They are attempting to intimidate all of us who were there that weekend into silence...fearful...

They post pictures of random people, naming them Black Bloc, inviting the public to help track them down, to finger them, to turn them over to the not so tender mercies of the police.

I had a panic moment lasting from last night, all this morning, this afternoon right up until just now and deleted my Pride/G20 post on this blog. (sorry thegaytekeeper, i saw that you'd commented. feel free to do so again.)
sigh...
Unbossed and unbowed, knowing that they will most likely come knocking at my door, that they may eventually come a'calling, come to search my things, come all phallic and dominating bent on destroying my tenuous sense of peace and well being, knowing that cowering in fear will not protect me anymore than my silence ever will, I repost...well, I'm posting the version I put on okc which has a preamble of sorts...

"those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are those who want crops without plowing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. power never concedes anything without a demand. it never did and it never will. find out just what people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both."

- frederick douglass

G20/Pride/G20/Pride...messed up/mixed up...

Jul. 12

For those who might not know or who haven't really been paying attention...

The G20 happened meetings and resultant public response happened on the weekend of June 25,26,27. The next week as protesters and activists struggled to get people out of jail and mount a legal response to the actions of the state and the police, Pride picked up speed. City and police officials utilized Pride to attempt to draw attention away from what had happened in the city the previous weekend.

Consciously situating myself via mutliple identities and affinities I was in both places. What a mind fuck.

Queers, who were targeted and picked up as a group during the G20 were invited to forget, to dance and party, to pretend as if everything was in the past. Having my own motives for being at Pride, for showing my face, partners and family at Pride, basically to say to those who thought they'd seen the last of me, who hope to one day finally see the last of me - I am still here and I thrive - I decided to go to Pride even though I realized that in some ways the space would be one of denial and distancing from the events of the previous weekend.

Definitely a vomitation, this is what I posted on my blog last week after Pride as I struggled to process what had happened for me in both places...

Despite what city and police officials would like, I am not that easily distracted. Not a big mindless baby whose attentions can be diverted from one event to another depending on what they would have me see or feel or discuss or think about or blog about.

Na-ah...
I am not a series of compartments and that's good cuz the issues aren't separate because the resistance isn't separate because experiences and identities aren't separate or artificially walled off for many of us.

This city scape space isn't that markedly different one weekend to the next no matter how they decorate it or pre-package it.

Layered one over the other, same people, same voices, same conflicted defiant, scared, trying to be brave bodies, spirits and minds.
Same SELF. THIS self.

I felt it all. With love, rage, understanding, defiance, fear, with clarity and confusion I remember it all.

I can't take refuge in denial. I can't submerge the guns, the armour, their roars, their orders, my roars, beliefs.

I can't submerge my lived experience of one in order to embrace the other.

The party was bittersweet...bitter...ambulance siren startle flight or fight reflex triggers, smiling beat cops,posing with festival goers as if they weren't days before snatching and disappearing people, bile rising in my throat, I needed to spit...fire "MUTHAFUCKERS MUTHAFUCKERS YOU GODDAMN FASCIST MUTHAFUCKIN TOOLS"

I clung to his hand and knew he understood because he was there, he saw them, too. I clung to his hand and knew that if I said "run!, we have to leave this party NOW!" he wouldn't think I was insane. He'd come with me. We could run away and find somewhere safe on the periphery from which to watch hundreds of people present at one happening, partying at the other be taken in full view of the drunk, the out and the proud, without anyone daring to lift a finger because this week has been proclaimed the time to forget, the time to party.

I cling to his cock with mouth and hand on the busy, overcrowded stroll. His exposed cock cradled in a froth of pink, exposed to the gaze of amused and/or scandalized onlookers, doesn't seem to worry or shame me. Memories of G20 hammer coming down on our heads has redefined what it means to exist, to resist, to defy, to rage and to fear. I survived the grabs and detentions. I was not targeted or taken away. I find myself more adventurous than usual, egging him on to jerk off in front of another building, not particularly worried about security approaching, just cool and calm walking away, not screaming and howling his name hoping I don't have to fight off a pig to keep him safe. I would have. hmmm...I think I have survivor guilt.

At this distraction, this opium of the masses "party" they call pride, I encountered fierce, brightly dressed misfit kindred aplenty. We saw each other, recognized each other running and rebelling in one place, standing and modeling in the other.

The G20 weekend, site of public misbehaviour, outrage and mayhem in the streets was in some ways more a place of pride and homecoming than the space they call "pride", a place where I encountered plainly dressed, plain faced kindred aplenty. I treasure that coming together.

So yah...pleas and demands from city officials that we/I put incorrigible open struggle behind us/me fall on these deaf ears.

There is something about that weekend I need to cling tight to.
There is something I already understood before G20 clowns came controlling, dominating, threatening.

There is no putting snatch and grabs behind me. There is no putting guns turned on unarmed people behind me. There is no putting behind me the exhilaration of openly, verbally challenging these minions of planetary power and naming them as the moronic pawns of fascist power that they are.

As experiences of oppression are linked via the matrix of power, so are expressions of resistance and rebellion.

Linked.
They are linked.
They are one for me. One. Forming a continuum, willingly internalized, radically embraced.

That party wasn't just a cracked out street fete. That weekend of government control overtly expressed wasn't a site of mob violence no matter what the media said.

So, yah...as I process the mess mingled inside I offer it, frame it, inviting you to view it and consume it with full consciousness, in love and struggle against all odds.

Strategic and necessary, my attendance, my participation, my coming out, my walking or furiously biking towards or away with partner/lover/friends nearby struggle close to home or on a planetary scale, against oppressors but yes, also sometimes against friendly fire was/IS mandatory. Full of pride, presence and consciousness in both places on both weekends as I roamed...I felt bulletproof. :)