I took a creative writing class a while ago. For our first assignment I used an actual event to write a fictional short story about a young girl caught up in the anti-war protests during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Although well written, it completely failed because the young people in my peer review group did not find it believable.
My peer review group consisted of three 18 or 19 year olds, and a woman in her 70s. The class was held in a very white, very conservative town in a very conservative area: these kids simply could not buy into the thought that the police were anything but our friends.
So, I revised it into a literary non-fiction essay which gave me the opportunity to append a little verification of what had happened that night. The arrest of a protester in Milwaukee the other day brought it back to mind.
Since those who don't know their history are bound to repeat it, the essay is beyond the squiggle.
I can’t remember his name.
It is driving me crazy that I can’t remember his name because I can remember so many other things about him. I can still see him, standing over six feet tall, gangly, with long limbs and big feet, and fine blond hair dropping down over his broad forehead onto the top of his horn-rimmed glasses. In his early twenties, he was wearing light green surgical scrubs that night. I can still feel his hand on my back and hear his voice, calm and sure, in my ear. But I can’t remember his name.
I thought of him last week when I heard that a Los Angeles Police Department officer allegedly shot an allegedly knife-wielding Columbian man in Westlake Village. I think about him whenever I see video of a police officer kicking a prostrate, hand-cuffed suspect in the head, or a group of officers kicking and beating a man on the ground who is only trying to gain a fetal position to protect himself, or any one of the many other video clips of officer assaults on civilians. And I can never remember his name.
I think he was married; it seems there was a tall brown-haired girl with him the few times that we ran into each other at the bookstore. But she wasn’t with us that night. It was just the two of us walking up North Clark, he in his scrubs, me in my nursing uniform, on that particular August night. We walked past the small crowd that the police had cleared out of nearby Lincoln Park.
Beyond the cones of light cast by the street lamps, it was very dark. I don’t recall any traffic on Clark Street, which was unusual. I do remember two busses pulling up alongside us mid-block, where they clearly didn't belong. I had barely enough time to register how odd it was that there were no lights on inside the busses when all of the doors flew open and a seemingly endless stream of black-uniformed, helmeted men came pouring out of all of the doors, cursing and growling. Feeling like a boulder in a river, I stood embedded on the sidewalk as the police swirled around us and charged into the crowd standing in front of the auto showroom windows.
I felt his hand on the small of my back and heard him whisper in my ear, “Keep walking. No matter what happens, don’t run. Just keep walking.” I don’t know why I trusted him the way I did. I was young, only 19, and I was frightened. His words made me feel that somehow, I could walk out of this nightmare, unharmed.
I tried to remember his name while watching the endless replays of the Rodney King beating in 1991. That video always brought tears to my eyes because it looked so much like the scene on North Clark Street that dark August night in Chicago, during the Democratic Convention of 1968. In one of the islands of light, a circle of uniformed officers were kicking and swinging clubs at a young man who didn’t have the sense to stay down on the ground. That is when the man, whose name I can’t remember, said, “Go ahead, Sue, I’ll meet you at the church,” and pushed his way into the circle armed only with his red first-aid kit to help the boy.
I wish I knew his name. The last time I saw him, a cop was bringing a club down across his shoulders as he knelt to help the boy. I continued to walk, fighting to keep an even pace, trying so hard not to surrender to my body’s adrenaline fueled demand and run just as fast as I could. Three cops approached me, one with a raised can of mace aimed at my face. Another grabbed the arm with the mace and pulled it down as he briefly nodded to me. Perhaps it was my white uniform that stopped them. Or perhaps, it was that I didn’t run, but that I just kept walking that kept me safe. Or perhaps, it was my prayers. I don’t know. I never will.
Today, when I see or read about police brutality, I wonder, as so many others do, what the victim did to provoke the attack. Born and raised in a law abiding society, where we are taught that obeying the rules will keep us safe, we tend to believe that only rule-breakers get hurt. Surely, they must have done something to cause the police to react the way they did. They must have done something that the video doesn’t show or the story doesn’t tell.
But then I remember that night. No one provoked those policemen. They came out of those busses swearing and swinging clubs. There were no taunts from the crowd; there were only screams of fear and pain. These men were supposed to protect us. They were supposed to keep us safe. When those whose job it is to protect, attack, where do we turn for help?
I remember so much from that night. I remember what he did, what he said, and how safe I felt when I was walking with him and how terrified I became when he left my side. I remember how brave he was. I remember the look of the concrete sidewalk at my feet, the smell of the tear gas in the air, and the feel of the cool night breeze across my face. I remember the fear, and I remember the horror.
I wish I could remember his name.
“During the week of the Democratic National Convention, the Chicago police were the targets of mounting provocation by both word and act. It took the form of obscene epithets, and of rocks, sticks, bathroom tiles and even human feces hurled at police by demonstrators. Furthermore, the police had been put on edge by widely published threats of attempts to disrupt both the city and the Convention.
”That was the nature of the provocation. The nature of the response was unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night.
”That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were occurring.”
 Rights in Conflict. Convention Week in Chicago, August 25–29, 1968. A Report submitted by Daniel Walker, Director of the Chicago Study Team, to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Introduction by Max Frankel. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968. pp. 1, 10–11.