I tap Ixchel on the shoulder to let her know of the instant publicity that the protest was attracting through the multiple snapchat videos and flashing cameras trained on our faces. Police officers were offering their hands to us and we walked across the street. Together. When we reached the Trump Towers, the officers put metal barricades around us. I soon realized they weren’t corralling us; they were keeping everyone else out because as newspapers would later write, this march of four hundred mostly privileged white students was peaceful. However, newspapers never deem protests as peaceful, so why us?
Six months earlier, I was filled with overwhelming pride as multiple fists ranging in colors from warm brown rice to sharp black pepper and spicy red curry rose in the air. The blood of our enslaved and undocumented ancestors, our history of broken backs and cracked feet spilled out on the clean “cookie-cutter” rugs of the New School building. I felt the shudder of the strong woman next to me as we breathed in and out as one, frightened of what was to come. We walked toward Grand Central Station with foreheads drenched in salty sweat and sticky lemonade fingers as red-faced men screamed “Sluts!” and “Put some clothes on!” Some mothers raised their fists in a salute to our anti-slut-shaming protest; others covered their daughters’ eyes, shielding them from the free women of color fighting for their future. We didn’t avert our eyes from the gaze of our zookeepers; we stared it in the face and unchained ourselves. At Grand Central Station, we screamed. We were thunder, demanding to be heard. A group of twenty women, hands linked in solidarity. Together we were no longer forced into their straight-jackets that typecast us; we reclaimed a meaning that was inclusive of our power as young women of color. Cameras flashed and everyone stopped to admire the young women they thought belonged in zoos. Our skin glowed with all of the colors of the rainbow and every flag across the globe. Police officers just had to shut it down. Twenty cops, one for each of us, came down to tape our lips together, but we didn’t need to speak in order to stand out. We were like thunder, no longer seen, but heard. As the chief of the NYPD tells us that we were disturbing the peace and we have to leave in an orderly fashion, we stick up our middle fingers and chant, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Six Decades of Protest, 1964–
LINDA CORMAN
Soledad’s reflections on her experiences demonstrating for various causes made me think back about my own experiences, and the related interactions with police.
What were the police thinking
When the busloads of white, suburban kids spilled
Onto the grounds of the
School building, its crumbling, scarred brick façade draped with “Freedom Boycott” hand-painted in black on a white sheet
Windows covered in heavy iron bars (or was it broken chicken wire?)
Perhaps some boarded up where stones had sailed through the glass
(We were told to take advantage of the bathroom stop at Howard Johnson’s on our way into town; no telling whether the toilets at the school worked)
I, at 13, in pleated skirt and round-collared blouse, proud to skip school and join, at our mother’s urging, the protest against “De-facto Segregation” and the decrepit schools to which Boston’s black children were consigned; my brother, a few years older, chafing under parental tutelage, but clasping a dog-eared copy of Another Country.
What were the police told to do that day?
Were they told to “protect” us do-gooders from the black kids, parents, ministers, principals
Who we joined on the barren hillside sloping down from the school to sing “We Shall Overcome”?
Or, were they there to protect white Boston from us?
Did they curse us under their breaths, “Nigger Lovers”?
Or, did they look on, taciturn, and then go home to their neighborhoods, and their only slightly better-kept schools
And vote for Louise Day Hicks?
****
Seven years later, in Harvard Square, my brother,
Raging against the war (Vietnam)
High on something
Skinny, angry, dirty, hair flamboyant, Medusa-like
“Hippy scum.”
“Lock him up.”
Did they finally get to unleash their fury at the privileged, white suburban kid?
***
At JFK, after the Muslim ban
Police—at least one for every 20 protestor—machine guns dangling from their belts
Corralled us into a triangle of concrete near a parking garage
Marginalized, shunted aside, hidden from most of the waves of passengers entering and leaving the international terminal
We chanted, “Immigrants Are Welcome Here” and “Remember the St. Louis.”
As I left, chilled, new waves of protesters arrived. I glanced up at a few young officers at the end of a gauntlet on either side of a sidewalk they were “keeping clear for passengers.”
“Someday soon, you’re going to have to decide what side you’re on,” I remarked, counting on age, as well as whiteness, to protect me from immediate danger.
MADIHA ALAM
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Senior
HIGH SCHOOL: The Bronx High School of Science
BORN: Queens, NY
LIVES: Queens, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Scholastics Arts & Writing Awards: Gold Key, Honorable Mention
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: The first time I met Diana, we bonded over the Mellow Morning playlist we both listen to on Spotify, which was the first of many things we share. Despite our different backgrounds, we are always able to relate to each other. Diana has helped me see beyond my own experiences and, as a result, has helped me give more substance to the pieces I write. It is because of her that I no longer hesitate to share my writing with others and strive to write outside of my comfort zone.
DIANA SALVATORE
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Marketing Associate, Innisfree M&A Incorporated
BORN: Brooklyn, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Suffragette City (Managing Editor)
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: I was