What Is Jail Support Part 2

 What Is Jail Support - Part 2

I knew it involved raising money for bail and protesting the arrests of occupiers, and sometimes I chalkupied the New Orleans sidewalks for people in other occupations who were getting arrested for drawing on sidewalks with chalk. I knew members of other occupy groups headed to the physical jail where their comrades were detained and sent out calls for donations via Twitter. Recently I'd seen tweets about jail support that included the hashtag #casseroles but I didn't know they were pots and pans used for making noise, nor did I know that we actually had casseroles at Occupy The Stage. I thought it might be a code for carrying money to give to a bondsman because I'd seen "casseroles" hurriedly misspelled as or "cashroles" once or twice.

My little knowledge of what jail support involved stemmed from the fact that there had only ever been one arrest at Occupy NOLA when the encampment was evicted on December 6, 2011. 

Someone told me later that jail support was letting the person know you cared and letting the police know you weren't going to tolerate an occupy arrest, so I guess for me jail support started the second the police car drove by the Occupy The Stage warehouse and Justin shouted "I'm going to the clink" from the back seat. I screamed his name over and over, chasing the squad car to the intersection before it turned the corner and he was gone. Seven days later, when he was released, Justin told me I'd hurt the officer's ears.

Both my Android batteries were full. I'd just been on GlobalRev filming the arrival of the Occupy Caravan.  

So I stood outside the warehouse with Occupiers from the Caravan and let myself cry. The Occupy Caravan was staying in New Orleans for two nights and we'd spent weeks preparing for their visit at the Occupy The Stage warehouse. After occupying his own stage with the Playback Theatre Troupe, Justin had gone down the street to feed somebody's cat. I'd known something was wrong when he hadn't come back. He'd been livestreaming too, and I knew his battery was probably almost if not all the way dead.  

If anyone else had gotten arrested, our leaderless movement would have looked to Justin. But he was gone and I hadn't been able to run fast enough to catch up to the police car, but even worse, I hadn't been there and didn't know why he'd been arrested.

I have myself three minutes to cry, not because he'd been arrested, but because he was going to be in OPP, a jail with one of the slowest booking systems in America, and we'd only been dating two months and I hadn't told him I loved him yet. 

I had to explain to everyone who didn't know me that I wasn't going to be hysterical all night and that I was screaming and crying because I had never told him I loved him and I wanted him to go to jail knowing I loved him. I met people for the first time as they tried to calm me down, and in order to prove I could be rationale, I said we should start jail support.

A few younger members of Occupy The Stage were drunk and suggested going to the jail immediately to raise hell, but I thought about the action we had planned for the next day and told them to focus on not getting arrested. I made a WePay link and started asking for donations on Twitter.

Around 3am, A took me to Central Lock-up but Justin hadn't been booked yet, and nobody there could tell us why he'd been arrested. "He'll never be out by noon," I told A. "How the fuck are we going to have this flash concert without him?"

"This is a test. Of all of us. We have to step up. You have to step up," A told me in the dark hallway of Orleans Parish Prison

I stayed up all night, glad to have the action to focus on, hoping he'd be out in time for the end of it, fielding text messages from people who only came around when trouble reared its head.  "I don't know why he's been arrested and don't speculate about unknown illegal activities via text," I actually replied before adding, "Please come to the action tomorrow."

The action a Flash Concert and "Rebel without a Single Cause" march was something the direct action working group had been planning since before the Caravan had contacted us and included at least one band, a burlesque troupe, transportation of the original wooden stage from the warehouse to Washington Square, tentmonsters, a route so secret even I didn't know it, an unpublicized start time, and PBS.

The sun came up, and with it arrived text messages from a woman who had not been involved with Occupy of late. As a member of the Digital Media Working Group, she was concerned that I was collecting bail donations when I didn't know why he'd been arrested. She wanted me to take down the WePay link.

In the gas station next to the warehouse, I asked several members of the Occupy Caravan to hold an emergency GA, and they reached unanimous consensus regarding Jail Support solidarity. The We Pay link stayed up.

Although I am not very good about not giving fucks regarding things I give a fuck about, I somehow managed to ignore the nagging of that particular member for the first few days of Jail Support.

I called the people from PBS (they were going to film the Caravan members at the march) and posted the location of the Flash Concert on the Occupy The Stage website. It was only because Justin actually hand-wrote phone numbers in a spiral notebook that I, along with Robert, were able to contact everyone involved and tell them we needed the Flash Concert and march to be extra great because Justin was in jail.

The Willow Family Band met the sixty or so people gathered in Washington Square at noon. I hadn't slept. Robert would lead the march. JJ set up the rolling dog PA system, and as I began livestreaming the performance, it dawned on me that over half the people attending had absolutely  no idea where City Hall was or where the march would go.

"Please follow one of the other streamers for an objective feed of this march," I told my live audience. And then I started a Mic Check for the first time ever.  I'd always had a voice but kept myself reserved due to streaming, but not that day. "And I'm gonna take this march, all the way, to central lockup! No Justin No Peace."

The march was like a parade that traveled through the quarter and CBD, stopping at the courthouse and bank and City Hall, where we mic checked the mayor. I'll always remember Robert leading the march that day, and how we looked at one another for a second and I felt like he understood more than anyone else what Justin usually did and what we had to do because he wasn't there. That kept me sane. The march was ending at City Hall when an Occupy The Stage member mic checked Mayor Landrieu asking him to free Justin.

That was when Robert received the phone call from legal. Justin had been booked and we needed 500 to pay the lawyer. Under the assumption that I'd go pay the money and he'd be released, I left the march, heading to the lawyer's office.

He wasn't getting released. Justin had two warrants issued by Baton Rouge for resisting an officer and disturbing the peace on March 12. He had been arrested for possession of marijuana on Tuesday, June 19 (he wasn't booked until the 20th, but it was around 10:30 when he was arrested) and was being held on those warrants. He was released on his own recognizance for the possession charge but Baton Rouge wanted him transferred there.