women's march in Boston
Sophia and I headed out this morning to the Arlington Street Church for pre-march "warmth and snacks". The 350.org group was to meet up there for munchies from 9:30 to 10:15 before heading over to the Common together. I extracted Sophia from the apartment and got her to the T with the promise that if the snacks at the church were not satisfactory, we would find a Dunkin' Donuts. Sophia is not a morning person so we did not get there until 10:00. People from many different organizations were milling around inside and around the church. We followed the signs for 350Mass and found-- snacks?-- a Dunkin' Donuts box?-- d'oh! There were no donuts left in the box. No more snacks, other than brownies. Also too many people in the confined spaces of the church offices. Sophia desperately wanted to leave, so we went off in search of Dunkin' Donuts. I didn't see anyone I knew.
We found an Au Bon Pain on Park Plaza. Since there was still lots of time before the event, we got lots of food and settled in. Two blocks away there were thousands of people milling around, but in the Au Bon Pain we found a quiet, nearly empty nook. Sophia got lots of food, including a whole bottle of juice. I didn't feel like I needed to go to the bathroom, but I used the facilities anyway, preemptively. Sophia did not take advantage of this opportunity. And drank the whole bottle of juice.
Then we walked to the Common, cutting through the Public Gardens, joining the huge gathering crowd. We didn't push too hard to try to get near the stage, so we could see nothing. There were many people but we had room to stretch and breathe. Finally the programming started. The mayor of Boston spoke, both our U.S. Senators spoke, etc. Sophia was mostly interested, and got into cheering and whooping and clapping in response to the speakers. We danced a bit to the music.
Then, at 12:15, we got tired of being there. Well, I was tired of being there from minute 1, especially after the Senators finished speaking; but a feeling of duty to go out there and be visible in our displeasure keeps me at these things. But as soon as Sophia was tired of being there, I was ready to leave. I said "I think the March is going to start in 15 minutes-- do you want to stick it out through another 15 minutes of speakers, and then see how the March is?" Sophia waffled about this for several minutes, but before 12:30, uh, no, we wanted to leave.
So we started to try to leave. Heh. We were not that far from an edge of the Boston Common. We were near-ish to Charles Street, which separates the Common from the Public Gardens. I figured the gathering was just on the Common, not spilling over into the Public Gardens, right? And when we had crossed Charles Street earlier, they were not letting Charles Street fill up with protesters, it was still open to traffic. So I figured the crowd had an outer edge and that the closest outer edge was probably somewhere around Charles Street. Maybe at the edge of the Commons? Maybe spilling halfway across Charles Street? So we started walking towards Charles Street. My god, was that a mistake.
As we got closer to Charles Street (N.B. as we got AWAY from the speakers and projection screen, so WTF PEOPLE???) the crowd got more and more crowded. Almost to Charles Street, we came to a wall of Porta-Potties blocking the boundary between Common and Charles Street. I thought-- does this explain the huge crowd here? How many of these people are waiting for a Porta-Potty? Or is it just disrupting traffic flow? So we went sideways along the row of Porta-Potties, AWAY FROM THE SPEAKERS REALLY PEOPLE, towards the crosswalk linking the Common and the Public Garden, and found even more crowded conditions. We tried to go towards Charles Street, because, I'm like, this crowd has to thin out somewhere-- somewhere away from the speakers. But the crowd just got denser and denser. Sophia started to freak out. Rightly so-- I was concerned about safety too. When a crowd is too big and too dense, if the crowd spooks, people can get crushed or trampled. It was that crowded. I just desperately wanted to get away from the density, fuck Charles Street.
So we started going the other way. There are a couple of small buildings that (I think) house the elevators to the parking garage. These were locked up, and being on the wall of one of these offered no refuge. Ten feet away was a small crane that the organizers had, apparently, rented merely for the purpose of holding up an enormous (maybe 20 feet long) American flag. The crane was on kind of a big blue tractor, and people had climbed up on top of the tractor. We wedged ourselves between the body of the tractor and one of its big wheels and were in a spot where I felt we were out of danger of being crushed, at last.
Sophia calmed down and we managed to climb up onto the tractor. Safe, but trapped. In every direction was tens of thousands of people. The closest T stations were not far away, but impossible to get to with thousands of people standing in the way.
Meanwhile 12:30 came and went and they were still having speakers speak, rather than transitioning to the March part of the proceedings. Someone from the ACLU spoke, and I thought yes-- important messages-- BUT. ENOUGH. Many other people in our immediate area wanted the March to start because they were also trapped, and we intermittently chanted "Start The March! Start The March!" An old lady sitting on the tractor shushed us, and gave me the stink-eye for chanting this, saying "I came to hear this person speak". Well-- yeah, but when tens of thousands more people show up at an event than the organizers expected, the organizers should re-consider whether to stick to the program as planned, or whether they need to modify things on the fly to get people out of there before bad things start happening.
But Sophia and I were really lucky to be on the tractor. We chatted with other people on the tractor who were nice, and admired all the witty signs and lovely pussy hats. Sophia retreated into surfing the 'net on the iPhone as needed. The weather was lovely, for January. But Sophia (who, recall, had NOT used the bathroom at Au Bon Pain, and had the whole bottle of juice), really needed to pee, and I started to get desperately hungry.
Finally the speakers were done. The plan was, I gather, that people were to exit the Commons onto Charles Street, turn right, and march towards and onto Beacon Street? I think? It was hard to tell. Even when the speakers were done and we were Officially Marching Now, the movement of the crowd was slight, gradual, almost imperceptible at times. I said, hang on, sweetie, let's let the crowd thin out before we get back into it. We talked about the dynamics of a traffic jam. In a traffic jam you're not moving because the person in front of you isn't moving because the person in front of them isn't moving because the person in front of them isn't moving... Somewhere, out in front, there must be someone who doesn't have someone in front of them? Are they moving? What's a the front of a traffic jam? In this case half the Boston Common was trying to squeeze into some narrow Back Bay streets, and the people in front would have to walk quite a distance before they had covered enough street to fit the number of people there were.
The organizers had a happy problem to solve: they threw a demonstration, and everybody came. Wildly successful. But this was a problem. They were not ready for just how successful they were.
Sophia and I sat on the tractor another expanse of time. At some point my sign disappeared. I had carried that sign in 4 demonstrations within just a few weeks, so I was done with it. I tried to read news on my phone, but we had overloaded the cell service.
Finally I stood up on the tractor and, in the distance, in the opposite way away from Charles Street, there appeared to be an area where people were moving around freely. Some of the Common had partially drained of people, finally. And I saw that although people trying to go towards Charles Street were making incredibly slow progress, people who were walking the opposite way were able to snake a path through the crowd. We climbed down from the tractor, I grasped Sophia's hand very tightly, and we pushed our way through the crowd. After we got-- I don't know-- maybe 40 feet away from the garage elevator buildings?-- we got to the edge of the crowd and were free! Hurray! The whole Common was full of people milling around, but away from Charles Street, it was no longer too full to walk.
We crossed the Common to the Park Street station and took an outbound Green trolley to try to get the hell out of there. Of course there were no empty seats on our train car, and I had to hang onto a strap, and Sophia had to hang onto me. The trolley, for some unknown reason, kept stopping in the tunnel, waiting for several minutes, and lurching to start again (and Sophia, who would stop hanging on when the trolley was stopped, went flying over and over again.) This trolley must have taken half an hour to get from Park Street to Copley.
By Kenmore I was really sick of being on this trolley, and really, really hungry. I did not want to stay on the trolley all the way to our stop and then have to walk home from there and then have to cook before I had any food. So at Kenmore I asked Sophia "do you want to go to Bertucci's?" She just wanted to get home-- but-- temptation of pizza overcame desire to go home and we hopped off the trolley to go to the restaurant. Some minuscule percentage of people who had been at the demonstration had the same idea, on top of their usual Saturday business, and the fact that they didn't have much waitstaff working at 3:30 when we got there-- so there was a wait. And service was really slow. But at least Sophia finally got to go to the bathroom.
After food we went back down into the Kenmore station. D'oh! By that time the March had ended, apparently, and the trolleys were packed. Even though, yes, they were running more trains than they usually would on a Saturday afternoon. We nearly got crushed in the 3 stops to get home.
Finally, home, collapse.
As someone at the rally said: "Today we march; tomorrow, we organize." All of you who did not march today: no regrets that you did not march. Enough other people marched for you. Had you come it would have just sucked. You can join the "tomorrow, we organize", 'k?