What Is Jail Support Part 1

What Is Jail Support?

Part 1

March 12, 2012. 

"They're arresting Justin!" Of the several members of Occupy The Stage who'd traveled from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to protest on the steps of the Louisiana State Capital, only two had phones that day. For a moment, the high-pitched voice makes me think it's eighteen-year old L, but it's R. He's used up the battery on my portable hot-spot and can't livestream, but he has my digital camera and starts recording. 

"Get badge numbers and ask the officer if he's being detained or arrested," I tell him.

I'm stuck working from home in New Orleans. Unable to livestream this action, I'd given them my equipment, phone number and had stayed logged into R's livestream channel all afternoon - watching Occupy Mic-Check Jindal - until the stream went down. Now, fingers banging various combinations of Occupy Baton Rouge (#OBR #OccupyBR Occupy Baton Rouge), I search Twitter but find nothing.

"Tell anyone there with a smartphone to take pictures or record it," I say.

I've cried watching people I've never met get arrested, and now, someone I know may be getting arrested. After watching Occupy arrests in places like DC, Oakland, Los Angeles, and New York I recognize the reassurance of raw documentation. I want to see him not getting hurt with my own eyes and know whether the police have zip ties.  Yes, seeing zip ties will be better than not knowing if zip ties are present.

"I want to know what the charge is," I hear R shouting. "Holman 6071," he tells me. Before his phone battery dies, R finally tells me Justin broke free and ran.

I realize I've lost all communication with Occupy The Stage.

A Twitter search for "Baton Rouge" with no hashtag returns a link to a video student recorded and uploaded to YouTube.

In it, members of Occupy The Stage hold a banner on the capital steps as Justin, wearing a suit jacket and his fedora, jumps down the capital steps, his authoritative voice gaining momentum. "We are bearing witness to the single greatest social correction the world has ever knowing...and it's about damn time"  he shouts before police grab him from behind. 

Bystanders chant "Freedom of Speech!" 

Nobody yells "Fuck the police" as he slips out of his coat and practically somersaults to the bottom the steps before he sprints away. Members of OTS dressed as tentmonsters (who'd been banned from the steps for being a "hazard") wait in the parking lot demanding badge numbers. 

Before long, R goes live from his computer back in the blue bus they traveled in. Only then, when I hear him ask for a cigarette before being interviewed, do I learn Justin is safe. It will be a month and a half before I fall in love with him. 

That evening, I go to the Occupy The Stage warehouse.  By this time, photographs and details are circulating in the Louisiana Occupy Facebook groups, so I've pieced together most of what happened. Even though I still feel a bit like an outsider there because I wasn't around for the beginning of Occupy NOLA, the warehouse is my favorite place. It's where I brought the Mardi Gras tentmonster costume I made and where activists paint signs, make banners, and play music. It's a location that's evolved after the encampment was raided on December 13.   As everyone hovers around the media center and community kitchen, R hands me a plate of food and returns my camera. 

When I download the contents of my media card, I see the photograph R didn't upload to Facebook.  Justin's bare chest displays a hand-sized bruise on his sternum.

"You have my phone number," I tell him when we're alone. "I want you to know you can call me at any time. If you see police, I'll be there. My Droid battery can last 32 hours now." 

He nods, but something tells me he won't call me. He doesn't know I've seen the bruise, and if he did, I imagine he'd still view my offer as a favor and politely refuse.

If it wasn't for Justin, I may not have begun livestreaming. Since I'd started going to Duncan Plaza when eviction was imminent, most occupiers had been skeptical or too harried to explain when and where the Digital Media Working Group met. Having missed the first month of Occupy NOLA, I was used to hanging around, volunteering to use the stopwatch app on my Android at GAs. Usually someone would give me the number of the legal team and write down my email, and I'd upload all my photographs to a Tumblr blog and tweet them. It's not that anyone was unfriendly; the most committed activists seemed exhausted from the day to day maintenance of the encampment (For a long time, the fact that I never slept in Duncan Plaza would be one of my two Occupy regrets). 

I'd shown up for a GA one day in late November, but a cluster of students told me most members were at a facilitation workshop elsewhere. The kids who usually begged for left-overs on Decatur bummed cigarettes as a fight broke out on the pavilion and a few people who seemed like regulars at the camp quickly de-escalated it. The only guy who regularly hit on me at Duncan offered to give me a private tour of his tent. After chatting with a reporter from The Gambit for a few minutes, I learned that he was just hanging out but didn't think the raid would happen that night.  

A few blocks away, the Saints played a home game in the Superdome. A Twitter search revealed the @OccupyNOLAGA Twitter account's trollish descriptions of rape and prostitution at Duncan. At that time, the account holder handled four accounts that regularly tweeted distorted information or outright lies about activities at the encampment. None of the people I was used to seeing at Duncan were around that day. The students from the GA were leaving. Once again, I felt like I'd missed everything. 

That was when I met Justin. He had his own cigarettes and was drinking coffee on the hill, but he invited me to sit with him and showed me a photo album of his carpentry. His craftsmanship impressed me. Somehow I told him I didn't drink and he said the same. He was the first person who sat down and talked to me and didn't ask me to do anything or mistake me for someone else. At the time, this frustrated me because I was determined to try to help.

"Is there electricity here today?" I asked.

"Why?"

"It doesn't matter. I can livestream but my Android battery doesn't last very long."

His suspicion turned to a smile.  "There's going to be a live performance over there in a little while," he said. "You should stay and livestream that."

Then he was gone.

I'd heard about the Occupy The Stage performances in Duncan, and Justin said I could stream one that night if I felt like it before he rushed off. Little did I know I had just met the man who'd built the wooden stage upon which a burlesque troupe had stripped in front of City Hall. 

Hours later, in the dark, I filmed a musicians performing on the stage as NOPD walked through Duncan Plaza issuing eviction notices. Then my battery ran out. 

That Android battery only lasted about thirty minutes when I used the Ustream app and live tweeted at the same time. I knew I would lose my job if I was involved in Occupy, and as I pulled on my winter socks in the wee hours of December 6, I checked Twitter and saw that #TOYM Team Occupy Your Mom was in NOLA. I quickly tweeted to @ghostpickles, explaining which Twitter accounts were intentionally tweeting false information, and then Korgasm_ went live and NOPD destroyed the encampment. 

I wouldn't see Justin again until MLK. 

Occupy NOLA's digital media team seemed to collapse after the eviction, and I'd occasionally receive emails or texts about actions. I livestreamed the MLK March and Occupy The Stage brought a mobile PA system, broadcasting Dr. King's speech through the city as we marched to the Federal Reserve where one protester already stood. I knew the fedora even with the Guy Fawkes mask. During Mardi Gras, I heard through word of mouth that Occupy was going to be in the Krewe de Vieux parade. The NOPD brutality of the 2011 Eris parade had inspired me to livestream, and I headed out to the parade with my Droid, hoping that Occupy would in fact be in a parade.

I saw the Expect Us signs before I saw them. That's how it would happen for a while; I'd go out looking for Occupy and I'd find Occupy The Stage.

They invited me to a Mardi Gras revolution bash, and I  made a solidarity stencil to decorate a tentmonster, and Justin showed me how to make a master stencil so I wouldn't ruin the only one I had.  My boyfriend and I broke up for reasons unrelated to the Occupy movement. 

Occupy NOLA still had regular actions then, and I started going to The Direct Action Working Group and volunteering to make flyers for actions. Then I'd hang flyers up around town, put on my utility belt, and go find the action. Whenever I was livestreaming I'd end up next to Justin because he'd be leading the march, or everyone wouldn't remember the words to a chant, and he'd start one. Before the F29 BP action, he explained the way COREXIT can cause an average camping tent to mutate into a tentmonster.  

By March, Occupy NOLA had gotten more organized, and this was certainly in part due to the central location of Occupy The Stage. They started inviting me over for dinner at night. 

After the Baton Rouge incident I kept my camera on Justin as much as I could. The photograph with the bruise would appear in my photo archive sometimes, along with the concern that one day he'd be arrested. So I kept my camera on him. One Friday in March, I worked from home, exhausted, when I noticed that Occupy The Roads was headed from Mobile Alabama to Baton Rouge. As we exchanged tweets, I learned that they didn't know there was an Occupy NOLA to stop at and gave them location of the warehouse. 

On March 31, Occupy The Stage brought an enormous banner to the Police Brutality protest which hundreds of people attended. That was the first time my livestream was re-broadcast on Global Revolution TV. A brass band played "I'll fly away" as I caught up with the front of the march and Justin. "Please learn how to hold the camera," someone typed in the chat and I realized I'd been dancing. I slowed down, realizing that for a moment, all my livestreaming stress had disappeared and the march had been fun. That was when I realized I had a crush on him.

By April, talk of going to Occupy DC was in the air, and a few people from New Orleans had already headed that way. I'd gotten my crowd anxiety under control enough to entertain the possibility of going myself. It never occurred to me to go with other people. I figured I'd travel alone with my dog the way I always did. One night at the warehouse, R and I were sitting on the stage in the dark and he told me Justin was also going to DC.

"Then I can't go," I confessed.

I was afraid that the crush I had on him would blur my judgment and he'd get arrested or I'd get arrested or something bad would happen. Every time there was an action I buried that crush deep inside myself when I ended up next to him, and I buried it deeper still when I livestreamed performances at Occupy The Stage.  The crush could not exist. 

But we did go to Washington DC in the car and slept in front of Bank of America. That was where I streamed an arrest for the first time and where, while making stencils, I told Justin he could keep an exacto blade my ex had given me. "A recent ex?" he asked. So he learned I was single because we both made stencils. 

... to be continued.