#was originally meant to be one of those funky flashlight things

[untimelybones]

smth like "The sky was so blue on the day that you died / It faded to gray, like a needle to my eye" lol

weirdo

[wordsfromgrime]

One Night in Richmond

~Busted~

It never hurts to show up with a case of beer so I stop at Lombardy Kroger on my way to the Circle and pick up some Blue Moons and a box of popsicles -both alluding to the festive mood facing through the air. This morning the mayor announced the resignation of our only ten-day old police chief, and while many understood the dense socio-political tactics implied with the decision, most celebrated the occasion as well. A Friday night at the top of summer will always carry with it feelings of excitement and reward.

I pull my bike up to the normal spot at Marcus-David Peters Circle and recognize a few familiar faces in the soft afterglow of dusk’s light. The sun is just now setting, leaving only about 30 minutes until full darkness and the cover that comes with it. Now, the sun is still tightrope walking over the horizon, the sky shimmering with raspberry-lemonade tones and watermelon marshmallow clouds. Around the turn of the Circle a free concert is underway, made possible with just a microphone, a generator, and a few amps. We doodle with spray-paint, or attempt freestyle tricks on our fixed gears, as we sip beers and bust musings on the day.

We’re all rocking on the obvious cookout vibe, but we’re tentative as well; We aren’t completely relaxed. We’ve seen things turn from lax to chaos before, in only a second, for no reason at all, and we know it can happen again.  When you’re facing an enemy that has full control over the definitions of combat, it’s forgiven to feel nervous.

For now though, it’s good vibes and sunshine. And while our conversations dance around the protests, the police, police brutality, human rights, the mistakes of the generations before us, and our determination to fix those mistakes, mostly we just talk about Richmond. It’s hard to explain Richmond to someone who hasn’t stayed there for any amount of time. Richmond is like an oasis that’s also a black hole. Richmond is the place you’re trying to get out of, and also the place you can’t wait to be back in. Richmond is the place you think you deserve. Richmond is where a lot of us feel most at home, but it’s a home that needs sweeping renovations.

As we expound freely on the failures and accomplishments of the capitol city, more and more of our friends arrive, skidding to stops at the periphery of our claimed area and slowly increasing our settlement size. It’s easy to dominate a space when everyone arrives with a bicycle, and in our group it’s pretty much a necessity to show up with some wheels of a sort. Besides a general interest in protesting the state, bicycles have been the strongest conjoining factor throughout the ragtag group of friends that I’ve been meeting with near-daily since the brutal murder of George Floyd at the end of March.

Some of these friends, like Salad (our stoic, de facto captain of the group who’s got friends in every part of town) and Funky (our resident artist and Big Wheel extraordinaire), I’ve known for a while and originally met just by biking in the same parts of town. But others, like Sophia (badass girl with a Wide Bars/Big Heart combo) or Johnny (no fixie yet [just a road bike], but is well-loved for his reputation of generosity and hilarious braggadociousness) I’ve only spent real time with since the protests began. All in all, there’s about 12 of us that have formed a little posse of itinerant protestors. Every summer brings with it something new, but something about the revolution marching down the streets had this summer already feeling particularly seismic. And something about all that “newness” in the air made me feel more like a kid again.

Soon, a few men in assault rifles and military vests approach us, seemingly threatened by their own lack of acceptance and comradery now reflected against our group of laughing friends.  

“Is this your tent? This tent’s gotta go!” the man begins the conversation, unaware or unwilling to exchange pleasantries.

“It’s not our tent but we don’t think it should go”, a few people begin to say at once. “That tent is covering a free community library.”

“Well, when the cops get here this is going to make them upset, and they’re going to come in here and destroy it anyway,” the man says. “So I’m just saying y’all should take it down before I come back with a few other guys with rifles and take it down myself….cuz we don’t want the cops to come!”

“You can do whatever you want, man, but we’re not going to take down some tent that isn’t ours just because you think the cops might come,” our friend Amin (always good for a giant smile and a fat joint) says. “And also, that whole theory doesn’t make a lot of sense to me” He punctuates this last part with a tip of his head and a swig of his beer.

The man grumbles to himself and walks away, returning ten minutes later with his aforementioned rifled goons, as well as a lady that doesn’t really seem to fit in with them.

“This lady owns the library so we’re getting her to take it down,” the man says, directing his speech towards our group for no apparent reason other than to start a conflict. He was obviously oblivious to how his aggressive, commandeering attitude was completely antithetical to the entire idea of the community space that is Marcus-David Peters Circle…or maybe he was just an asshole. Regardless, he was a blatant intimidator, and unless we’re talking about Number 3 (RIP) there’s just no room for that inside the Circle.

We ignored whatever the guy was trying to serve to us and kicked back, but soon the man was back again with an even larger group, now forcefully encouraging everyone to exit the interior of the Circle under the assurance that “the cops can’t touch us if we aren’t in the Circle”. As one tends to notice, it’s hard to say “no” to a group of men with large guns in their hands, so the group was having large amounts of success with their attempts to incentive people out of the area. Our group, though still not understanding completely or agreeing with the logic of the move, followed suit, packing up our blankets, beers, and popsicles.

Not five minutes after the entire populace of the Circle had been cleared out of the area that lay surrounded by graffitied barriers, officers in riot gear began to arrive, just as the man earlier had “predicted”. Predicted! *Hmpf*! Predicted, or imprecated? Or better yet, foretold? Because I reckon it’s a hell of a lot easier to predict the future when you’ve got a direct line to the chain of commands. I also reckon that about the only person who would come up and complain about the tent covering up a free library was some bootlicking wannabe-cop snitch who knew, without a doubt, that the cops were coming that night, whether they had a reason to or not.

And, of course, there was no reason that any amount of police officers, let alone 50+ outfitted in full riot gear, should have appeared that night. No reason for a city to sic a militarized pack of baton-wielding goons on its own people. No reason why the citizens of Richmond could not have just been left to be: listening to music, drinking beers, talking with friends. These were the crimes we committed before being attacked.

As police announced to the crowd that the surrounding area had been declared an “unlawful assembly” by the state, tempers began to flare on both sides. Rampant rubber bullets and flash bang grenades sliced through the air, as chants and screams rose up from the civilians. Suddenly, the space felt like a warzone, a battle with what seemed like completely lopsided enemies. On one side stood line after line of grown men adorned in battle armor, helmets, and shields. Some held Assault Rifles or guns meant for firing rubber bullets and smoke canisters; all wore heavy, polished, steel-toed boots. On the other side stood men, women, children, and pets equipped with nothing more than their wallets, sunglasses, tank tops, and shorts. Some held bottles of water for extinguishing smoke, others had gloves on for tossing tear gas canisters away; all wore a sense of fear, anger, confusion, and determination on their face. These Richmonders, who had done nothing more than to enjoy the public space of their city, would not be deterred so easily. A feeling had spread through the crowd that we would not be punished unjustly tonight. If we were going to have to face the consequences of merely existing in the street, then we weren’t going down without a fight.  

The ranks of G.I. Joe-pretenders slowly increased their perimeter, pushing citizens further and further from the reclaimed art space at the epicenter of the Circle. Soon, we stood in the middle of Park Avenue, a block from Monument Avenue, and still we were being told to “back up” and “get out of the street”, by both RPD and VSP. It seemed the boars with badges would not be content until they had claimed the whole neighborhood as their own Draconian hang-space.

When my friend Nick (The big love bully - The homie to ask you if you’re okay when you’ve got a down face) shines his flashlight toward a group of suspicious looking officers, he’s swarmed upon by a particularly dorky looking Virginia State officer who accosts him with a completely trivial question about the bike he’s riding.

“Whoah! Hey! You got lights for this bicycle here?” the officer asked, taking strides closer and closer to us, hand on his hip.

“Two, actually!” Came Nick’s response as we all flipped our bikes around to put some space between the officers and ourselves. “You’re not gunna get us on some shit like that!” He shouted over his shoulder as we pedaled up the street towards a safer space. “ya dumbass cop”

With some distance between the commotion and us, we regroup. Nick, Sophia, Salad, Ryan, Johnny, and I squad up at a park only a block away.

“Shit’s wild”

“What even started this?”

“Oh, they’re definitely mad about the chief resigning.”

“I saw someone get hit right in the face with a rubber bullet”

“Fuck!”

“I saw a couple kids with paint guns shooting at the cops, I think that’s what started it all”

“I mean, the cops started it all when they showed up…”

“AGREED!”

Looking behind him, Johnny says, “This car coming up is an unmarked cop car, anyone want to see where it’s going?”

“Let’s do it”, I say.

And we take off. The two of us darting after this beefy-looking tinted black SUV, keeping close but keeping our distance.

After a few blocks Johnny turns to me and says, “They aren’t going anywhere interesting, let’s head back.” and we reverse-course towards the way we came.

Coming back up towards the intersection where we left the rest of our friends, I can’t say that anything felt particularly off, though it did seem a little quiet, not a simple quiet but a stifled one.

As Johnny and I make our way through the shadow left in the space between two light posts, we hear a “GRAB HIM!” and a hidden mass springs from the darkness. I watch as Johnny’s bike finds the space between charging homunculus and a row of cards and skirts through it successfully, just as the same cop changes direction to tackle me off my bike (FUCK!). The goon leaps into the air as gracefully as an anemic hippopotamus, and tackles me off my bike with the ease of a drunken uncle at Thanksgiving.

“All right, big guy, you got me! You can chill out.” I say to the panting officer now shoving my arms in positions not familiar to them, restraining my non-resisting body with the help of 3 or 4 buddies. “I appreciate all the attention but it’s really not necessary”

“It’s for both of our safeties”, the stormtrooper says to me without looking at my face, instead holding his nose high with eyes darting around the perimeter like some cracked-out hound-dog.

“Oh yeah, I bet”, I say, laughing a little. “Hey man, you having any fun?”

The officer just grunts.

“Aw, c’mon man, what’s your name?”

“Officer Harris” Still no eye contact.

“Hey, officer Harris, you having any fun out here? It’s ok to have fun, I’m having some fun, are you having fun?”

Officer Harris shifts his weight from one foot to the other, rolls his tongue across his upper teeth, and says out of the side of his mouth, “Yeah, I’m having a little fun…but you guys are making it hard for us out here.”

“GROSSSSSSS!” I say laughing from the pit of my stomach, “Oh, Officer Harris, we’ve got real problems” And I continue to laugh as this confused cop looks down on me, still zip-tied at his feet. I was beyond affable at this point from the adrenaline and alcohol coursing through my bloodstream, and while the fear of this cop and his gang of buddies assaulting me crossed through my mind, I figured if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound. Being arrested for protesting the police force already put me in a vulnerable position, and I figured the policeman’s image of me couldn’t be altered much in the short time we were interacting with each other, but I wanted to say one more thing before Officer Harris cast me aside as some wanton rioter.

“I hope you don’t think I’m just some white punk, some revolutionary with no cause. I’m fighting for what I believe in, and I sleep well every night, Officer Harris, do you?”

“I try,” Khaleed Harris said with a sigh as he put me in a cage in the back of a van.

“Now, watch your head.”