Last night in Rozzie
Jun. 2nd, 2020 10:46 amThings were a little surreal in our quiet little corner of Boston yesterday - I wrote this last night. There was a silent protest/vigil planned for this evening at the big rotary a few blocks from us, mostly aimed at the folks in Rozzie/West Roxbury. We planned on walking over after work.
About midday, our local FB group started buzzing... some fucknut on Twitter had posted the flyer from the vigil with a call to arms that "tonight was the night" to move into the residential neighborhoods and "take what was theirs". Consensus seems to be Twitter was flooded with this crap all weekend, it's most likely just MAGA assholes trying to stir up tension and amp up police (and make it look like it was coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which I have no words for), but still. We briefly discussed whether we still wanted to go (hell yes) and headed over as planned.
It was exactly what I expected... mostly white allies, trying to show support, few if any people with any claim to the kind of personal anger or desperation that might lead to the tension that sparks a riot, holding an almost stereotypical peaceful vigil with a lot of black lives matter signs, everyone wearing masks and politely putting space between every little knot of people, mostly honks of support from the backed up traffic (including several people who did multiple laps of the area). In other words, NOT the kind of gathering that would normally pique any cop interest, except maybe a traffic detail. (I know, any crowd can lose it, don't![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
me, but I've been to a lot of these kinds of protests.)
And yet. The businesses we could see? All boarded up. (FB would later show me business all over Rozzie Square and WR also getting boarded up.) And the police presence was insane - there's a precinct house literally right on the rotary (it was also lightly barricaded, with a line of cops in front of it), but this was way more than that. There were cops everywhere. I might have written it off as tensions are high, they're on high alert, but then, as we were standing there, a BPD truck carrying a portable panopticon tower pulled into the parking lot across the street. A few minutes later, three MBTA buses full of cops pulled up over there as well.
And here's the thing that felt really obvious about where the cops were - they looked like they were ENTIRELY there to protect the church behind us, the parish school where they were parked and the precinct house. They were not positioned so that they could do anything to protect the crowd, they were doing little to manage the traffic or the people trying to cross the streets. They were standing in clusters at each of the church doors, in the school parking lot (which is high above where the crowd was), making sure no one entered the parking area.
In the end, nothing much happened. We stood there for an hour or so, people drove by and honked, we read signs and tried to figure out how to smile at strangers while wearing a mask. Eventually the folks organizing the vigil came around and thanked us for coming out and shooed us gently towards home (cognizant, I'm sure that one of the turning points for violence is when the cops try to make people leave before they are ready to disperse). We walked home and chatted with our neighbors. We tucked our cars that usually park on the street into the driveway for the night, just in case.
Now it's after 11, and everything is quiet. It seems that that whatever 'threat' there may have been out there probably wasn't ever real, and was just assholes trying to stir shit up and make people nervous. Scared and nervous people, even well intentioned ones, do a lot of damn stupid things, after all. And at the end of it, I am rather at a loss for words. I want to find something profound to say but it's still a jumble in my head, so I'm settling for writing what I have, so I'll remember the details once I've has some time to think.
Right now the main thing I want to remember is how unsettling it felt, to worry that my quiet little neighborhood was going to see the same kind of damage that other cities are seeing, to worry that something we going to go badly at our little vigil. To be there, scanning the crowd, watching for anyone who looked like they wanted to cause trouble. To feel the looming presence of the cops and be afraid of what might happen if someone DID decide to start problems.
About midday, our local FB group started buzzing... some fucknut on Twitter had posted the flyer from the vigil with a call to arms that "tonight was the night" to move into the residential neighborhoods and "take what was theirs". Consensus seems to be Twitter was flooded with this crap all weekend, it's most likely just MAGA assholes trying to stir up tension and amp up police (and make it look like it was coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which I have no words for), but still. We briefly discussed whether we still wanted to go (hell yes) and headed over as planned.
It was exactly what I expected... mostly white allies, trying to show support, few if any people with any claim to the kind of personal anger or desperation that might lead to the tension that sparks a riot, holding an almost stereotypical peaceful vigil with a lot of black lives matter signs, everyone wearing masks and politely putting space between every little knot of people, mostly honks of support from the backed up traffic (including several people who did multiple laps of the area). In other words, NOT the kind of gathering that would normally pique any cop interest, except maybe a traffic detail. (I know, any crowd can lose it, don't
me, but I've been to a lot of these kinds of protests.)And yet. The businesses we could see? All boarded up. (FB would later show me business all over Rozzie Square and WR also getting boarded up.) And the police presence was insane - there's a precinct house literally right on the rotary (it was also lightly barricaded, with a line of cops in front of it), but this was way more than that. There were cops everywhere. I might have written it off as tensions are high, they're on high alert, but then, as we were standing there, a BPD truck carrying a portable panopticon tower pulled into the parking lot across the street. A few minutes later, three MBTA buses full of cops pulled up over there as well.
And here's the thing that felt really obvious about where the cops were - they looked like they were ENTIRELY there to protect the church behind us, the parish school where they were parked and the precinct house. They were not positioned so that they could do anything to protect the crowd, they were doing little to manage the traffic or the people trying to cross the streets. They were standing in clusters at each of the church doors, in the school parking lot (which is high above where the crowd was), making sure no one entered the parking area.
In the end, nothing much happened. We stood there for an hour or so, people drove by and honked, we read signs and tried to figure out how to smile at strangers while wearing a mask. Eventually the folks organizing the vigil came around and thanked us for coming out and shooed us gently towards home (cognizant, I'm sure that one of the turning points for violence is when the cops try to make people leave before they are ready to disperse). We walked home and chatted with our neighbors. We tucked our cars that usually park on the street into the driveway for the night, just in case.
Now it's after 11, and everything is quiet. It seems that that whatever 'threat' there may have been out there probably wasn't ever real, and was just assholes trying to stir shit up and make people nervous. Scared and nervous people, even well intentioned ones, do a lot of damn stupid things, after all. And at the end of it, I am rather at a loss for words. I want to find something profound to say but it's still a jumble in my head, so I'm settling for writing what I have, so I'll remember the details once I've has some time to think.
Right now the main thing I want to remember is how unsettling it felt, to worry that my quiet little neighborhood was going to see the same kind of damage that other cities are seeing, to worry that something we going to go badly at our little vigil. To be there, scanning the crowd, watching for anyone who looked like they wanted to cause trouble. To feel the looming presence of the cops and be afraid of what might happen if someone DID decide to start problems.