Because Sometimes, Kline Isn't Enough
By Micah Noble
Opinion
Crowding the Supreme Court steps on February 28, approximately three thousand gathered in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the abolition of the death penalty.
Though the rally's bookends, a seven-year-old-boy chanting "the people's streets" and the arrest of a 94-year-old wheelchair-bound woman participating in the day's mass civil disobedience were moving, it was the number of students from local D.C. high schools and the busloads of college students from around the nation who gathered under the high court's "equal justice under law" that made a lasting impression.
As a "virgin" protestor, it was hard to just jump directly into the masses of pickets and slogans, as the strong police presence on both the high court's steps as well as scattered throughout the sidewalk and the street seemed to have an extra eye on me.
"It is ironic to see the most apathetic group in America coming together for the sake of change," says Erin Fogg, one of the many in attendance from Bard. "...how we're told daily that we're lazy and ignorant whereas we are the one group who really knows what's going on beneath the surface, and we know its not pretty."
As the numbers grew and the time slowed, the general feeling among the mass grew as well, from a reluctance to shout phrases like "no justice, no peace, no racist police" to a full-out barrage of anger that never once turned violent.
As a phalanx of police and charter busses neared our very own, dragging away each member partaking in the civil disobedience to great applause, it seemed that this 18-year struggle for justice was honestly taking a turn in the right direction. But it wasn't until friends were dragged away that I choked up.
There was a bond between the youth assembled which was felt as people you don't know were dragged away...as other citizens of this nation were dragged away.
The fight for Mumia's freedom may soon be over, or it might have just began, but witnessing an organized mass fighting for honest-to-god justice is moving.
But what seems most important was a glance I shared with an aging black cop, whose eye seemed to understand why we all had assembled.