But they don't want us to forget who's in charge." What happens next?!?? Order the book to find out! Or click here to get the full version of Chapter I
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