Would you describe the experience?
It always is calming to know more detail of what we might be facing at some point.
“Would you describe the experience?”
I was there for the adventure, the national news made it sound like it was going to be a blood bath because of the 82nd and the Marines.
In the coliseum where I was held along with a few thousand others we didn’t have showers and we just slept where we could, we were kept in the bleachers while the National Guard guarded the exits and controlled the arena below, that is where the FBI did their initial questioning of every individual, offering release to those that would agree to further interrogation away from public view.
The sexes were mixed and it was a fascinating collection of people, the National Guard seemed friendly and even sympathetic, they even supplemented our food one day, I don’t remember if we were being fed or not, although when I got to the city jail I was ecstatic to find that the food was a huge cardboard box of dry bologna sandwiches, for me it was the best feast that I have ever had in a jail, I could eat all I wanted, in fact most everyone else ignored them.
Seeing how quickly and easily the system can choose to ignore all the rules of law was a little discouraging, but I already had years of experience of seeing that by being a part of the wandering hitchhiking world, It really impressed me that I didn’t see the DC police beat anyone (except at the demonstration) back then a beating at the jail or even in the offices in front of the secretaries was very common.
People should try to imagine the arrest and holding of between 12,500 and 13,500 people.
This is the kind of muscle that the city brought in,“At one point, so many soldiers and marines were being moved into the area from bases along the East Coast that troop transports were landing at the rate of one every three minutes at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, about 15 miles from the White House.”
Man, I miss the good old days, something that surprised me was that the farther away from DC you were, the more convinced you were that the city was burning and being destroyed, the people in DC seemed pretty good natured about the whole thing though.
After a couple of weeks in DC I saw the effect of the media while leaving the city just as I had seen it while approaching the city. The farther away from the city that I got (hitchiking), the more that the people were convinced that horrors and violence were taking place there (it wasn’t).