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Cinco de MayoMay 05, 2006 My Cinco de Mayo took place exactly 35 years ago, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. It was a Wednesday. The previous weekend tens of thousands of mostly free radicals had poured into town intending to shut the city -- and thus, symbolically, the war machine -- down. Like many of my antiwar colleagues and fellow D.C. residents, I had pretty strong doubts about both the strategy and the people who were coming to carry it out. It wasn't Nixon or Agnew, John Mitchell, Melvin Laird, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were going to be inconvenienced by the blockading of D.C. streets and bridges during the Monday morning rush hour, and besides the federal city paralyzed itself twice a day every weekday: no one had to risk getting busted to shut it down. In the previous couple of years, however, we'd become pretty adept at providing logistical support for visiting demonstrators, so we swung into action: scrounging food, wheedling floor space, gathering information, squelching rumors, babysitting teenage runaways through bad acid trips . . . D.C. had survived several major mobilizations by this time, with minimal damage done beyond a vast amount of litter left on the Mall, but everyone was on edge about Mayday. The Mayday demonstrators weren't interested in permits; their plans were frankly illegal, and quite a few participants were itching for a confrontation with police. More than 7,000 people were arrested on Mayday Monday. All you had to do to break the law was to stand on the sidewalk in a group of more than two. Kibitz too long and hey presto! you're getting bused to the de facto internment center at RFK Stadium. National Guard vehicles patrolled the streets, helicopters hovered just above, the air reeked of tear gas, it was just about impossible to find out who'd been arrested, where they were being held, and when they might get out. To make a long story short, by Wednesday I was seething. It no longer mattered that I strenuously disagreed with the Mayday tactics and hadn't planned to participate. I shanghaied my friend Michael and off we went to the demo at the Capitol. It was as peaceful a rally as I'd ever attended. Four members of Congress addressed us: Ron Dellums, Charles Rangel, Parren Mitchell, and Bella Abzug. The sound system was rudimentary, so they invited us to come up and sit on the steps. Most of us did. Then the cops cordoned us off and announced through their bullhorns that anyone who didn't leave would be subject to arrest. Hardly anyone left. They repeated the announcement several times. We sat. The previous couple of days civil liberties had been violated right, left, and center: Miranda warnings weren't read, bustees weren't properly booked, etc. So these guys (and no, I can't remember what flavor they were: D.C.? Capitol? Park police?) bent over backwards to do everything right. Names were recorded, rights were read; the officer who arrested me asked if my parents knew I was going to spend the night in jail. "No," I said, "but they wouldn't be surprised." About 1,200 of us were loaded into buses, lots of buses, and delivered to the Washington Coliseum. They got everything right except for one thing: there was no law against sitting on the Capitol steps. Turned out the bust on the Capitol steps was the most clear-cut violation of civil liberties of Mayday week. Dellums, Rangel, Mitchell, Abzug, and the ACLU took all responsible, right up to Attorney General John Mitchell, to court. About 10 years later I received a check for $2,000, which remains the best pay I've ever got for 36 hours of non-work. The real prize, though, was a sheet of yellow paper that I carried from the courthouse in the very wee hours of Friday, May 7, which was my friend Michael's birthday. I got one of the good judges: he dismissed charges and let us out on personal recognizance as long as we agreed to return to court "should the order be reversed." The yellow sheet was my copy. At the bottom was my signature. At the top it said "United States of America v. Susanna Sturgis." L'état, ce n'est pas moi. I've been trying to live up to it ever since.
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