Substance reporter among those rounded up at March 20 anti-war protest...

30 hours of life...

By Leo Gorenstein

“ Hey Sue, remember our talk about not getting arrested at any of these demonstrations because it’s going to start getting hot? Well, I’m calling you from a paddy wagon”…

Yep. The “experienced” protest marcher was heading off for jail at 111th and Cottage Grove with seven other guys in a paddy wagon. It’s not that I felt we shouldn’t be arrested or that I wasn’t willing to be arrested in order to protest, it was just that I’d been sure that the crowd of two to three thousand that was trapped on Chicago, just east of Michigan, Thursday, March 20, was too large to worry about being arrested. But, like so many other things in life, things and abilities had changed.

The protest rally started at 5:00 in Federal Plaza. By the time we got ready to march at about 5:45 the plaza was packed. Before long we were on Lake Shore Drive and the police had to shut the North bound lanes. Pretty soon the crowd took the southbound lanes too and then we got off the Drive at Oak and headed for Michigan Avenue.

But the police made their stand there and prevented the huge crowd (the papers estimated 10,000) from going onto Michigan with a phalanx of police on horses and what looked like blue-helmeted police at least five-deep blocking the rest of the way. Soon the throng headed back for the drive after chanting, among other reasons as to why we wanted to march on Michigan, “We just want to shop”.

Soon, a smaller but significant 2000 to 3000 protestors (my untrained estimate) were trapped on Chicago at Michigan with police on horses and hundreds of police on foot to the west and hundreds more police to the east. Buildings and walls blocked any exit to the north or south. There were plenty of police (300-500?) but I wasn’t worried. There were too many of us.

Then I saw the huge sheriff’s police busses (you know, those white ones you might have seen over the years) and about a buhzillion paddy wagons. I went up towards Michigan but the police there weren’t letting anyone out. And about one block east they wouldn’t let you out either even if you asked.

I had been watchful all night for what the police were doing and where I was in the crowd, who was around me, etc. because I really didn’t want to get arrested. Being 6' 4" I’m generally able to see over the crowd and I had kept track of the police, where they were and how many there were. Now, trapped, I was in the middle of the crowd and didn’t think they’d arrest all of us. But they arrested a lot of us including me by coming into the crowd and taking the leaders first, continually squeezing the crowd, letting enough go out the back and front to reduce the size of the crowd, eventually filling all those damn busses and wagons.

Just before my arrest the line of police got so close to me that I even asked one of the police what their ninja turtle outfits were made of. “Is that kevlar,” I asked. “No, this is foam. The vest (bullet-proof) is underneath,” he said. Then I was handcuffed. Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

On the way to 111th and Cottage Grove I thought about the crowds during protests in the 60s and 70s. No way one of those crowds of the past with 2000 to 3000 protesters wouldn’t have busted through the police lines. I remembered the ugly riot in 1967 (I think) when Sly and the Family Stone didn’t show up for a free concert. The crowd rampaged, smashing windows on Michigan Avenue amongst other things. Some of the police who were there were quoted in the newspapers at the time saying that they feared for their lives.

But things are different now and when I had been told it was my turn to be arrested I just turned around to be handcuffed with plastic zip-strips like everybody else.

In jail

When we got to the jail around 11:00 p.m. on Thursday we were in a long line of paddy wagons. It took at least an hour before the eight of us were unloaded from our wagon and taken in to the station. While waiting, we had banged on the walls for the police to open the door to take care of one of us whose plastic cuffs were too tight. The police said they weren’t too tight and left them on. They did open the door of the wagon to give us some air. Finally, it was our turn to go inside.

“ Hey, didn’t I see you in ’68?” asked the officer putting my personal items in a bag while I was removing my belt and shoelaces. “No,” I said. “But maybe you were one of my students?”

I was thinking. Maybe one of the officers here was one of my students. I taught on the south side for about 20 years. I started looking at the badges for a name or a face I might remember. But maybe I’d find a former student who hated fractions. God, my first full year teaching I taught fractions for 17 weeks. What if it was one of those kids?

After that I was placed in my first cell for the night. There were so many guys brought in that we were being crammed in the cells as we started going through the process. I started to look around to see who had been arrested.Most of the other arrestees were in their 20s and, I guessed, were probably middle class. From what I could see, those arrested were predominantly white but there was a definite number of blacks as well as a few Hispanics and Asians. There was one Turkish man in my cell and there was also a salesman from California who had stepped out of his hotel that night to see what was happening. After looking around I started to think about the last time I’d been arrested.

In 1972 (I think) I was arrested and placed, handcuffed, in a squad car. Those police started to use some of their tactics pretty quickly. “Gorenstein, huh. Maybe we ought to make a bar of soap out of this guy?” Even though I was in a much different situation now than 30 years earlier, I wondered what kind of games would be played in 2003.

Some of the police seemed to enjoy screwing around and trying to play with your mind. There was the one who was working about 18 hours straight and singing …”give war a chance” instead of …”give peace a chance.” Other officers seemed to try to get your hopes up that you’d be released soon, that they’d let everybody out, that we’d be in for the whole 72 hours someone said they could legally hold you, and some officers were clearly just doing their jobs and played it straight. One was even wearing a “No War” button.

Anyway, many thoughts went through my head. But I knew that I should just stay calm, my time would pass. Nothing bad was going to happen to me. In fact, although some of the guys were very upset, the great majority handled being in jail real well by just sleeping or talking

But then, after a few hours in a cell, I started to think about some of my former students again. How many of them had jail as a steady, prominent part of their life. How many of them weren’t in a position like I was where the hours could just pass and then it would be over?

There were 32 of us in one cell that would be comfortable for 10 or 12 and we talked about many things. We discussed the Patriot Act, the prisoners in Guantanamo, the police, the war, Bush, many topics … and how long we’d probably be in. These talks made me think about my former students again. I remembered so many students who were going straight from high school to the military. We talked about who was in the military too.

Sometimes for one reason or other we’d start singing or chanting. There was 99 bottles of beer on the wall and one of the chants was a takeoff on a chant during the demonstration. Instead of “Whose streets? Our streets!” we were chanting “Whose jail? Our jail!” But we were also talking about the war, why we were demonstrating, why they were holding us so long and a myriad of other related topics.

One cell-mate came up and said, “You’re different. What’s your story?” Since almost all of the others in the cell were in their 20s I was different. This guy was next oldest in the cell at 46 and we knew a few of the same people. In fact, he knew about Substance and was pretty sure that Substance was publishing a letter in its next issue concerning students walking out of schools on protests.

They kept putting us in different cells and I could tell that I was part of the last group each time. Once fingerprinted, about 20 or more hours after my initial arrest, I was placed in the last cell I’d be in. As that group dwindled from 10 to 3 I was called next, about 3:00 am Saturday. I hoped Sue had left and gone home to bed. But she was there and had been since 8:00pm. There were many others still waiting, too, as well as a lawyer from the lawyers guild.

It was great to see Sue. She said she wanted to be there and that she knew that I’d have been there for her if our roles were reversed.