“Hey, hey! Ho, ho!
Bigotry has got to go! Hey, hey!”
The cold night air
burned in my lungs.
“I have to pee,” I
announced, to no one in particular.
“I need some
coffee,” muttered Scott,
hands trembling as he
smoked a cigarette.
That was hours
earlier.
Damn bigots were
more than two hours late
arriving to erect
their monument to hate.
Well before the
winter dawn, we gathered
on the dark and
frosty square, forming a tight knot
beside the space the
city police had cordoned off.
At first the mood
was jovial. You’d think we were at a
party.
But the temperature
was below freezing.
The fountain was not
running.
The windows of the
hotel across the street were like blind eyes.
The parking garage
behind us was like a crypt.
Two men in a rusted
pickup truck, dressed in blue jeans and flannel shirts.
A dozen of the
city’s finest, there to protect their right to hate.
The white cross,
gleaming in the predawn chill.
I took a deep
breath, held it for a minute- it’s like smoking pot,
you know, and just
as intoxicating- then shouted.
“Gay, straight,
black, white! Same struggle, same
fight!”
A dozen or so
protesters took up the chant.
“Two, four, six,
eight! This cross stands for hate!”
Do protesters still
use those same chants?
They are so
versatile. Like jump rope rhymes.
Why don’t we teach
them to our children?
“Hey, hey! Ho, ho!
The KKK has got to go! Hey, hey!”
The rednecks
erecting their cross ignored us.
The police
positioned themselves silently along the perimeter.
No one tried to
breach the wooden sawhorse barricades.
Just our voices,
echoing through empty city streets.
I shook my hair out
of my eyes.
Tipped my head
back. Saw the dawn breaking.
Sang “We are a
gentle, angry people” as the sun rose
and the crowd
dispersed.
No comments:
Post a Comment