Dueling Protests and Other Issues that Keep Me Awake in August
Disclaimer: This was written when I was exceptionally tired, and is not exactly an attempt at anything journalistic. It’s just my own incomplete reaction to a rally I attended with the intent of livestreaming and the counter-protest there, as well as the other distracting issues that nobody really needs to know. Also, the actual writing itself is not very good, and there are commas missing and too many ‘ands.’Yesterday (Thursday August 22), I got ready to go to the Marigny to livestream the Merritt Landry Rally that was being held in front of the home of Merritt Landry. This is where Merritt Landry shot a 14-year-old over a month ago in New Orleans. I wrote about it in more detail the night before HERE. I had been confused the night before and thought the Louisiana Ecosocialists and Rev Brown were going to have a counter-protest at the same time, but that was just because Mike Howells had sent a confusing email. Mike Howells’ protest is actually on Saturday. Captain Black, who I consider a friend, was going to be at the Justice for Merritt rally and helped organize it. The Merritt Landry rally is tricky because it involves Marshall Coulter, who Merritt Landry shot, and people have strong feelings and can relate the incident to the Second Amendment or racism, or gun laws, or crime, or really whatever they want, which is what a lot of people do anyway.
The fact that anyone in New Orleans has the energy to organize a rally in the summer should be noted. Lately, I’ve been too exhausted all the time and have run out of energy trying to get people to rally about the NSA or Bradley Manning, and this week I’ve been to tired to even ask why people don’t come out in the streets for Manning.
On August 22, went to livestream the Justice for Merritt Landry rally because I was sure whatever would end up on the news would be sensationalized blandness. I personally don’t think the Landry case is that similar to the Zimmerman case, but some people are making a case that they’re similar, and the mainstream media is great about fueling this parallel.
Anyway I stayed up really really late Wednesday writing a blog post explaining what I believe Captain Black has been saying about crime and New Orleans, and I tried really hard to have this blog post ready so that if people watching my livestream were asking me about the rally, I could tell them to read my blog. I am also able to tell people watching my livestream to go and Google something, but that only works if people with initiative are watching, and I felt it was my responsibility to explain my presence at the event. Also, I consider Captain Black a friend, and some of the people rallying for Merritt Landry are friends of mine, and I figured I’d go to the rally and hear what people had to say and learn more about their viewpoints since I never met Merritt Landry. Wednesday night, I kept almost calling him Mayor Landrieu, and it was annoying me greatly as I tried to write my blog post and tell Justin about the case and the rally. I felt really bad for being on the internet writing the blog post for so long Wednesday night when Justin went to bed without me, and then I couldn’t sleep worrying about a lot of things.
I figured I’d also go to the rally Mike Howells emailed me about - “Rally Against Shooting Coulter” - on Saturday to offer a view of both rallies being held. I really didn’t like the email Mike Howells wrote that portrayed his rally and the Justice for Merritt Landry rally as “ either or situations” (he called the latter “Rally for Shooting Coulter”), which is exactly the fucked-up binary mentality mainstream media loves shoving down people’s throats.
It makes me sad that people are so divided over whether or not the situation is about race because I think it’s more complex than being only about race. It seems like for some people, the comparison to the Zimmerman verdict is eclipsing other issues of crime, poverty, education, NOPD reform, the mayor’s failed NOLA for Life program & wasted money, & people in general being unwilling to listen anymore. The New Orleans community obviously needs to unite in order to address issues of crime, poverty, race, political corruption, and education, and hopefully a dialogue about this situation will be a step in accomplishing that. To miss such an opportunity or to use this tragedy to promote a political party would be an outright shame.
Personally, I was hoping some of what Captain Black has been saying about people not getting upset and rallying when a black on black crime happens would resonate because honestly there is too much crime being accepted as normal in New Orleans, and I was thinking that the whole power structure of government and corporate government is the bigger problem and that there are fuckton of more complicated issues connected to this case. The fact that Captain Black, who is African American, is willing to try to have a discussion about issues IN ADDITION to race had been appealing to me.
I didn’t sleep much worrying about stuff in general.
Then it was Thursday, and I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and was working and then got ready for the rally and charged all my livestream gear. I was going to go to there and livestream and then go figure out if the Markey Park dog area fundraiser money is still going to be used for a dog area in Markey Park or if the dog area is going to be some place else in the Bywater because nobody is returning my emails about this issue. I was so fucking tired I couldn’t remember anything really well and was afraid I’d refer to Merritt Landry as Mayor Landrieu.
I figured I should be on time to the rally, so when Justin came home from work, I told him I was going to leave soon. I’ve been worried about going to actions lately because this weird provocateur kid has been harassing me in public, but I doubted he’d be at the Landry rally. Anyway Justin said he would go with me, and I was happy, but he’d just come home from work and looked really tired; I was worried he wouldn’t want to stay for a long time while I interviewed people after the rally and that we’d get impatient with each other, and I didn’t want to be late and didn’t want to make him hurry so I suggested we go separately - him on his bike and me in my car.
I drove down to the Marigny and realized I didn’t have a lighter attached to my utility belt and couldn’t stop wanting a cigarette but didn’t have time to stop and look under the seat of the car. It’s less than 10 minutes of a drive, and I parked 2 blocks from the rally right at 6:30 and saw a bunch of cops down the street, which was weird because NOLA police hardly ever come to rallies, especially when the rallies are practically taking place on private property like the Landry porch.
From a block away I could see there were counter-protesters too, and I knew it wasn’t Mike Howells’ Ecosocialist protest from far away because the counter-protesters had a bunch of signs and banners. When I got close, I saw it was “some anarchists” and that they had a huge banner and lots of hand-painted signs about how fucked up it is to shoot a 14 year-old kid. The Landry rally had numerous signs that were printed professionally, and some people had shirts on with solidarity fists and Landry support statements.
A man was playing a flute really loud and shouting about Jesus (I think), so it was hard to tell if he was protesting the rally or attending it because he was moving all around in the street, while most of the Landry advocates and Captain Black stayed near or on the Landry porch. Some of the people at the counter-rally were my friends, and some of the people at the porch of the Landry house were my friends, and I thought oh fuck, I’m gonna be neutral neutral neutral about this and just film it and interview people and film the police.
Seriously, there didn’t need to be at least six cops at this event. One could argue that the fact that the police don’t keep people in New Orleans safe is how this situation of a homeowner shooting a trespassing 14-year-old happened. I don’t know why so many police were there and should ask someone who got there early. That is a large police presence for a New Orleans rally. I’ve livestreamed/attended dozens of rallies over the past year and a half, and there were rarely that many police in attendance.
WGNO and WWL news trucks were both parked on Mandeville Street near the Landry house, and reporters were trying to interview the Landry rally but the counter-rally was yelling so loud I couldn’t even hear the people speaking, even when I went right up to the porch.
I was wearing a purple skirt and tank top and steel-toed boots and a backpack, and some of the Landry advocates thought I was an anarchist and told me so and then gave me dirty looks. They kept asking me who I was with, and I’d say “myself” and that I had gone there neutrally. Weirdly, that made a lot of people not want to talk to me. Neutral people are easy to win over.
For the first half of the rally, I was livestreaming on my regular Bambuser, but my livestream link wouldn’t share and I was too tired to figure out why. The police were in the street then, and the counter-protest of maybe 30 or 40 people (I think) was getting really loud, and I kept looking for Justin to show up but he wasn’t showing up. People kept trying to talk to me about which side I was on. I started feeling nervous even though I never get crowd anxiety anymore. Mostly I was nervous that I kept looking for Justin and he wasn’t there, and I always feel nervous around the police (which is a rational response for someone who has witnessed police brutality), and also I was nervous because I was sad that there were people there on either side and I didn’t want to have to take a side, which I felt some weird pressure to do based on my own ingrained patterns.
From an activist perspective, I was proud of the counter-rally for making so much noise. Even though I wanted to hear Captain Black talk about problems related to crime that aren’t limited to race and hope that at some point people will have a dialogue and work on the horrible problems in this city, I haven’t been to a decent protest in a while, and “some anarchists” were shutting that rally down. The news crews kept turning around every time the counter-protest would chant ‘No Justice No Peace’ or ‘You Killed A Child’ or other chants, and the Landry rally people weren’t really able to articulate their ideas to the press in many instances. From a neutral perspective, I can say the counter-protest was effective. If the group went to the Landry rally to “shut it down,” they accomplished that. Whether or not one agrees with their message, the tactic worked.
It had been a long time since I stayed neutral at a rally, and I felt weird and kind of lonely and nervous. I went over to the counter-protest and told my livestream I was there being neutral because I didn’t want people I actually give a fuck about to think I was protesting them. I don’t know why I care what people think except I do, I guess. Again, that’s just something I have to work on in my own head.
Then I wandered around wishing I had a cigarette lighter and thinking Justin would when he got there. A man who held a Free Landry sign said he would pray for me because I was an anarchist.
Also making me nervous was the guy playing the flute. He wouldn’t stop playing it and some yelling about Jesus went on. Someone else was holding a Bible, but I never got to ask why. I didn’t want to film some of the counter-protesters who don’t like being filmed, so I kept moving around and trying to be really obvious about not filming them and even filming the ground to make sure I didn’t film them. I figured at that point that Justin must be asleep.
I couldn’t call him b/c I was livestreaming, and if the police are there I make sure the livestream stays on.
First Video
I figured out my Bambuser livestream was fucked up and set to private, so I switched to Ustream. NOLA Defender was there, and the reporter was really taking some interviews, and I hope they have a good article.
I interviewed a man from a labor organization who asked me what would happen if, hypothetically, someone were to be in a random yard accidentally and if it would matter if a family member was confused and trying to enter the wrong yard and got shot. It’s a question worth pondering.
For a while, I tried to interview more people, but there would be some kind of chaos happening as the MSM reporters ran around trying to find people they could hear enough to even interview while the counter-protesters chanted louder and louder at times. At first, nobody really wanted to answer my questions; they mostly wanted to know where I stood, and I must have been having a bad day and was too tired because I didn’t ask really specific questions or explain that I wasn’t trying to narrate what was happening I was trying to interview people. I probably said “but” and “like” a lot and kept filming the ground when people who don’t like being on camera were getting in the camera view.
Then the some of the Ecosocialists showed up and joined the counter-protest at the end, all standing behind the banner and yelling their heads off. They didn’t have any signs or banners. Now that there’s no more Occupy for them to get to make signs for them, I guess they just go without. Rev Brown was there too. I was really glad the mean Socialist Alternative people weren’t there selling newspapers because they’re so fucking mean to me lately. People who use the tragedy and work of others for political gain really bother me.
The counter-protest was breaking up by that time, but there was still some chanting going on.
I interviewed as many people as I could, including someone who showed me the gate and Landry’s porch.
Captain Black was talking to a woman from an organization - European Dissent - who wanted to help bring some kind of peace to the city (I didn’t hear all of the discussion because her friend said they didn’t want to be filmed, so I turned around to shut my phone camera off), and most of the counter-protest was gone by then.
Finally, Captain Black introduced me to the women, and they said I could interview them.
I told Captain Black I’d give him a ride home because his ride was gone, and I felt like talking to him about the rally. I called Justin to tell him I was coming home and he answered and said okay and sounded like he’d been sleeping.
Captain Black and I had some good conversations in the car about the sad state of the world in general. We also talked about the Landry case ways it is different than the Trayvon Martin shooting. I give Captain a lot of props for not pitching a fit that a group held a counter-protest that was louder than his rally because if I’d organized a rally and people protested it and made so much noise, I’d be inconsolably irate after.
We discussed Rev Brown and his participation in the counter-rally and references people made to the terrible murder of Trayvon Martin. If people are upset about the Marshall Coulter shooting being a racial issue, I can understand, but it’s not the same as the Zimmerman case, and I wish MSM would stop creating so much hullabaloo and making issues seem black and white. This seems to be dividing people and shifting the focus from trying to heal NOLA (if that’s possible).
Captain Black and I went to Burger King to get 1 dollar chicken-something sandwiches. Per usual, I didn’t know how to go through the drive-thru and he was really patient with me when I asked him how to order a chicken-something five times.
I dropped him off and ate my chicken-something driving home. At home, Justin made some great points about the rally, mentioning that people should be protesting city hall and then protesting at the capital instead of protesting one another, and I tweeted it. We worked on some stuff for the Bloc Voting Andy’s Plan. Well, really Justin did an awesome job sketching out a booklet to to explain Bloc Voting, and I was answering questions on Twitter about the dueling rallies.
Then the mainstream media (MSM) coverage of the rally came out, and WGNO was so inaccurate and lacking in detail, and I tweeted to @JulesBentley about it for a minute and he said a nice thing about my coverage not being as crappy as MSM’s. I couldn’t believe the MSM coverage didn’t even really mention how loud the counter-protest was or that they had really shut the whole Justice for Merritt rally down. It made me angry at mainstream media for not reporting what actually happened (I can’t wait to read NOLA Defender’s write-up when it comes out!). This is a criticism of MSM and not the message of either protest.
The media being so inaccurate and lame is what I am protesting every minute of my life.
At that point, I felt like I didn’t totally suck for being at the rally after all. At least I can say that the counter-rally effectively drowned out most of the initial rally. No matter what “side” someone is on, or how they feel about the dueling protests, the news coverage should at least be accurate.
To be honest, it really annoyed me that some people got quoted on the news so much when he just showed up at the end. I understand that some activists don’t want to be on the news being interviewed, but the WWL article makes it look like Mike Howells was the spokesperson for the counter-rally which he did not organize and arrived at late, and I hate when people use protests - especially protests related to tragedy - for to gather supporters for a political party.
If people want to protest the people supporting Landry because they believe it is wrong to do so, I understand that and support people standing up for what they believe. Some counter-protesters seemed to feel supporting Landry is morally wrong and cared enough to make huge banners and signs and scream really loud for over an hour. However, if people want to protest supporting Landry because they are trying to build up a political party, I get annoyed because it’s just as dirty as the politicians they claim are crooked. By the way, I don’t identify as an anarchist or a socialist or a democrat or a republican or anything related to a political party. I have a lot of respect for people who try to take care of others and can be effective community organizers, and some NOLA anarchists are really capable of that.
Important Digression: the counter-protest was organized without Facebook as far as I know. So for everyone who has been following my whole rant this week about how activists don’t need to organize protests by posting all the details, times, locations, and names of organizers and their phone numbers on Facebook, the counter-rally is a GREAT example of the fact that a group can organize without Facebook. I don’t know how any random anarchists organize actions because they have good security culture and don’t blast the protest details all over the internet before a protest. As far as tactics are concerned, if news of the counter-protest had circulated the interwebs, more people might have come out in defense of Landy. However, the fact that the social networks are a buzz with people complaining about the counter-protest when they didn’t come to the rally to support Landry implies that people should go out and actually show solidarity when they care about a cause. The mainstream media is not going to tell anyone what happened.
I had a talk about this with Justin, and we wondered if it was kind of weird that people who do sometimes have protests asking to have no more jails seem to be protesting in a way that implies they don’t want the charges dropped against Landry, which implies that Landry would go to jail, and that’s a great topic that I’d love to discuss. The lack of justice in the courts and in the streets of NOLA makes me question where one finds peace.
There’s a “Justice for Coulter” rally that Mike Howells is having taking place on Saturday, and I wish people would talk to one another about how to deal with this fucked-up city and crime and everything else I can list specifically when I’m not so exhausted.
I’m a little too worn out to write anything smart or include commentary more than I did above. I hope NOLA Defender’s article is good when it comes out and mentions that there was a loud counter-protest since MSM didn’t bother describing what actually happened.
Here is a YouTube Video someone made that includes a description I initially thought was satire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W38pLuSt08
Description: “A multi-racial group of concerned citizens gathered in front of the home of Merritt Landry this evening, for the third of such meetings. Unfortunately an organized group of uninformed, rude, hateful and wayward scum showed up to disrupt the peaceful gathering. Foul language was heard from both sides. The interviews that we had scheduled were interrupted due to their cult like chanting. The event was covered by WGNO (ABC) New Orleans and is expected to air this evening. Other media attended, including NOLA Defender.”
NOTE after writing this, I was contacted by a reporter from the Times Picayune.
I was quoted in the article In Marigny, rival protests for and against homeowner charged with shooting 14-year-old in the Sunday paper because the writer called me to ask me what had happened since he hadn't been following the story that closely.
