Note: All teacher and administrative names have been removed out of fear and loathing of the school board. Nothing these good people have done is morally wrong, and as such, I will not give any details which may lead to their identification and subsequent punishment. Locations have been left vague, multiple persons may be combined into one, and most names are entirely deleted. They know who they are, and are greatly appreciated by myself, the organizers, and all the students they teach and serve at BISFA.
“Money for schools and education,
not for war and deportation!”
Tired from a day of doing nothing, I slumped down in my solitary seat at the back of the bus and retrieved a copy of The Road from my backpack, thinking I had time to read. I don’t know why I ever try though, because not a paragraph in, Bennett’s head gophered up from the seat in front of me.
“Tyler,” he started, using his inquisitive tone; “if I planned a walkout, would you do it?”
I sat for a moment, squinting. “For what?”
“Well, you know ICE is setting up new facilities in Hagerstown, right?”
I didn’t, but my stomach immediately dropped. My face fell to a downturned position and I sat facing the window for a while, deep in contemplation. If my grandfather (formally Pappy; colloquially The Big Dick) caught wind of this, he would surely disapprove. Although he had told me he “wasn’t sure about Trump anymore” after some of the regime’s most explicit and frivolous moves towards fascism, he would still never be one to support protest. Besides, he has enough to worry about already. Adding grandson turns into commie to his growing list of concerns would not be productive for anybody.
So, out of necessity, I decided that what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Once I got off this train of thought, I had to consider my own views on the matter. I was against ICE, for sure, but I was skeptical of the student body’s ability to do any real political good. The students of Barbara Ingram so seldom reach a level of political consciousness deeper than an Instagram Infographic level that I do my best to not engage when a conversation steers in a political direction, which is easy to do. Not laughing is a little harder, but I usually manage to keep it under my breath.
“What’s the purpose of a walkout?” I finally asked. Bennett, an active member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, seemed a little flummoxed by this. He stammered and looked beside me, as if my second head had asked the question.
“Publicity,” he answered, regaining his composure and locking eyes with my primary head again. “Local news comes out; PSL has people who do media stuff.” He shrugged. “Yeah. Publicity.”
I slowly nodded. It made sense to me, and I was certainly for The Cause, as it were, so I asked him the proposed date and time.
At that point in planning, I thought a “walkout” would consist of Bennett, his comrade Finn, myself, and the notorious “Murphy” Murphy; and if we were lucky, we could probably get some other friendly sympathizers who had a gap in their schedule. But as Bennett planned with Finn and their friend Eva, it started to feel real. Posters were made, PSL members were consulted, and we started growing the number of confirmed walkers friend by friend. The biggest factor in our power of persuasion was our skill at squashing any fears that may fester in the minds of meeker students. Bennett assured everyone we approached who feared repercussions from the school that administration could not, by law, punish any walkers to the tune of anything but a half-day unexcused absence. I dealt with anyone who feared parental repercussions by regaling them with my own story of bravery, but I soon realized that the “my parents will kill me” phrase was usually given as a flimsy excuse for apathy.¹ Soon, I lost my patience for anyone I heard utter this, and would jolt my finger towards them accusingly while shouting, “Bourgeois!” or, “Swine!”
One morning on the bus, early in planning, Bennett told me and a couple friends who had signed on (Dallin and Indy) that he would need a speech ready, and that he sure as hell wasn’t going to write it.
“Shit,” I mumbled; “I’ll do it.” I was only half-facing him as I said it, and my speech was impaired by a lack of sleep from the previous night. I had stayed up to finish the first season of Andor, and was in a particularly involved mood after seeing the riot on Ferrix.
After I repeated my proposition, it was decided that I would be the speech writer. It was proposed that there be an open-floor situation as well, but that drew ire from myself and Bennett.
“My worst fear,” Bennett said, “is that Fox News will clip one of the freakish kids stumbling over their words and say, ‘your tax dollars are funding a public arts school so that crazy leftist students can do this!’ ” As he imitated Jesse Watters, he got a crazed look in his eye and shook his fist in the air. As much as I would love to see something rile some skullsucker like Watters into such a drooling frenzy, I know that he would make himself calm and collected, purposely contrasting the raving lunacy of the modern Student Left.
When we got into the building that day, we set up our headquarters in a vacant room. We expected the teacher to show up soon after we did, but we had a long time to plan in peace before that happened. Indy and Dallin were sent into the corner so that they could discuss a Marvel Rivals controversy without disturbing my writing process. They were understanding when I asked them away, but Bennett seemed surprised. “You really need your concentration, Tyler Gorman.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m scared I won’t be harsh enough.”
I suppose I got the better of this fear, as we had to call Indy and Dallin back several times when Bennett thought my wording ventured to be too extreme or esoteric. I don’t know how he expected two creative writers to validate those concerns, but either way, I won every one of those disagreements.
As I was lashing together the final high, white notes of the climax, the room’s suzerain reappeared. At first, I closed my laptop halfway, and Bennett swept the chant sheets off the table. But the teacher was very receptive to our civil disobedience. They claimed great pride in us, and informed us that they had just gotten back from a teacher meeting where they were informed of our plans.
We knew the school was aware of the walkout, as the day before, Bennett had told us about his run-in with an administrator, regarding the posters he and the other organizers put up around the school. “I saw [Administrator] coming down the hallway towards me, and I knew I was fucked. [They] said, ‘I’m mad at you, Bennett. You have [me] running all around the school taking these posters down!’ ”
The poster had done more good online, anyway. Eva was the chief word-spreader, and made great use of social media in her efforts. For my part, I logged back into Instagram, posted the scan, and swiftly deleted it again. I was told that my post garnered the most likes of any regarding the protest, but I haven’t logged in to verify this.
We were shocked that a meeting was called with the sole purpose to discuss and prepare for the protest. At that moment, I started to feel like I was involved in something meaningful. For the first time in my life, I would be exercising my right to peacefully assemble, and I was proud to be involved with a team of organizers who had raised enough hell–a week before the protest, mind you–so as to whip the staff into panic/preparation mode.
The teacher told us that no, we could not be severely punished for this–but unless we took serious precautionary measures, the whole thing could fall apart spectacularly. The principal of the school, Dr. Robert Hovermale (lovingly referred to as Robhov) and Sergeant Eric Knode would be required to follow us outside, and the extent of Robhov’s disciplinary action at that point would be to kindly ask us to come back inside. Even this, however, could be avoided. “I didn’t tell you this,” they said, “but if you could get everyone’s parents to sign a note–” They paused for a moment to let the ulterior means of having a “signed” note sink in. “–then there’s nothing they could do to stop you from just… walkin’ out.”
Bennett immediately began work on the mass production of slips which excused a nondescript child of some generic parent for an appointment downtown, which said child would be able to walk to and return from within the hour. All this wording was carefully selected according to the advice of the teacher, who we “heard nothing from.” We were also told that they had no idea that we had planned all this in their room.
With the speech finished and approved by all present, we needed an orator. I was heavily considered, but quickly refused. Indy and Dallin were only brought into question because they happened to be in the room, but we all encouraged Bennett to take initiative and read it himself.
“I’m not sexy enough,” he said. “And I have a speech impediment.” While I reassured him of his handsomeness, I had to admit that it was hard to imagine a crowd being won over by somebody with the height and vocal mannerisms of Elmer Fudd.
We decided we needed someone with genuine passion for the topic, a normalish look about them, and who was dripping with charisma. It wasn’t long before our only option was narrowed down to Murphy.
But there was a certain danger with running him as the Head of the walkout. He was unpragmatic, could be abrasive at times, and scorned most of the student body with a more vitriolic hate than even I care to express; but he was our man. We knew that the passion he possessed would be able to move every student in the crowd, even ones he had made foes of along the course of his high school career.
He was summoned to the dark corner of our headquarters, as it were, and was recruited as our figurehead. I sat nervously beneath him as he bent over to read the speech. When he was finished, he straightened his posture.
“Whaddya think?” I asked.
He stared at the wall and nodded nonchalantly. “Looks good.”
With Murphy on-board and Eva confirmed to pass out the chant sheets and lead them outside, we planned to have Indy, Bennett, Finn, and I hold up the banner (which would be acquired within the week and painted in school) as we marched in tandem to the square; an arrowhead to a caravan of civil disobedience. Two p.m., Wednesday, the twenty-eighth, would see the students of Barbara Ingram make a stand against the terror of ICE in our community.
That weekend, we got the most prolific snow we’ve had in this area in ten years. We didn’t have school Monday or Tuesday… then Wednesday was cancelled too… then Thursday… then we would have a delayed start to Friday. I cursed the idea of having our school week amount to five hours and twenty-two minutes and assumed we would move the protest to next week. However, checking with Bennett on Thursday night proved this assumption wrong. I shrugged and went downstairs to get a pen and some notepaper, realizing that the carefully-worded slips we had produced now had an invalid date on them. When I was finished with my forgery, I laid it on top of my backpack and continued season two of Andor.
When I got up the next morning, I pulled my Star Wars shirt over my head, but soonafter covered it with a red sweater, which I then covered with my bomber jacket. Brushing my teeth, I grunted atonally to the rhythm of “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist U.S.A.!” to get myself into the proper mood for civil disobedience.
Getting to school, I walked into the cafeteria, where my Study Hall is supposed to take place. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than five minutes of class there, but I always make sure to sign out on the sheet my teacher keeps near his improvised lunchtable desk. I realized I’d be in another one of his classes when the walkout was scheduled, so I took the chance to give him a heads up. I told him I would be getting up and walking at the strike of two. He, probably because of his childhood behind the Iron Curtain, was very understanding, and thanked me for the advance. Dropping the pencil back onto the sign-out sheet, I mindlessly punctuated our conversation with, “Civil disobedience, y’know.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Totally.”
When I got upstairs to help paint the banner, any mental sense of preparation I had was severely stomped. Meeting Bennett in the Drawing Room to lay the fourteen-foot canvas on the floor, he informed me that Murphy was apparently super ill; vomiting profusely and being generally flu-like. Although he offered to FaceTime in and deliver the speech, Bennett and I decided that this wouldn’t exactly have the same effect.
We were back at square two in terms of speech preparation. Everyone we could think of who was extremely charismatic was lacking the proper political passion, and everyone with the proper political passion was too uncharismatic. Bennett and I oversaw the painting of the banner by Stan, Leo, and Annie: a group of passionate visual artists. Noting his tree-like stature and good looks, we briefly attempted to rouse a fire in Stan’s soul, but that thought was laughed out of the room by himself and the surrounding painters.
Again, the idea that I give the speech entered the atmosphere (espoused especially by Annie, my girlfriend), and I again rejected it. I’ve been told by an alarming amount of people that I possess a certain kind of charisma, but that certain kind is always compared to that of a cult leader’s. I didn’t feel that this was the proper mood that needed to be brought to the demonstration. Besides, my public-speaking skills are sorely lacking.
“What about Indy’s brother?” asked Bennett. This seemed like a great idea to everyone present until some voyeur from the back of the room spoke up and told us that neither Indy, nor his brother (also called Finn) were at school. I was depressed that Indy wouldn’t be joining us. He was one of the few people I knew who I felt a total confidence in when it came to looking for an intellectual conversation. He was somebody whose mere presence would have probably elevated the overall perceptiveness in the crowd.
“Yeah,” the watcher continued, “their parents were afraid of the ice on the roads.”
Bennett solemnly took a seat on one of the tables we had pushed out of the way. “They’re afraid of the wrong ice.”
Eventually–and partially by inaction–it was decided that Bennett would deliver the speech. This took him off banner duty, which–coupled with Indy’s absence–nessecitated Stan being roped into holding it along with Finn and I. We had cut about a third of the material off because of its obnoxious length and burgeoning concerns about space on the square, so the job went from requiring four people to just three.
Although it was initially decided that the speaker would recite the speech from memory (which had before carried the fear of Murphy going off-script in one of his fabulous ways), it was simply impossible now. Bennett and I went over it several times, annotating a printed copy for where to pause, what words to emphasize, and where to allow for audience reaction. Doomed.
I was worried about the amount of snow that had been pushed up onto the sidewalks when the roads were plowed. I didn’t know if there would be enough room–even populating all four corners of the square–for all the students who planned on walking out. The thought of conflict with regular citizens of Hagerstown due to obstruction of the sidewalk proved spine-chilling and unavoidable. I brought this concern up to Bennett, which prompted us to run through the school, peering out of any window we thought could provide a view of the square. We were unlucky in this pursuit, running up and down the flights of stairs until Bennett remembered the guidance counselor’s office.
We walked through the open door of the conference room joined to Mr. Merrill’s office and were greeted lazily by a peer serving as his aide for the period. He looked ridiculous sitting all alone at the end of that long table, which I think was why Bennett and I didn’t feel the need to fill him in on why we were there.
“We just… need to look at something,” Bennett told him when he started stammering indistinctly. He said something about needing an appointment, but I flashed him a natural Bogart smile and told him we’d only be a minute. He knew there was no reasoning with these radicals as I walked past him, keeping my eyes on his face the whole time. He looked back down at his chromebook before I had reached the window, and when I turned around, I noticed that he was playing Super Mario World.
We could see that there was definitely a lot of snow pushed up from the street, but it only went back about two feet. Lines of little white mountains with high peaks and narrow sides. That gave us plenty of room for the surprising (and still growing) list of students who had turned in notes or had a parent email the school with express permission to participate in the walkout. Initially, I was just relieved that people had taken initiative after our mass-produced slips became outdated, then I was amazed at the potential turnout. Bennett guessed that we saw at least sixty names on the list that an unnamed person with special knowledge briefly showed us–and that’s before factoring-in the kids who didn’t turn in notes, and were planning to throw themselves into the confusion of the crowd. We knew of a few of these, and although they had given us some trepidation beforehand, it seemed that they would have enough of a crowd to get lost in after all.
On top of this, the word had spread wide enough that several non-students would be joining us on the square: Hagerstonians who were just as disgusted as we were about the operation of an ICE facility in our city, along with two members of PSL and eleven members of the Social Democrats, USA.
Having a free period for all of C Block, I took my lunch at the first shift. Annie followed me down, but when I emerged from the line, she insisted on going the opposite way we came.
“Are you coming back up?” I asked.
“Yeah!” she said. “We just… need to go this way.”
This sent me into a horrible grapple with paranoia. Had my most beloved just been working all this time to entrap me? Was she waiting for political dissidence to arise in my natural rebel soul? The curtain was coming up, I could feel it. I imagined that when we reached the beginning of the stairwell she was leading me to, she would take up the pepper spray she carried with her and incapacitate me, leaving me vulnerable to be seized and carried away to one of the unmarked vans that would be appearing in Hagerstown soon after the installation of the ICE facility.
“No, no,” I protested. “You can’t do this to me. Tell me what you’re doing. I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m ON TO YOU!” At this point, the lunch tables closest to us all fell silent—a rare occurrence for any group of theater kids—and turned to watch.
Fear and embarrassment crossed Annie’s eyes, and she assumed the same cooing tone she had used to coax me away from a fight with a middle-schooler dressed as a hotdog last Halloween: “I was going this way to get you a carnation.” I looked down the walkway to where our school’s chapter of Tri-M had a table set up with a collection box and list of names for Valentine’s Day.
“Get… a carnation for me…” I bumbled, “as a surprise. Right; I’ll meet you upstairs.” I turned away embarrassed and headed for the safe stairwell. Jesus! I thought. Is this what political involvement does to you? I remembered the episodes of Andor I watched last night. Images of the Ghorman Massacre bounced around in my head. Were my nerves just now catching up to a fact my brain had known for a week; that I was practicing civil disobedience? Disobedience! The word sounded so dirty all of a sudden. I decided I wouldn’t use it anymore. I’d call the walkout “peaceful protest” or “a redress of grievances” from now on.
After jotting some notes down and eating lunch next to Annie–whose hand kept a noticeable distance from her pepper spray–we headed across the building to meet with Bennett and Finn. Eva was still nowhere to be seen, and Stan couldn’t get out of class to meet us yet. These two absences made me a little nervous, and I felt the darkness of the Computer Game Design & Animation Room creeping into my soul, so I handed the folded banner to Annie and told the gathered comrades that I had to piss. As I entered the hallways, I heard Finn say, “This is where he jumps ship and sells the info to Mossad…”
With my bladder drained and the clock striking two, the small company we had assembled in the CGDA Room mobilized and entered the cafeteria, where we were met by two small groups of already-waiting students. A group of theater kids chatted indistinctly about nervousness, and in it I saw a girl holding a stack of signs. I could only read the topmost one, which had a cute drawing of a sailboat and handpainted text that said, “Where Were Your Papers in 1492?” My heart was uplifted by this show of enthusiasm. I was beginning to feel silly about my skepticism. I started to think that my unpragmatic view of the neoliberal/anarkitty tide-riding that I usually observed in the student body was counterproductive as more of my peers flooded into the cafeteria. Sign Girl noticed one of our peers and called out to her.
“-----!” she cried. “I have the perfect sign for you!”
I watched the other girl come to Sign Girl curiously and question the statement. Sign Girl quickly thumbed through her stack and raised the “perfect sign” out of the index. It was also hand-painted, and had a graphic of a flame next to a melting ice cube. The text read, “Hot People Melt Ice.”
I grimaced uncontrollably and turned towards Annie, trying to hide my scowl from the offending party. She gave me a leveling look which stifled the disgust I was feeling. Just then, Bennett grabbed my arm. “We’re moving to the front,” he told me. “Where’s Stan?”
I had no clue, and I had also already gloved-up, so Annie had to call him as we pushed to the head of the buzzing crowd. As Finn was engaged in a similar pursuit regarding Eva, we got a hold of Stan, only to hear garbled noise on the other end. I felt as though the potential energy of the group was too strong to stand much stalling. They had to be let outside in the next five minutes (we were already two behind schedule) or else they would turn on the organizers and rip us all apart. Just as I saw a few impatient faces start to turn towards Bennett, an administrator climbed onto a table behind us.
“Hey, guys!” they bellowed. “I can’t condone this or support it… but it is my primary concern to make sure that you all are safe in whatever you do. Just keep in mind that a peaceful protest is peaceful.” I suppose the admin didn’t have an idea of how to end their remarks in a punctual or meaningful way, so they awkwardly climbed down from the table after that last sentence.
This warning prelude only held the crowd over for a half-a-minute more at most, but luckily Stan came waltzing in from the other end of the cafeteria. We hurriedly motioned towards him to get to the front of the crowd, and we were soon jamming the front office with our young, eager bodies; Stan and I fumbling with the banner by the door. Here is also where Eva finally appeared, relieved by the fact that the chant sheets had already been passed into the crowd to be distributed.
I was on the leftmost side of the banner, Finn in the middle, and Stan on the right. Some non-student protestors were waiting for us outside the school with their cameras ready. With the snow, there wasn’t quite enough room on the sidewalk for us to fully unfurl the canvas as we walked, so Stan and I had to twist away from Finn to straighten the middle out. I wasn’t sure whether to smile at the videographers or not. They were smiling at me–but I wasn’t pointing a camera at them either. I flashed a few stupid, half-baked grins until they stepped aside to let us reach the lightpost at the end of the square. We three banner-bearers spread out to fully unfurl our message to the busiest part of the city. It read, in plain black and red, “ICE OUT OF HAGERSTOWN.”
Eva and Bennett moved across the street to another square and readied the megaphone. Eva welcomed us out into the cold, and reminded us why we were here. She began leading us in a variety of chants from the sheet, jumping between them without pause. I stood with my eyes fixed on her, watching as she moved her small body with every word she uttered, commanding the crowd into unity. She wore a black and gray lumberjack hat with the flaps pulled up, and the thickest goddamn prescriptions I’ve ever seen. Even from across the street, I could see her owl eyes glowing with a righteous fervor. I followed her every word, focusing hard on memorization since I didn’t have the agency to hold a chant sheet.
At one point, I looked around to see the turnout. As our voices rang together in cries to fund schools instead of wars, and to affirm that no human is illegal, and to try to believe that the people have the power, I felt a genuine sense of community. Afterwards, Eva said that the walkout was “really an example of strength in numbers,” which I could agree with in that moment. We were a mobilized group of young people on the right side of history.
At the end of my survey, I spied a decent group across the street to the left, standing in front of Cannon Coffee. Rising high above the crowd, I saw an absolutely beautiful sign which showed Earth drifting in space, with thick, bubbly text which read, “A Map Does Not Define Value.” I couldn’t see who was holding it, but I saw Sign Girl next to them, holding up one of her own she had saved for herself . It read, “The Hippies Were Right.”
So utterly confounded by the multiple levels of absurdity and ignorance that the sign portrayed, I went slightly slackjaw, blowing thin clouds of breath into the air and missing a few rounds of chants. Annie was standing next to me, but took no notice. Her Pops was talking to her. He had come out in support, and flanked her with me. He told her that this scene reminded him of when he was young; when the issue was Vietnam.
Indeed. I caught back up with the chants after taking a moment to collect myself, but it was hard to follow between the passing trucks. Occasionally, a long, white freighter would pass through the square, not only blocking my vision of Owl Eyes and Bennett, but also dampening all sound from the other side. It was such a complete envelopment of noise that it sounded as if tear gas had been fired the second our view was blocked, and everyone we couldn’t see had ceased chanting to choke on it. Twice, the offending vehicles were garbage trucks with American flags plastered on them and text that read, “Patriot Disposal.”
The speeches took a long while to start. Bennett told me that they would wait until they had the largest possible crowd, but I think nerves held him off for an extra ten minutes. When the last chant rang out in the square, Eva held the megaphone close to her mouth and introduced Bennett (though he needed no such thing). He held his annotated paper firmly in his hand, but the wind blew it stiffly back and forth. The speech he held read as follows:
“We’d like to thank the portion of the student body who decided to join us out here today. By coming together in protest, we are making a clear stand against ICE in Hagerstown. They are not protectors, they are not civil servants; they are paid mercenaries. They are in the profession of disrupting peace in our communities. They are traitors–not only to the nation which once prided itself on its blend of cultures, but to the human race as a whole. There is a price to pay for tearing families apart which far exceeds any judicial or physical punishment: it is a tax which weighs on your soul. They may believe that fifty-thousand dollars is enough to offset this price; that their conscience will be clear in the face of human suffering; perhaps even that humanity is unnoticeable when seen through a cage… but we know better. We are here because we are humans who are standing up for our fellow humans, and because we recognize the first steps of fascism which are taking root in our country. If Trump’s regime was able to convince the public that children can be ‘illegal,’ or that a person can be a criminal because of their place of origin, there is no telling where it will end. Who will the next scapegoats be? When will the political opponents be rounded up as well? How many camps will be built until we recognize history repeating itself? How long will you allow them to antagonize your neighbors?
How long will be too long?”
But this was not what was read. Besides the nervous flubbings of words and inability to read the paper, the sound of horns drowned him out. As the southern light at the intersection turned green, a parade of cars rolled through, taking notice of our assembly and honking in support. Bennett initially gave a great pause to let them pass, but when the eastern lights changed and another parade started, his patience dwindled, and he continued through the speech under the sound of horns and whooping from the crowd. From what I could hear and see, every attempt to return to the paper was futile because of the wind. The order of lines were changed, some were absolutely neutered, and some were dropped entirely.
I felt disappointment, but it wasn’t a thing of ego or self-righteousness. Only a baby’s-handful of people knew I wrote the speech. I didn’t want to be credited or thanked, because I felt that it would take away from the impact of the delivery. It’s like hearing a good song sung by someone who didn’t write it: it just falls flat.
No, I was disappointed because nobody was listening. The whooping at supporting cars felt entirely unnecessary to me, and made it impossible to listen to the speakers. It was a courtesy that lost all its meaning after the first wave of cheers, which I believed to rise out of excitement for support. Sure, it was scary going out there not knowing what to expect from the public, and it was a great relief to know we weren’t alone in our stance; but what did it matter after that? We already knew we were on the right side of history, and we knew many people agreed with us. Did we have to celebrate every normal human being who passed? Maybe we do. Maybe.
Of course, there were dissidents who drove by with middle-fingers outstretched, but few of us cared. There they were in their tiny metal boxes, solitary in their hate, while we stood together, engulfing them for the small moment they passed; crying out for the love of humanity.
Another issue of hearing came from the whistles. The fucking whistles. Little white plastic tubes that hung stupidly from the mouths of a high-decibel minority; rising high above even the blaring of horns. Obnoxious screeches filling the air with a natural feedback; something that warns you to jump away from the source of it. The purpose of this sound at a protest is to warn fellow protestors of incoming ICE presence, but none of the troglodytes who held them knew that. I don’t know who passed them out, and I think that is for the best. It’s my opinion that they should have been beaten on the kidneys on a bastinado platform in the square, and then forced to submit to urine tests for the rest of their lives. A loathing of that level best remains without a target.
All this is to say, I felt that our congress was not treated with the level of respect it deserved. We had spent so much time worrying about downtown crazies and chud pushback that we failed to consider that our own worst enemy would come from within. As passionate as Eva was, and with as much solemnity she urged us to remember Renee Good, and Keith Porter, and Alex Pretti, the crowd was not moved by anything but recognition from fleeting cars. Her words of appropriate anguish were periodically drowned out by a rising woooooo! all around her. I felt insane trying to listen, as if I was somebody trying to pick out the sound of a sermon in the chaos of a circus. At one point, she howled like she was Janis Joplin reciting Allen Ginsberg, reminding us of Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old detained by ICE in Minnesota. “Five years old!” she would cry. Then a car would pass. “Five years old!” again. Two cheers. She sounded on the verge of tears. This went on for about a minute, with only short pauses to allow the initial blow of a horn and mindless cheer pass. This is how an art school protests, I thought. We pat ourselves on the back for being out here, and cheer for ourselves when we’re recognized. I looked back towards the Maryland Theater, and wondered if we could sell out this show, too.
My attention was brought back to the square when I heard someone close to me shout, “ICE deez nuts!” Comrade Finn and I turned to see where it had come from. After both frowning for a moment, Finn fixed his gaze again on Eva, and slowly shook his head.
In her speech, Eva spoke “[o]n behalf of this nation’s youth,” saying, “It shouldn’t have to be this way. We should not have to live in fear for our neighbors, friends, and family; wondering who may be a target next. [...] With the construction of an ICE detention center right here in Hagerstown, the fear and paranoia will increase tenfold. [...] As students, we will not stand for the continuation of this racist, violent, and unconstitutional deployment of untrained, masked, and pseudo-law enforcement against the people of the United States.” But as I strained to hear these words, I wondered if most of the students gathered there were able to think about the invasive ICE species that hard. I appreciated that it was Eva proclaiming to speak on behalf of the Youth of America, and not some of the people in my immediate vicinity. She described herself as “someone who is very vocal about current events and the state of the country we live in,” and I don’t think you can say that about most of the people at Barbara Ingram. The vast majority are vocal about being liberal, and having a strong dislike of the right wing, sure; but when a question is asked about a specific issue or conflict, a refresher on the topic is usually needed. Then the response is a meek, wishy-washy answer, spoken softly out of fear of saying the Wrong Thing and jeopardizing their carefully built social image.
After Eva was finished speaking, Torin Malott took the megaphone to rapturous applause and enthusiastic cries. Torin is popular among the student body, not only because of his charming personality, but because of his passion for student representation. He’s on too many councils to list; serving as the president of both BISFA’s Student Council and Washington County’s, along with being BISFA's student ambassador. In short, he is a decorated youth leader, and a promising young socialite.
I’ve endorsed him when voting seasons come up, and we are on amiable terms, but I think he remains a little weary of me. We had Biology together when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore, and sat at the same table. One day, trying to make small-talk, I asked him a question about his sexual orientation. While this already provoked a fierce side-eye, I pushed further, saying that I thought he was gay because of his accent. This did not lead to a particularly close friendship.
But no matter what may or may not have been said in the past, watching him in the square was almost more frustrating than watching Eva. Because of his popularity and influence, I expected a little more respect for his words, but it was not so.
He started his speech by thanking everyone for taking a stand, which drew a fat round of autoaplause. Allegedly, he continued, adding, “for recognizing the disparities and horrifying moments that continue to surge across the nation,” but I didn’t hear this over the cheering.
Torin’s speech was especially interesting to me in the parts that I caught, because he focused on our lack of political power as youths. “We may not get to vote in elections,” he said, “we may not get to make the final call on decisions, we may not even have a real vote in our own Board of Education; but we will always have our voices.” Reading this back in retrospect from the transcript he provided, it is especially depressing to me that even voices like Eva’s and Torin’s–raising points that should have resonated deeply with the crowd–could not be heard over the masturbatory cries of my peers.
“Student walkouts shine attention on current events that matter most,” he said. “They cause disruption, ruffle feathers, cause commotion, and question authority in order to bring the proper sum of attention to matters that require everyone’s attention.”
That phrase “civil disobedience” crept back into my mind, causing me to shutter slightly. Although, it was hard to tell if this was to do with a psychic disturbance or the frigid cold we were standing in. My arm was starting to ache from holding the banner up, and I couldn’t feel my fingers through my gloves. I turned to my right as I heard Pops start to speak. He was telling Annie that it was running a little long for him. I looked at the clock in the square and shuttered again.²
When Torin was finished speaking, he introduced City Councilwoman Caroline Anderson, a connection he made through Hagerstown Youth Council. She took the megaphone for a brief moment and applauded us for braving the cold to protest, which brought more whooping and loud pats on backs.
While still aware of the blowing of whistles and cries of the self-congradulating, I started feeling a little pride in the whole thing. We had attracted the attention of a genuine local politician, which gave an air of legitimacy to this operation that I had gotten myself involved with. With a newfound resolve in spite of the shrill monotone and cheering, I watched on as the open mic was finally announced.
The first to take the opportunity was a writer named Erin McCary, who had prepared a few verses of scripture. The words had a profound effect on me. I’m not religious, but I was so struck because she chose the perfect words from the gospel to highlight the hypocrisy of the Republican party. In the modern day, they claim to be the only champions of free speech left, fighting desperately to keep the dwindling flame of Christianity alive in America. But that’s hard to believe when the words of the Good Book are held against their actions.
Can the remover of strangers really claim to be disciples of a doctrine which teaches: “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shall love him as thyself” (Leviticus 19:34)? Can the vexers and oppressors of all things unknown to them claim to be followers of Christ when he teaches: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21)? Weren’t they taught not to worship false idols?
Only about half the verses reached me over the whistles/cheering/horns, but what holy words I did catch rang in my ears as I watched the shuffling of a new student coming forward. I knew who the next speaker was before I recognized their face due to a disturbance in my holy psychic radio and the subsequent rising of bile in my body.
Shortly over a year earlier, I had posted a long plea for my peers to appreciate their parents while they had the chance on the anniversary of my mother’s suicide. The current speaker was overheard discussing it the next day, noting that although it was sad and all, I was still too ugly to be dating my then-girlfriend.
They had been holding one of Sign Girl’s creations, and–now holding the cardboard to their side–took the megaphone and began lecturing the crowds about the importance of recognizing this as a human issue, rather than a political one. Humanity, they said. I checked the clock again.
By the time a friend of mine took the megaphone and started off by screaming, “AS THE CHILD OF AN IMMIGRANT FROM CANADA…” I was totally checked out. I felt comfort in the fact that I had at least tried to treat the situation seriously, which was more than most around me could say. The whistles only grew louder, the whooping more frequent, and the cold more bitter.
After it was clear that nobody could follow the Canadian Immigrant act, Eva and Bennett again led the crowd in chants. Bennett snuck in a few extra that used more explicitly socialist wordings. I guess he felt safer doing so now that it was clear no media outlets were showing up. On about our third repeat of “the people united will never be defeated,” I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked first to Annie, but she was focusing her energy on trying to hear which chant was being said; a harder task for her because she’s a quarter deaf.
I turned to my other side and saw my buddy Owen, donning a leather jacket and dark sunglasses with gold rims, which complimented his recently bleached hairdo. I shouted with surprise and grabbed a hold of him with my free arm. I had completely forgotten that I’d invited him. He initially didn’t think he’d make it because of his school’s schedule, but had finally driven all the way from Middletown as soon as class let out–already about fifteen minutes into our protest. He also stopped for McDonald’s, which probably didn’t help, but I chalked it up to his own holy psychic radio telling him that there was no hurry… which I confirmed when he arrived.
“I think we’re almost done,” I said to him, looking to comrade Finn for confirmation. After he shrugged, I turned back to Owen and invited him into the school.
“When?” he asked, confused by the nature of the offer.
“Now. Today. Just walk in, they won’t notice you in the crowd.”
He nodded thoughtfully and agreed.
Eva’s closing remarks reinforced her pride in the crowd for such an impressive turnout and highlighted the importance of civil disobedience among youths. I shuttered again, which Owen noticed and cocked his head at. I shook my head, trying to drive some of the bile from my ears. “It’s nothing, man. I’ll tell you later.”
At five-past-three, as Bennett and Eva’s portion of the square waited for the walk sign to turn on, Stan and I folded the flag and handed it to Finn. I was glad to free my hands of my physical involvement with BISFA’s attempt at protest.
Back on the Band Floor, Owen stood behind me nervously. Once my gloves were off, I poked at my thumb to discover that it was totally numb. In an attempt to get my circulation going, I started jerking my body to and fro; jabbering madly at everyone I saw who didn’t join us outside while cursing everyone who participated in the same breath. All of the non-walkers cleared the immediate area when I started screaming about whistles and car horns.
Once we were relatively alone, Owen and I sat with our backs to the guitar lockers and planned out his short tenure at the prestigious Barbara Ingram School for the Arts. I kept glancing up the hall to make sure we weren’t being spied on, but every pass at this made my paranoia grow. The same set of eyes was looking back at me every time, and quickly jolting away when I caught them. This was extra horrible for reasons too grossly personal to delve into here. The only relevant layer it adds to this story is the fact that this particular bourgeois spy would recognize Owen, and know for a fact that he was not officially enrolled.
After hushing ourselves to a confidential speaking tone, we thoughtfully crafted a believable pseudonym and skeletal backstory. After discovering that he wasn’t proficient at any European accents, it was decided that for the next hour-and-a-half, he would be known as Michael Krauss, the Germanic Oklahoman exchange student.
At this point in our plot, I felt totally confident that he would be able to join me in the Guitar Ensemble totally unnoticed and walk out of the back entrance with all the bus riders when school let out. Owen was not as optimistic. At one point, he proposed to walk out the front door while we were changing classes, but realized halfway through his sentence that he would be seen and questioned. He took off his sunglasses, and I could see that his eyes were wide. They fell to the floor as he ran his fingers through his hair. “You’ve trapped me!” he said.
I assured him that our teacher would not care. The walkout gave us an advantage as well, as they would be privy to a disorderly day. They would have already had two underclassmen missing from the Guitar Technique class because of their involvement, so what does it really matter that we finish the day with a stranger in the classroom?
Owen still wasn’t so sure, but any of his uncertainty was quelled when we entered the storage closet where we play. I stepped to the middle of the room and gestured towards Michael Krauss to introduce him, but halfway through explaining his Germanic Oklahoman origins, I was cut off and told to get ready to play “The Floating Ancillary Ants.”
“ ‘Ants’! ‘Ants’!” I was jumping up and down, hitting Michael on the arm feverishly. “You get to play ‘Ants!’ ” He looked at me in confusion as my fellow players started to smile. I ran over to a cluttered shelf and grabbed one of the junker guitars for Mr. Krauss. Owen (that’s Michael’s real name, if you remember) is a prolific songwriter. Like most modern songwriters, his primary instrument is guitar, but he had never played in a classical ensemble setting like this before.
Lucky for him, “Ants” is easy enough to jump into, as Guitar Three starts out playing nothing but sixteenth-note low Es for entire measures… then entire sections… then they play Fs in the same manner. Then back to Es. Then they scratch the bass strings at the bridge of the guitar. I marked up my music for Owen, noting where he switched notes and when to start scratching.
“Ants” is hard to describe. You could call it avant-garde, but I feel like that’s kind of a cop-out. Its roots are firmly established in the canon of classical guitar repertoire, sounding somewhat like a natural joining of Leo Brouwer and Andrew York. But truly, its sound is as unique as its inspiration. As composer Rex Willis describes at the front of the score: “During a flood, if the water is still enough, ants with no place to climb will float. They then lock their legs together in what looks like a floating glistening red pad that is about pancake thickness and perhaps one to two feet across.”
Indeed. Owen faked his way through it pretty nicely, consistently keeping better time than the actual members of the ensemble. When it was over, we stood idly in front of the guitar rack, Owen relaxing now that he knew he wasn’t going to be hunted down and detained as a predatory infiltrator. While we were talking, another senior in the ensemble came up behind him, waiting to put her guitar away. It was Leah, one of the non-walkers I had been jabbering at on the Band Floor when we came back inside.
I made eye-contact with her while she stood there silently. I think she anticipated me to tell Owen to move out of the way, but I just smiled. Finally she said, “Excuse me,” very politely, and Owen quickly sidestepped her and apologized.
My smile grew into a sneer. “Are you trying to give my buddy Michael Krauss any trouble here, missy?” I knew she would have recognized Owen from my Instagram.³
At first, Leah denied this charge, but when I repeated it, she gave up and said, “Yep. Lotsa trouble.”
“You are trouble,” I said. “Nothing but trouble.” I looked at Owen and saw that he was embarrassed, so I continued. “When we round up all the enemies of the state, I’ll make sure to–” I made a motion like I was grabbing her hair and jumped up, as if I were tying it to a rafter. “Hang you by your–!” but she just laughed and walked away. “C’mon,” I said to Owen. “Let me show you my favorite bathroom.”
I led him to the catwalk overlooking the blackbox, where the whole theater department was gathered. Some of the protest signs laid scattered on the floor among very bored looking people checking their phones at the end of the day. I figured some of them were collecting the best pictures from the walkout to make an aesthetically pleasing post. Sign Girl looked up at me and waved. “It’s just over here,” I said, turning to Owen and cursing myself for waving back.
After we took turns pissing in the sink of the homey and secluded catwalk bathroom, Owen and I sat by one of the back exits and waited for the bell to ring. Once Annie regrouped with us, he would be able to slip out totally unnoticed by any teacher on bus duty. “Hey,” I told him. “You better hang on to Michael Krauss, he might save your life when they get you one of these days.” Owen nodded quite seriously, and then smiled.
Back in the square with Annie, I watched Owen walk up the Arts and Entertainment district towards where he hid his car behind the library. He told me he would check out Hub City Vinyl real quick, with no real intention of purchasing anything. I don’t know why he bothered sparing this extra time after complaining to me about his fries getting cold, but nothing happens without a reason, I think.
I felt Annie’s loving hand squeeze mine, and I turned to see the walk sign flashing. I also saw that there were six protesting Hagerstonians on the other side of the street. I didn’t see them with us when we had been out there, so I assume we had inspired them to carry the civil disobedience on later into the day. The signs were neat and unpretentious, mainly just thick black text on white posterboard. One held up by a middle-aged gentleman who might have served in Iraq read, “VETERANS AGAINST ICE.”
When we crossed the street, we passed behind them, so as to not block the view of their signs from the road, for that was all they had. They stood wordlessly, with no one to lead them in chants, and with no cheers for the passing cars that noticed them. I thought to myself that if the BISFA student body had inspired these people to come out and stand in the cold, I would be proud of our efforts after all; even if I would have rather stood with these older, quieter rogues.
¹ At least these people had excuses. A friend of mine overheard someone in their Chemistry class say, “I was gonna walk out, but I realized I’d get cold…”
² Torin later summed up his thoughts on ICE and the failure of our legal processes, saying in part, “We all bleed red. All of us are human beings. [...] I understand that the system has a legal process of granting citizenship; but to me, it is simply not right to make the process of becoming a legal immigrant in this country so difficult–especially when many come in search of refuge. The missing accountability of ICE agents has only caused more and more fear to creep into communities across the nation, now including Washington County.”
³ She did not. I managed to convince a few members of the ensemble after the fact that Michael Krauss was a real exchange student who just happened to bear a striking resemblance to my friend Owen Kufta. I told them that after witnessing the protest and playing through “Ants,” he went disgustedly home to Oklahoma.