POLICE RIOT - LOVE HOLDS FAST
Berkeley Barb article and poem from Priscilla*****, who was there
1968 Bekeley Barb Article "Tales of the Terror"
(This intense police terror riot in the Haight Ashbury was reported here in the Berkeley Barb, and a couple other small publications, and then quickly "buried"...... hmm - imagine that.)
It was one of the trademark Haight days, sunshine and clouds trippin the
sky,
people everywhere, wondering and wandering, trying out smiles
people of all shapes sizes colors from all the corners of the earth, it
seemed,
learning to experience what this world could mean , what love could
BE....
It was a full-flowing -saturated -with -energy kind of a day. It was a
Threat.
A car inevitably became a huge steel weapon, and a dog went down in the
street.
There was a frozen moment in time, the driver and the dog-person spoke
with each other,
and in that meeting I remember seeing what it meant to say "brother"...
It was covered. They sat in the street, and slowly the magical waves of
celebration
and one-ness returned. Smiles peeked out again, music began it's steady
weaving
in and around the crowds of folks...it was okay.
I saw the police at the same time I became aware of the deepening
silence.
Sounds faded away, movement hushed, the police came. Little men in large
uniforms,
marching, no, I thought I was hallucinating, Goose-Stepping down the
middle of Haight St.
The air turned greasy, sour, and then electric, with the coppery smell
of growing fear
.
Silence was like pressure, and I know we were all holding our breaths.
We watched,
and the Main Man gave an order to " Break Form.." something garbled.
Those little unifoms
with legs became gigantic whirling stick-machines. Fat, hard clubs.
Their focus was anyone
on the street. Richly clothed suited-up Nob Hill tourist, young
long-gold-haired mother holding
her child. No one under the clubs got away from them. I met the eyes of
a small child whose
mother lay under blurred windmilling up-and-down uniformed arms, and
legs. For a split-second
in time, the child's hair floated all around her head in the static
atmosphere. Like wings.
I ran. I am not a confrontational person. I am a coward. I ran then,
with others,but only up a block from Haight Around the corner came roaring,
zooming, up-raised clubbing uniforms. On
motorcycles. To chase us all back down into the violent despair that had
been created.
That happened a few times, until some of the folks living in those
houses started opening
front doors and screaming for us to come in. I never found out which
house I wound up
in. I always wanted to , because they saved my ass, my sanity, perhaps
my Life that day.
Brothers. Sisters. We must have been some threat, the Establishment
lost it on that day.
I saw fallen people, beaten, children left alone in a tangle of terror,
and I saw hands
held out to try to help. I saw old men carrying young dudes over their
shoulders to safety.
I saw young hippies kneeling to comfort a fat well-dressed bald white
guy, whose shoes
shined almost as much as the jewels on his fingers. I saw tears in the
eyes of one uniform,
a young red-fired face with glazed, melting eyes and a mouth formed into
a soft O.
I was there that day, and I was forever changed.
Something Shifted inside me, and forever connected me with the
life-force
I may call Bro, or Sis, or other names, but which I know is Humankind,
in all it's
fragile newness and exquisite courage.
may we all,
Shine.
priscilla*****
1968 Bekeley Barb Article "Tales of the Terror"
The Hippies
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