Inside a protest

You march in the street, a bunch of people around you. You remember meeting up before the march, everyone seemed friendly, chatting, smiling and laughing. Now everyone is yelling, “F*** the police” “black lives matter” and cursing at the police. The cops are clearly getting agitated and scared. Someone shouts “death to pigs” and gets in the face of a police officer. The officer asks the person to back up and the person refuses. The officer takes a step back clearly just wanting some space, but the protester moves up again refusing to leave the officer alone. You can see the frustration mounting in the officer.

Someone throws a bottle and it shatters between the police line and the protesters. You feel the tension elevate with the shattering glass. The people you are with surge forward, pressing you toward the police line. An officer yells but you can’t hear what he is saying over the crowd shouting around you. The officer shouts again and you catch a few words, “Please… designated area… orderly…” You were told that it was okay to march here, but you do not have enough time to think about the situation as the people you are with yell back at the officers. “Our rights… Down with tyranny…”

The police stand silently in a clean line, but you are close enough to see how tense the officers are. The people behind you are surging forward again, the crowd seeming to feed off the officer’s tension. You start to panic, you feel trapped and can tell this is a bad situation. All you can think of is that you wanted to promote social change and help people, not get into a screaming match with the police, and now you just want to get out of here. You can see the same look on the faces of others around you.

An officer puts his hand up and tells someone down the line to back up pushing them off him. The man starts yelling as if he had been punched and falls into someone. Did he get punched, you are not sure, everything is happening so fast. You feel the crowds anger rise and you get angry too. They cannot beat people in the street. The crowd yells and pushes forward, the front line is shoved into the police. The cops all start yelling for everyone to back up. The crowd surges again. The officers grab people and starts tackling them and put them in handcuffs. This just outrages the crowd and someone shoves a cop off someone he is placing in handcuffs. Three cops tackle the person who shoved the officer, slamming him against the pavement. A cop yells at everyone to back away. Everyone is yelling, officers are putting people in handcuffs. People are running. Someone gets sprayed with pepper spray. Everything seemed to go in slow motion now. You feel dizzy.

Someone bumps into you and you fall onto a cop. He pins you and puts you in handcuffs. You just wanted to help, just wanted to make a difference. How did you get here? Who is this helping? As the officers puts you on the curb you see the news stations and reporters and overhear them. “Police brutality reaches a new level” “A peaceful protest turns violent when cops attack protesters” Each station putting their own spin on it, only worried about getting the story out before all the other stations.

Before you know it everything is over and you are being released from the police station. You return home and turn on the TV and see a politician. He is calling for change, saying this divide needs to end and blames the other party for promoting the split. You change the channel. Another politician. She blames the other party as well. You change it back he blames the police. Change it again, she blames the protesters. Your head spins, you don’t know who to believe.

You were there and everything happened so fast. Did the cop throw the first punch? Did the protesters violate the law by not staying in the designated area? These questions fall away as you think again, I just wanted to help, to make a difference. But did you really do anything? Did you help anyone who actually needed it? It made for some good sound bites for the politicians, the news stations got something to run for the week, the heads of the movement got their faces on TV. But did you help those you wanted to help? Or were you just used?