signs and signals

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 19:19:12 GMT

I was returning from my constitutional Saturday, and saw a group of people lined up along Mass Ave, holding up signs every 6 feet or so: "Black Lives Matter," "No Justice No Peace," "I Can't Breathe," "Hate Has No Home Here." I ran up to my apartment to make a sign, have a drink, and put on a mask that wasn't soaked with sweat, then went back to take up the slack in the line.

This was nowhere near the Black Lives Matter event in downtown Boston. As some of you know, I am afraid to go where there are likely to be police lights much less police violence. And of course now even taking the T is frightening. My neighborhood is closer to Lexington Battle Green than to the Boston Common, and this whole thing felt very quiet and peaceful and just saturated with white privilege. I'm not sure if it was any more meaningful than re-tweeting helpless outrage. But I did go back. And I'll be going back again.

The plan, insofar as there is a plan, is for people to stand there with signs for an hour every day. Cars going by have responded very positively. More than 2/3 of people passing waved or honked or gave us a thumbs-up. (Including most of the bus drivers.) Some rolled their windows down and cheered. I only saw one actively negative response. Even the police officers gave us tightly civil nods when they drove past.

There were several times I was a little scared. A surprising number of drivers pulled out signs to wave out their windows, to show their agreement. I had no idea so many people just happened to carry "black lives matter" and "I can't breathe" signs around in their back seats. It's great that they do! But FFS, people, keep your hands on the wheel!

And there was that one guy. He wasn't scary, but he was confusing. He might have just been passing by on his way home from a cosplay event, and not paying any particular attention to us. (Do I want to know what kind of cosplay?) He was wearing a tricorne hat and carrying the flag of Imperial Japan. If he had been wearing an old-fashioned navy uniform, or some outfit that looked vaguely steam-punkish, it would have had a different effect than wearing that hat with cargo shorts and hiking boots.* I would also have seen it differently if he had been holding the flag up and waving it, instead of carrying it down around his knees.

*I cling to the idea that if I don't make fun of other people's fashion choices, nobody will make fun of my own, so I can wear cargo shorts for as long as I can squeeze cell phones into the pockets.

*Does anybody even remember Burma Shave anymore?

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Tekiah

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 06:11:34 GMT

I went marching yesterday.
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2019/07/never-again-1000-activists-stop-traffic-in-boston-protesting-ice-detention-centers-18-people-arrested.html
I didn't really plan to go. I'm afraid of strobe lights, afraid of running into trouble alone. But I had some extra spoons when my 3-7 plans fell through, and there was brilliant sunlight to drown out the strobes. So I went, on the theory that a big crowd would be better than a small one. I texted somebody in my synagogue to meet up, but we couldn't find each other in the crowd. I saw at least 5 other people from my ridiculously small synagogue, saw them to wave to, and Julian was drumming. (I had to ask strangers for help when I ran into trouble with petit mal seizures, and that was terrifying even though the marshals were great.)

We were walking through downtown Boston for more than an hour, singing and chanting. Traffic on the cross streets stopped to let us go by, and drivers cheered. I didn't think Boston drivers would be happy about ANYTHING that stopped rush hour traffic. I waved to pedestrians, and people standing on the sidewalk taking pictures, and called for them to join us...I think some did. I felt very far from alone .

The stranger next to me was carrying a shofar. She blew it when the speeches were over and we started to march. And she blew it to call our attention back to the specific purpose of the day:
Never again means never again!
Never again means close the camps!
Never again means now!
I loved that note of it being a Jewish march. I never thought I'd march through downtown Boston yelling "Never again" between blasts of the shofar. I never thought I'd NEED to.

Even though my conversations with the people near me were mostly limited to "What did she just say?" or "Can you see what they're doing in front?" the shofar was always very clear and understandable.

There's a Yiddish poem by Kadya Molodowsky, Ba'al Tekiah. I saw it ages ago, translated as "The Shofar Blower," but it was explained to me that the title means "the one who controls the sound of the shofar." Which isn't quite the same thing. I just found it online, without the illustration of thorns twisting into barbed wire and the shofar-blower seeming to call out alone in the darkness.

https://humancalligraphy.blogspot.com/2011/02/shofar-blower-by-kadya-molodowsky.html

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adrian_turtle

signs and signals

Tekiah