Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Dear Certain Radical Left-Wing Activists,

Last night you finally managed something that, a few years ago, would have been impossible. Last night you made yourselves a new and surprising enemy.

Me.

It's been many years, now, since I worked defense at the Planned Parenthood clinics in my area, but when things were hairy, and a bit scary (and they still are in too many places), I spent many a Friday and Saturday morning escorting stressed, tense women from their cars to the front doors of clinics, putting my body between them and the wild-eyed, screaming, hostile radicals who felt it their perfect right - some of them their reason for being - to keep women from getting safe, legal abortions. They were absolutely convinced that what these women and their doctors and us were doing was patently wrong, and they were deeply committed to stopping us by whatever means they felt necessary. For the most part, they didn't and wouldn't cross the line into violence, but some of them did, and those Fridays and Saturdays were tense for all of the clinic escorts who knew that things could get ugly.

These were also the years I was deeply involved with liberal and progressive causes, donating a great deal of my time and not a small amount of money. I participated in marches, rallies, vigils and counter-demonstrations. I wrote letters to the editor, letters to legislators. I lobbied in Sacramento. In my capacity as chapter president for NOW, I spoke with the local media constantly, wrote press releases, made speeches, attended and spoke at city council meetings, met with mayors and legislators, ran and participated in fund raisers, campaigned.

I loved it, and I loved the people who were involved along with me. Some of them were to the right of me, some of them to the far left of me, and we could have wonderful, vociferous, non-hostile arguments long into many a night about the issues dear to our hearts and the ways in which we could try to make change, the ways in which we could convince people, the ways in which we could use the means at our disposal to get our message out, and to get it out well. Despite the fact that I wasn't working in the press at the time, I was married to the television news business, and I had print and electronic media friends and contacts all over the country. I used them, honestly and unabashedly, and they helped us a great deal. Many events which would have gone uncovered were covered, and with the articulate spokespeople we had, we were able to get our message out and get it out effectively.

What I and the people with whom I worked understood was that image is important. Words are important. Let the right-wing radical wild-eyed anti-choice ranters get all the face-time in front of the television cameras that they could eat, because they were doing nothing but preaching to the choir and hurting their own cause. We strived always to appear calm and reasonable, our message clear and never hostile, but firm and unrelenting and we took every opportunity there was to get that message out by whatever means we could find or were presented to us.

One of the things I have been adamantly against my entire politically aware life is the death penalty. I won't go into my reasons, they are many and they are mine, and I imagine there are plenty of people reading this who agree with me, and I imagine there are some who do not. But as most of you know, I was looking at covering the execution of Stanley Williams with as much enthusiasm as... no, there is no simile. It was one of those times when I had to partition off a part of my brain, lock it away, and just breathe.

Just outside the East Gate of San Quentin Prison is a post office and gift shop (yes, a gift shop). Heading east from that point is San Quentin Village, a community of 116 houses, some with a magnificent Bay view; nearly the same view you get from the south side of the prison. The news media negotiated with owners of some of the houses along the main road to the East Gate to rent parking and work space for covering this part of the story. Where the protests and vigils and rally were held, however, is a relatively small area just in front of the post office. At 6 PM, CHP officers placed orange cones in a line, restricting anyone but authorized personnel from getting within 100 feet of the actual gate, making the area even smaller. We, the television news crews, were granted a small piece of real estate close enough to the area of the rally stage to be able to see and hear and record the speeches and music, but far enough away to make room for people in front of us. We were given no fencing, there were no lines demarcating our work space; for that, we were on our own.

Understand that a television set is a television set, whether it's news or documentary or a sitcom or a drama or a talk show; whether it's in a studio or in a parking lot or in the middle of a closed-off street in front of a prison. There are cameras on tripods, light stands and arms at exactly the height of your head. There is hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and in our case and in the case of quite a few others, it's equipment we own, not the network, and it's equipment we have to replace, at great cost, if it gets damaged. There are audio cables and video cables and power cables, snaking and running and tangling over nearly every surface that isn't covered by chairs and tripods and light stands. There are lights hot enough to take the skin right off your hand at a touch, and there are cases and bags and ballasts and reels and any number of hazards horrific enough to injure you badly. I work around and in them all the time, and I still have a permanent bruise on my forehead from walking into a lightstand arm over and over and over again. I have knots on my knees from tripping and falling. Last night I banged my shin on the same case, in the same way, three times. They are, in essence, miniature movie sets, and people who work on movie sets get the hell off them when they don't have to be there. There's a reason for those fold-up chairs for the actors and the director; to get them the hell out of the way and out of the danger zone. It is a danger zone.

So, in a situation like the one we found ourselves in yesterday, the first thing we do is establish a perimeter, and if we can't get fenced, or can't put up yellow tape, we pile up empty cases and make our own fence. This is not, as we have been accused of time and time again, some kind of dick-waving demonstration of our "privilege" (oh, how many times was that word screamed at me last night); it's a safety measure to keep the unaware and uneducated from getting badly hurt, and it's a measure to allow myself and my colleagues to, ourselves, work in safety.

So, when I politely tell you that, no, I'm sorry, could you please go around this way to get to your destination, you're not going to get anywhere with me by calling me a bitch, or lecturing me on the privileges of the press, or screaming at me that I'm a tool of The Man or otherwise victimizing you. If you run at me, thinking because I'm a girl I'm going to get out of your way, and shove me, thinking because I'm a girl I won't fight back, well, at least three of you found out, last night, that I'm stronger than I look, and that fear and adrenaline are powerful forces. That two of you had enough alcohol on your breath that I got a contact high didn't help your cases any. Grow the fuck up.

(And if that radio reporter is, by any chance, reading this, well, hon, when you called me a fucking cunt, you broke my heart for about two nanoseconds, but I got over it. In other words, I am an equal-opportunity repeller. The only people who were going to get inside that perimeter were the people who belonged inside that perimeter, and no one else. Not still photographers, not radio reporters, not protesters, not roving camera crews.)

Let me give you a gentle clue; I won't bother you if you don't bother me. Play nice, be a grownup, and understand that during that vigil and rally, what I was doing was making it possible for the entire country to hear what your people were saying at that podium, and that what my cameraman was doing was making it possible for the entire country to see what your people were doing at that podium. Every time you got in front of the camera and blocked it with a sign, you made it impossible for your people to get their message out. Every time you started shouting things into my microphone, your invective covered up the words your people were using to try to get their message out. In other words, it was stupid and it was counter-productive to what was being attempted there.

This seemed especially counter-productive when we had the likes of Mike Farrell or the Reverend Jackson in our chairs, trying to interview them, have them speak their piece. Your antics were self-serving and childish.

Afterwards, when a crowd of one thousand, crammed into a small space, then tries to leave that space, your hurry is not my problem. My problem is to keep you all from surging into my area and breaking my gear, tripping and falling over cables, burning yourself on the lights, knocking over $60,000 cameras and otherwise wreaking havoc. Screaming invectives at me and threatening to have your buddies beat me up while holding your sign telling me how the Buddha preached love is deeply ironic, but I wasn't appreciating the irony at the time. I was standing between you, threatening to have your buddies make a grease spot of me, and Tim, who was more than ready to make a grease spot of you.

Then there was the charming fellow sitting on the fence with spray paint, a mocked up American flag and matches. Sir, when you commenced your tirade against the press, to calling us a lot of foul names, and to burning your version of the American flag, not ten feet from me, there was still a huge crowd of people trying to get out. You set a fucking fire in the middle of a crowd of people. I don't know if you're congenitally stupid or if you just don't give a shit, but when you fell off the fence and down the hill, and your bottle of Southern Comfort shattered, splattering the little bit that was left of it onto the ground, I guess I should have just been thankful that you didn't set the spray paint cans or yourself on fire. Honestly, by that time I was pretty much on my last nerve; I wasn't in any shape to see self-immolation.

I want to, I must, take a moment to mention that the vast majority of folks, especially many who witnessed the constant spew of hostility and hatred heading our way, were kind and apologetic and concerned that the focus would end up on the confrontations and not on the message. One very gentle woman came up to me and expressed such a concern about the flag-burner at a moment when Tim was nearby, and he leaned in and told her that at least as far as he was concerned, it never happened, as he was busy shooting something else at the time. The vast majority of folks were sober, committed, rational and persuasive.

As for the rest of you - the violent, hostile, destructive, egotistical hypocrites who thought that a lot of people didn't notice that your signs preached love but your actions preached hate - I don't know who you think I am, or who you think you are. But more and more, you are reminding me of the wild-eyed, hostile, screaming radicals at the Planned Parenthood clinics. You are reminding me of the idiots I ran into during the 1996 Presidential campaign, the Dole devotees, who thought they were being oh-so-smart when they screamed about the Press having a favored place in the auditoriums, and thought they were being oh-so-clever when they blocked the television cameras with their signs when, in fact, all they were doing was keeping their candidate off national television. In other words, you are every bit as awful, stupid, bigoted and destructive as the people you want us to think you're fighting against. Grow some god damned brains.

You have to decide what it is you want. Do you want to get your message out to the largest number of people possible, or do you want only to preach to the choir and have your message to the rest of the world be your version of a toddler's temper tantrum?

Whatever it is you decide to do, I'll be there to record it. You, not I, get to decide what kind of message to send when I do. But until the time comes when you treat me with the same kind of respect with which I tried to treat you, until the time comes when I don't feel physically threatened by you, until the time comes when you no longer remind me of the wild-eyed, hostile, screaming radicals of the far right, I will, for my own safety, consider you my enemy.

And you can consider me yours.