I met Desmond Gullette and Gina Ojeda near the blockades the Seattle Police Department had set up around its precinct station on 12th and Pine in advance of the Ferguson solidarity demonstrations. We started talking just after a few protesters began hustling up to the barricades, urging the crowd to "show no fear." (Almost everyone else in the crowd, including Desmond and Gina, showed some reluctance to start fighting at the barricades like it was Paris 1848.)
Gullette works three jobs and Ojeda works four while she studies at Seattle University. "We completely support them," Gullette said, gesturing at demonstrators who were massing at the police defense line. At home that evening, they'd listened to the press conference as prosecutor Robert McCulloch belligerently explained why officer Darren Wilson had not been indicted to even stand trial for the killing of Michael Brown.
"If it had been some old, rich white guy who got killed, it would've been different," Gullette said. "It's Trayvon Martin all over again," Ojeda added. "It happens all around," Gullette continued. "It sucks, because I'm black, so people think only because I'm black that I care."
Cabug Kluesner works with an organization called Bayan Pacific Northwest. "It's progressive Filipinos," he said, "who fight for the liberation of Filipino people and support other oppressed people." He heard about the decision not to indict Wilson down at Westlake Center, where he'd gathered with other demonstrators in advance of McCulloch's press conference. "I'm not surprised," he said. "I had an ignorant glimmer of hope that it would be different. But I'm not surprised."
Like many of the other demonstrators, L.âa restaurant managerâwas walking with her hands raised in the do-not-shoot gesture through the Central District. She didn't want her photo taken. It was the first time she'd marched in a protest, she said, but "eventually, you get fed up." She said the Michael Brown decision wasn't an isolated incident. It's just part of the pattern. "I call them 'the legal mob,'" she said, talking about the police. "They're all peas in a bunch."
"I wasn't surprised," said Fadumo Abdirahman, a freshman at the University of Washington (Tacoma branch) who studies international business and human rights. "It's a system that doesn't care about lives, particularly black people's lives. It's a system not made for me, for my sister, for my brother." And who's the system made for? "White people." Abdirahman grew up in Kent and started becoming more politically active when she joined the Black Student Union at UW this year.
Abdirahman noted some of the internal divisions at the demonstration. Earlier, when some people had cranked up a sound systemâblaring a particular strain of ominous electronica Seattle demonstrators sometimes play at the beginning of a protestâothers had said it was disrespectful to play music at a march commemorating someone's death. (There was tension over music later, when some white demonstrators repeatedly started trying to sing the old union dirge "Which Side Are You On?" Younger black demonstrators nearby muttered, "What's with all this singing shit?") Other demonstrators were setting off fireworks, which Abdirahman said "is not necessary."
And when some demonstrators chanted black lives matter, other demonstrators would counter-chant all lives matter. "I don't know if they all care about the case," Abdirahman said, "or if they're just here for their own causes. There are a lot of people from different groups hereâanarchists, communists. 'All lives matter?' If you're so colorblind, why is it all black blood on the floor?"
Partway through the march, I broke off to head to Mount Calvary Christian Center on 23rd and Cherry, which Pastor Reggie Witherspoon had told KIRO TV News would stay openâalong with other churchesâfor 24 hours after the indictment decision was announced so people could "come to the church and talk if you need to talk, pray if you need to pray, vent if you need to vent."
But while the hundreds of demonstrators kept walking the streets, the church was all locked up, as were the nearby Madison Temple Church of God in Christ and Mount Zion Baptist Church.
- bk
- Mount Calvary Christian Center
- bk
- Madison Temple Church of God in Christ
If people were praying, they seemed to be doing it in private. But those who were venting were out on the street.
Protesters blocked I-5 NB in Seattle. #Ferguson (@bettinahansen) Gallery: http://t.co/253Aton8V5 pic.twitter.com/vYCuRn2vhM
â Seattle Times Photo (@SeaTimesPhoto) November 25, 2014