Civilly Disobedient (Calm Act Genesis Book 1) (3 page)

Shuffling along, eventually the river of humanity broadened out into Fairmount Park, a complex greenbelt running along the pretty blue Schuylkill River. The area sported through-roads, woods, museums, sports fields, boat-houses, gardens, lawns, bike paths, and eventually a river walk. We reached a huge and elegant art museum that looked far more interesting and inviting than trudging along in a sea of cranky strangers. But riot police had grown steadily more numerous, deploying orange sawhorses to direct traffic. I tried to break out of the current, but a cop took one look at my Weather Vane T-shirt and directed me back into the stream. “Crowd control, Ma’am. Move along.”

I might have argued, but the driveway outside the museum was filling up with National Guard transports, not museum guests. With a twinge of misgiving, I moved along.

Interesting fact: The city of Philadelphia issued permits for only three demonstrations that Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend, for a combined maximum of 90,000 protesters. Weather Vane was one of the sanctioned rallies, and took steps to comply with their 30,000 head count limit. AARP (the American Association of Retired Persons) applied late for a permit, which was denied. Their ‘Walking Dead’ demonstrators came anyway, along with hundreds of thousands without the city’s permission to be there.

“Let me help you!” I cried, as I caught an elderly woman who started to topple over. She didn’t look too old, maybe 75, but she was limping on a cane. One of the ‘turtles,’ as I thought of them, hastened to catch her other side. The protesters demanding student loan forgiveness eschewed T-shirts, in favor of a bandanna cap, and another bandanna tied around the left bicep. I didn’t see the point of this messaging. They reminded me of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

“Thank you,” our charge breathed faintly. “So hot…” The temperature was nearing 100 by then.

With difficulty, the twenty-something turtle – her name was Jewel – and I half-carried the older woman out of the crowded roadway march, over a guardrail, and sat her down among an increasing number of black-shirted senior citizens eddied out on a scrap of shady lawn. Our charge collapsed to the grass, then curled up on her side. Jewel gazed anxiously back at the march.

“If you need to get back to someone,” I offered, “I can handle Sunbeam from here. I’m here alone.” I wished Sunbeam’s generation still remembered why they chose names like Sunbeam, and chose to wear environmental green here today instead of economic black. But the new Medicare voucher system amounted to a death sentence. I couldn’t blame them for protesting that.

“Oh…” Jewel dithered. “No. He’s gone already anyway.”

All three of us were out of water in our carry-along bottles by then. I collected the empties and started to head off through the trees. I’d glimpsed a water station back that way. The neighbors on the grass overheard us talking, and all held up empties begging for them to be refilled. In the end, Jewel and I accepted over 20 bottles to refill, and left Sunbeam to the care of her peers.

“Paying off my student loans was a real bear,” I attempted sympathetically, to open a dialogue with Jewel. There was no path through this pretty stand of woods. We took turns giving each other a hand up the steep bits.

“I’m in default,” Jewel said, deflated. “I just can’t pay the loans and buy groceries anymore.”

“I grow vegetables,” I shared. “It helps.”

“I could never do that,” Jewel said. “Black thumb. They should have done a better job on this march.”

“They who?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The organizers.”

Jewel needed to grow a backbone, in my opinion. I smiled at her encouragingly. “Good thing we’re here, to compensate. I’m sure glad you’re carrying half the bottles, Jewel. Water is heavy.”

“Oh. I’m not very strong.”

“You can do it. Oh, look! We’re here.”

The water station was mobbed. White T-shirts sporting brown fists proclaimed its sponsors were from REJ, Racial Economic Justice, pronounced ‘Rage.’ Just beyond the water crowd was a Weather Vane green canopy and enclave. I would rather have gone over there. But I dutifully joined the water lines with Jewel to discharge our mission of mercy. She didn’t talk unless I pressed her, so I let go of making the effort.

The lines were barely moving. Off to the left, beyond some more trees, some kind of commotion was growing louder. That was worrisome.

“Excuse me,” I cut in with the people ahead of me in line. “We’re fetching water for the elderly. They’re seriously overheated, and can’t wait this long. Let us ahead?” This dodge worked. People ahead of us started letting us jump the line.

After a few minutes of scuffling forward, one of the organizers up front jumped up on the water truck fender to see over the crowd. “Someone needs water for first aid?” he called out.

“Yes! Us!” I yelled, holding up a banana-hand of water bottles by their caps. “First aid water for the elderly!”

“Make way!” he agreed. “First aid coming through!”

So much for that line. From that point, we were done filling bottles inside of five minutes. We even picked up a trio of volunteer assistants to carry six more plastic gallon jugs.

I jumped as someone laid a hand on my shoulder from behind. “Good work, Dee!” Hogan said warmly, my Weather Vane organizer on the bus from New Haven. “I was watching,” he confided with a grin.

I grinned back in short-lived triumph. A sound like a gun report came from the commotion down the road. “Do you know what that’s about, Hogan?” I asked, frowning toward the noise.

“Afraid so,” he agreed. “You can drive a motor boat, right?”

“Sure,” I agreed, puzzled. I’d told him I was a swimmer on the bus. I earned my open-water life-saving certification to work lifeguard jobs at the public beaches as a teenager, and kept it up. It takes major swimming endurance to do open-water rescue. But I love swimming. Compared to that, boating certification was trivial.

“Great! Come with me down to the river,” Hogan said. He turned to my clutch of volunteers. “The rest of you can handle the water mission, right? I need Dee for another project.”

I had my doubts about Jewel, but a beefy REJ guy nodded emphatically. “I got this!” He relieved me of my spare water bottles, and they set off. I never even learned where Jewel was from. Not that I cared much. I was grateful to be relieved of my accidental AARP service. I came to Philadelphia about civil liberties and climate change, not to assist the elderly.

A flutter of reports rang out from down the road. They were getting closer. I pointed. “Hogan, about that.”

He grinned. “Yeah, it’s getting exciting, huh? Civil disobedience!” He pumped a fist. Several nearby water line onlookers matched him. “Yeah!”

“Huh,” I said. “Is that gunshot?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “We’re thinking about boat handlers down by the river. You game?” He took me by the elbow and started steering me along toward the river, away from the marchers.

“Hogan, what’s going on down the road?” I demanded.

“National Guard is shutting this party down,” he replied. “Especially back in the city streets. They’re pushing people into the park.” At my dark look, he insisted defensively, “We’re legal! Weather Vane has a permit. Not all these other people, though. Half a million showed up! Isn’t that awesome?”

No, not really. Not if they’re standing between you and the exit. “Shutting it down
how,
Hogan?” I insisted. Another spate of shots punctuated my demand.

“We think they’ll barricade us into the park for the night,” Hogan admitted. “Let people leave in controlled batches. Legal demonstrators only at first.”

“Cool!” I said. We were legal. “So shouldn’t we…” More gunshots. Screaming. A whine like a very fat bottle-rocket, and a
whumpf.
Teargas, was my guess, based on the screams.

Half a million people in the way were going to be a problem.

Hogan threw an arm around my shoulders for a half-hug. “We need your skills down by the river. Supplies. Maybe ambulance. By water.”

-oOo-

Fairmount Park is lovely. Maybe someday I’ll see it on a good day. On that Saturday, I was just grateful to escape the thick of the protest march. We approached a genteel row of stately brick boat-houses. By now it was after 4:00. The worst of the heat was relenting, and a golden haze bathed the appealing riverfront. I approved of the wide bike path, nicely separated from the car road. The bustling aged interstate on the far bank wasn’t so pretty. But back to water, and civilized natural beauty, I felt like I could breathe again. For the moment, the short hill we’d just crossed abated the noise of the National Guard action on the other side. I made a beeline for a water fountain, drank my fill, and splashed my face.

“Those boats are for sculling,” I pointed out to Hogan. Each boathouse had a rack of the delicate rowing skiffs by its side. I’d never sculled, myself. That was a placid river sport. My boating experience was in Long Island Sound, open water with waves. Though rowing was rowing, I supposed.

“Can’t use those?” he asked.

“Use them to do what?” I asked skeptically. The boats looked flimsy to me, and eager to flip. I wouldn’t want to attempt to carry passengers or cargo on one. Ambulance service was a definite no, and supply runs unlikely.

“Well, never mind. I wanted you for a motorboat,” Hogan said, and drew me along to a little pier. “Can you drive these?”

“Sure. If I have permission,” I qualified. “And if there’s someplace to go.”

“Well…” Hogan said. Maybe he hadn’t planned to ask for permission. Tough.

I held up a ‘wait’ finger to Hogan and pulled out my burner phone, unwrapping it from its Faraday cage. “Hey,” I greeted Mangal when he answered. “I’m fine, but we’re blocked into a park by the National Guard. There’s a proposal to borrow a motorboat for ambulance service, or supply runs. But if we did, where would we go?”

Over the phone, I walked Mangal through where I was in the park. On his end he checked maps and live satellite and traffic cams for me. “Waterfalls,” Mangal reported, “above and below you on the Schuylkill River. Hemmed in by a highway on the other side. Wow, those highways are a mess. No, I don’t think there’s anywhere to go by water, Dee. Not with injured.”

Of course, without passengers, I could simply swim across the river and walk along the highway. I had no pressing reason to do so. “Any news yet?” I asked. “What are they broadcasting?” Mangal had logged into our UNC Philadelphia affiliate site for the traffic cams.

“Nothing that they’re broadcasting,” Mangal reported, subdued.

“What are you seeing?” I prodded.

He didn’t answer right away. “You should stay where you are, Dee,” he advised. “It’s getting ugly back in the city.”

“Define ugly.”

“Fires. Troops. Street violence. Whole lot of people,” Mangal replied. “Stay put and stay safe?”

“Will do. Thanks, Mangal.” I caged and stowed the phone.

“What is that case for the phone?” Hogan asked.

“Oh, it shields signals. That ‘I’m not supposed to be here’ problem,” I replied. “Using boats to extract the injured or bring in supplies won’t work. The river’s not navigable. There’s violence in the streets outside the park. Our best bet is to stay put.”

“Who were you talking to?” Hogan demanded.

“Just a friend. Sir!” I called out to a member of the boathouse staff, tinkering with the engine in a Boston whaler, a small open-hulled motorboat. I walked out the dock toward him, Hogan reluctantly trailing in my wake. “Are these boathouses open to the public?”

“No,” the man replied, wiping engine gunk off his hands with a rag. “No regattas today. Canceled because of the protests.”

“The National Guard is bottling up demonstrators in the park,” Hogan said. “We were looking for a way to bring supplies in. Or at least, bring the injured out.”

“Injured?” the boatman asked in concern.

“My name’s Dee,” I said with a smile, and offered a hand to shake. “He’s Hogan. There are hundreds of elderly back there, ill from the heat. And now the National Guard has opened up with teargas. I’m not sure what else. We heard gunshots and screaming. I was collecting water for the elderly at the time.”

“Reese,” he replied, accepting the handshake with me, then Hogan. Such a simple thing, trading names and sharing a touch. But a line is crossed. We were now fellow citizens conferring on how to handle a shared problem, not nuisance customers to be brushed off.

Reese considered the situation, then decided he could open up the boathouse for use as an aid station. And he’d talk to the other boathouses for us. There were half a dozen or more establishments in boathouse row, presumably all with sanitary facilities and drinking water. They could make spending a night in the park a whole lot more civilized.

Hogan got on the phone to report back to the upper cadre of Weather Vane, while I accompanied Reese to negotiate with staff at the other boathouses. Turned out Reese was a gardener like me, and sympathetic to Weather Vane. We bonded over our vegetable concerns. My tomatoes were transplanting out two weeks early the past few years, his a full month early. The freaky weather lately was playing havoc with our harvests and boating.

Inside of an hour, official-looking canopy headquarters were staked out in front of three boathouses to represent the three groups who held legitimate permits – Weather Vane, Racial Economic Justice, and ELF, the turtles who sought Educational Loan Forgiveness. AARP set up a tent, too. But the other three demanded they pitch their tent across the street, away from us, as an illegal protest group. Not that it mattered in the end. We could resent them all we wished, for having crashed our legal demonstrations. But the senior citizens needed the most assistance, and overran the limited facilities.

By then, our quiet riverfront was inundated by stressed crowds of protesters. Coughing teargas victims had priority use of the outdoor drinking fountains. I helped the staff at one of the boathouses set up a table with a giant ice water punchbowl and cups. Hogan was having the time of his life, working with REJ to enforce clear lanes for bringing the weak through to the boathouses. Aside from people needing help, they tried to reserve the boathouse area for our authorized protesters only.