moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2017-10-23 08:16 am
moon_custafer) wrote2017-10-23 08:16 am
(no subject)
So, I was at the action at Nathan Philips Square on Saturday (at the back, guarding our bottled water and knapsacks), and at one point a woman who was much more obviously Antifa than I was tossed a piece of garbage in a garbage can as she went to take a break. A police officer stopped her and asked what she’d put in the garbage, obviously implying it maithili have been a bomb or something. She politely agreed to show him and dug out the empty air-horn she’d thrown away. He seemed to accept this, but just in case I went over and asked “is anything wrong?”
There followed one of the odder conversations I’ve ever been part of: the officer kept being what I can only describe as aggressively polite and neutral at me, asking if I (and later Andrew) was afraid of him; and insisting that we had every right to protest. What made it weird was that I wasn’t actually disagreeing with him, but he kept arguing back anyway. It was both unnerving, and sort of fascinating. Apparently I don’t even have to use words, I just have to be present.
In retrospect, it’s possible, and even likely, that my attempt to maintain eye contact and a neutral expression actually read as a cold hard stare.
There followed one of the odder conversations I’ve ever been part of: the officer kept being what I can only describe as aggressively polite and neutral at me, asking if I (and later Andrew) was afraid of him; and insisting that we had every right to protest. What made it weird was that I wasn’t actually disagreeing with him, but he kept arguing back anyway. It was both unnerving, and sort of fascinating. Apparently I don’t even have to use words, I just have to be present.
In retrospect, it’s possible, and even likely, that my attempt to maintain eye contact and a neutral expression actually read as a cold hard stare.