I texted my mother telling her that I attended a vigil for Renee Good in Fruitvale. “Trump fucking lied about what happened along with that witch, Noem,” she replied.
I texted back: “She said Renee was trained to ‘weaponize’ her car by a national terrorist cell,” and in my next bubble: “Which is true. I attended that workshop.”
“Right. Good class,” my mother quipped. We were trying to be funny. Something needed to be funny after that vigil, which took me two weeks to process and write about.
Upon arrival, I had felt deep despondency. There weren’t very many people, even gathered on the tiny walkable strip that cuts through the very 90s-styled outdoor mall surrounding the BART stop. Had we become so numb that even a woman being shot in the face doesn’t get us to come out in the 56 degree weather? When I arrived, one organizer shouted ineffectively into a failing megaphone as the 40 or so attendees stood stoically in a circle. A beep from an apartment’s dying smoke alarm rang out every 2 minutes. I looked at my fellow mourners, expecting no solace, no comfort, nothing, really. But the vacant expressions were all that stood between me and the most flaming, absolute, unmitigated, animalistic rage. And when the speakers mentioned Trump or Noem or Bondi, one by one, people would pop.
FUCK THEM
FUCK ICE
Beep.
We barked when we weren’t supposed to, like hecklers. And then, when the organizers called on us to make noise, we had nothing to say.
The strange tiny woman behind me shouted, “You don’t want to hear my noise. Too angry to make noise. I wanna shut it all down, but my union is fucking useless…” her voice trailed off.
Eventually, they got us to chant. We are all well-trained on the chanting. Renee Nicole Good. Renee Nicole Good.
Our organizer with the shit megaphone tells us to take a moment of silence for Renee—okay, good, a second to cool off—she hands off the megaphone, and her co-organizer immediately screams, “Let’s make some noise!” The crowd is rattled by the whiplash, kind of like how ICE goons yell at you conflicting orders. I’m sick from second-hand embarrassment. Beep.
I don’t remember all the speakers because most were ineffective, terrible at reading the room. We did call and response for what seemed like hours, and then heard from someone who just had charges dropped for allegedly slashing an ICE vehicle’s tires. He spoke about the Black Panthers and Oscar Grant. He spoke about the built environment around us, the architecture that connects us to resistance struggles of the past. He was erudite, an intellectual. He spoke in historical materialism. I was still fuming, so I don’t recall the specifics, but this man had the theory behind him. “I don’t have an army behind me,” he proclaimed, “Not yet.”
He begged us to get organized, join BAMN, not to just slash tires willy nilly. Everyone here wanted to slash tires willy nilly. So full of rage, we look down at our hands wondering why God gave us these if we weren’t using them to fight. Beep.
There was a lot of God-talk that night, actually. A musical performance from a very kind activist with a melody and a key that didn’t quite jive with the whole “we want blood” atmosphere referred to god standing with us. The musician told us she’s religious, but encouraged us to think of the lines about God however we’d like.
Two old photographers with faded press passes milled about inside the circle, regularly standing in front of the same two masked protestors with signs to take the same photo over and over. They’d confer with each other, mask my view of whoever was speaking, fumble with their large DSLRs, and take another 60 photos of the same guy. I’m embarrassed again.
The last speaker was a pastor in the skinniest jeans I’d seen since The Postal Service reunion concert. “If prayer isn’t your native language, then please try to join in the spirit of the intention of these words,” he began. Enough people had joined the crowd by now that the gathering felt less pathetic, and enough cathartic shouting had been done that we all mutually recognized each other’s anger, and were no longer trying to bottle it up. Addressing God, the pastor said he knew we are supposed to try to love our enemies, “but I am having a really hard time with this one, God.” And then it got real. “I want you to instill fear in their hearts, God. God, I pray that you would tear this entire system apart bolt by bolt until only our humanity remains.” A random passerby, possibly drunk, stood uncomfortably close to the pastor, pawing at the mic. The pastor ignored him, asked God to fuck up the ICE agents, and concluded his prayer.
I know this was an Oakland pastor of the heavily lefty-persuasion, but it still shook me to see a man of God feeling the rage I felt. Yesterday, several top archbishops denounced Trump foreign policy. They’re even losing the Catholics. The circle of protestors dissipated slowly, having taken our livid bodies out of our houses, put them in Fruitvale, and did very little with them. I took my body home that night, like everyone else who showed up, I assume, went to bed angry and heartbroken and scared, but also, the tiniest bit warmed by the fellow flames we saw on Avenida de la Fuente.
