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dancing. And then things shifted, kind of, later in the night. The feds had put up a fence around the Justice Building. It was illegally constructed, and so the Portland residents are trying to take it down. So once they started shaking a fence and banging on it, the federal officers—like a movie scene— lined up across the street and came out, just shooting projectiles and fireballs at people. It was really like a war zone. They shot me in the leg. My husband got shot a couple times. It was shocking. You know, I’m a little bit of a rebel myself. So I had my leaf blower. They put it on really heavy with the tear gas. So we had like a line of like fifty people with leaf blowers and we were just blowing the gas back at them. SYLVIE THODE, 21 NEW YORK CITY I went to a march on the day that would have been the Pride march in New York City. It was called the Queer Liberation March. And it was a Black Lives Matter-oriented march specifically centering Black trans lives, and we marched up towards Stonewall and past Stonewall and near the AIDS memorial. That was a very moving experience for me, especially because I ended up joining up at that march with a professor of mine who was involved in ACT UP. I wrote my thesis on poetry in the AIDS crisis. And so being there and sort of feeling this lived history at a place I’d written about, with a person who had experienced it thirty years ago… He was talking about how this moment felt like it felt then. ÉZÉ AMOS, 46 CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA Right after the whole conversation about the monuments started, the Lee statue became the focal point for any kind of resistance or protest in town. We all start from there and spread around town. During the summer protests, people just started writing stuff on the statue. It became a community gathering place. So people would come every evening, every afternoon, and they came with their spray paint. And they’d write whatever they wanted 47
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to write—a lot of profanity, you know, “F You Police,” “Defund Police” and all that. People came with different colors, and then before you knew it, the entire statue was covered with graffiti, and it’s just crazy and ridiculous. It’s a work of art—it’s so beautiful. ANONYMOUS, 25 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Outside of the East Precinct is where there were these daily protests, lots of tear gas. Eventually, one day, the police just packed up and left. And it’s kind of interesting: no one will admit to having given the order to abandon the precinct. We think it was the police union actually telling officers not to show up to work there. But yeah, so they left one day. There had been a 24-hour protest there already, basically, so when they went away people were just there in the street, thinking, “Oh, okay, now we have this.” And I think what really got it started was the mutual-aid groups that were taking donations. There’s a big park right there, and you could get free food there, in the park. So people started camping and it became just a protest that never ended. The idea for the autonomous zone—it had many different names, but there was graffiti that started popping up that said, “Welcome to Free Capitol Hill,” and I think that people were very excited by that concept. It was a really exciting experiment in mutual aid, in cooperation. For my involvement, I volunteered a bit. I picked up trash. I moved supplies around. I painted. I unloaded cars, and sometimes I was just there to witness it and listen to speakers and things like that. I remember being there the night before the police abandoned the area, and they had brought some trucks in and started moving things out. But no one thought that they were just going to leave. The atmosphere was jubilant at that time, and there was no organization to it. None. I mean, these protests were not like the kind that are organized by the civil society groups in Seattle, these were just people showing up from Twitter, basically. As far as I’m aware, the whole time, there was never even really an attempt at governance. It wasn’t even really like Occupy, where people were trying to make decisions. I never saw a real political vision coming from it, other than that we were going to provide services that the state 48

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to write—a lot of profanity, you know, “F You Police,” “Defund Police” and all that. People came with different colors, and then before you knew it, the entire statue was covered with graffiti, and it’s just crazy and ridiculous. It’s a work of art—it’s so beautiful.

ANONYMOUS, 25 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Outside of the East Precinct is where there were these daily protests, lots of tear gas. Eventually, one day, the police just packed up and left. And it’s kind of interesting: no one will admit to having given the order to abandon the precinct. We think it was the police union actually telling officers not to show up to work there. But yeah, so they left one day. There had been a 24-hour protest there already, basically, so when they went away people were just there in the street, thinking, “Oh, okay, now we have this.” And I think what really got it started was the mutual-aid groups that were taking donations. There’s a big park right there, and you could get free food there, in the park. So people started camping and it became just a protest that never ended.

The idea for the autonomous zone—it had many different names, but there was graffiti that started popping up that said, “Welcome to Free Capitol Hill,” and I think that people were very excited by that concept. It was a really exciting experiment in mutual aid, in cooperation. For my involvement, I volunteered a bit. I picked up trash. I moved supplies around. I painted. I unloaded cars, and sometimes I was just there to witness it and listen to speakers and things like that. I remember being there the night before the police abandoned the area, and they had brought some trucks in and started moving things out. But no one thought that they were just going to leave.

The atmosphere was jubilant at that time, and there was no organization to it. None. I mean, these protests were not like the kind that are organized by the civil society groups in Seattle, these were just people showing up from Twitter, basically. As far as I’m aware, the whole time, there was never even really an attempt at governance. It wasn’t even really like Occupy, where people were trying to make decisions. I never saw a real political vision coming from it, other than that we were going to provide services that the state

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