We have childcare until 9:30pm so we bundle up, and trundle our middle-aged asses off to Coast Guard Island. Date night in 2025 isn’t as relaxing as it used to be.
My partner had been going since ICE’s raids on the Bay Area were first announced, with the island named as their base. He and the ten others with him were nearly run over that first night by ICE agents smashing the gas pedal over the bridge. The agents taunted them. It was a frightening night. Now, on the second day we’ve all seen the footage of a pastor being shot in the mouth with a gas canister, from nearly point blank range. The agent who did it pissed his pants– afraid, apparently, of Christ. It was a long, tense day.
When we get there, I’m nervous. I don’t need to be. Mostly nothing happens. There are only about twenty five people, a mix of young people in all black, with Keffiyahs tied around their faces, and older folks with frog hats and patriotic signs. A couple our age walks around giving out sandwiches that are, by everyone’s account, really good. When those are gone, they hand out brownies.
I wish I’d brought food to hand out. It would be something to do. Mostly, this is exactly the same as countless protests I’ve been to before: just a handful of people standing around and chatting loudly about their shared politics. A person with an n95 mask, standing dead center, reads Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. We make friends, chat a little.
Mostly nothing happens, until the Coast Guard officers at the top of the bridge part their ranks to allow a sedan through. We join everyone else, and block the car’s way out. It’s tense. People yelling. Someone rolls a dumpster out to block the car’s way. A Coast Guard officer–a handsome white guy, probably in his late 30s or early 40s, with a good beard and a bad job–tries to explain that it’s just a Coast Guard officer, not ICE, and he just wants to go home. No one here cares about the Coast Guard coming and going; we’re only here to stop ICE. Eventually, an agreement is struck that the car can leave if it shows a Coast Guard ID.
The good bearded Coast Guard guy chooses one of us (a white guy with a veteran’s cap) to check the ID. We let the car pass. We wait.
Mostly nothing happens, but one more time, the same thing. Car comes out, the dumpster rolls in, the ID is checked, the dumpster is rolled out. It takes significantly less time the second time around. It’s boring and then tense, and then boring again.
And that’s it, until it’s time for us to get home to the nanny, expecting us. We give the person with the Octavia Butler book a ride home. Mostly nothing happened. An hour after that, we hear, someone backed a UHaul truck toward the Coast Guard officers, accelerating. The officers were scared, and they opened fire. A bullet ricocheted and hit a protestor. The driver is hospitalized, we later hear; when released, she is booked and charged.
The next day, it’s announced that ICE will not be raiding the Bay Area, our tech oligarchs having apparently made themselves useful for once. Back to boring. And that’s how it feels: Intermittent bursts of violence and conflict , and then radio silence, the promise of more horrors to come, and no sense of when they will start; until it does, mostly nothing will happen. But there are lots of us, waiting. When the time comes, whenever it does, people will come out.
Next date night at the protest, I’ll bring food, and share it with everyone ready to stand in the way.