At first I lied to my mother. She asked whether or not I had been arrested at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank demonstrations last month, and how could I straight up tell her the truth? After a miserable 26 hours handcuffed in the custody of the D.C. Metro Police and accused of a crime I had never committed, I was angry, sapped of all energy and unable to cope with the enraged, irrational response I expected to follow. She had, in fact, threatened just a few days before that were I to be arrested over the weekend, Georgetown would become a thing of the past and I would be immediately re-enrolled in Virginia Piedmont Community College for second semester. After years of explosive and painfully remedied confrontations over my own political activism, what else could I expect but another agonizing and tearful fight?
Continuing the lie became impossible, however, once I realized that Parents Weekend coincided neatly with the arraignment date. After confessing a few days later, though, I never expected a Parents Weekend quite so memorable as this past weekend, where my mother would forego all mundane and predictable planned Parents Weekend activities to come down to court with me Friday morning and enjoy our mother-daughter adventure into the bureaucratic, backwards and unjust D.C. judicial system.
A month ago, D.C. riot police herded 649 peaceful demonstrators, including four other Georgetown students and me, from a permitted, peaceful rally site at Freedom Plaza into Pershing Park. We were then surrounded, given no order to disperse and arrested en masse. What followed was, in short, 26 hours of waiting, mostly handcuffed ankle-to-wrist in a gym, as the utterly disorganized police force attempted to process us all. Even my mother recognized the injustice and mishandling of the situation by the police.
Getting all five Georgetown students down to the bus stop at 7 a.m. was Friday’s first challenge, but mom arrived early with coffee, a newspaper and a book, ready for whatever court had in store for us. We spent the bus ride predicting what the morning might bring and exchanging advice from various family and friends at home. For me this was the first step in getting to know the disorganized bureaucracy behind the very real violation of my civil rights a few weeks before, and for my mom an interesting case study, a unique Parents Weekend and an unbeatable story to bring back home.
Everyone due for court Friday morning assembled to run through some last-minute details. Mine was the only mother present, so when we went around and said our names, she claimed surrogate mother status for the entire group. Among the motley group of college students, local activist, aging hippies and an extremely well dressed 65-year-old, she smoothly adopted a maternal role and established a rapport with the group. After spending the week before her visit preparing for a tense reunion, I was surprised and relieved at the way things were playing out. I was the only Georgetown student, after all, treating her mother on Parents Weekend to a personal tour of D.C.’s absurd judicial scene.
Finally, hours later in the courtroom we were presented with the judge’s creative solution to getting rid of all 30 of us as quickly and smoothly as possible. The point of arresting 649 people during the demonstrations wasn’t to convict us all of the documented charge of “Failure to Obey,” or even demand any further punishment. 649 people handcuffed in Southeast D.C. waiting most of the weekend to be processed means 649 fewer people on the streets Saturday morning for the police to deal with. Everyone’s documentation had been conveniently misplaced before arraignment. We were all therefore “no-papered” and now effectively out of the system and beyond their concerns. Our chance to rectify the illegal mass-arrest was being hastily swept under the carpet with the hope that we’d all just thankfully walk away conviction-free. Even my mother was fascinated by the manipulation of the system in order to avoid the real issue.
We aren’t allowing the issue to evaporate into judicial avoidance tactics. Hundreds of us were illegally arrested, detained and then mistreated for peacefully exercising our rights. D.C. Police Chief Ramsey wrote us off as misinformed children, but it’s because of those very “children” that the D.C. Metro Police will face a class action lawsuit filed by the D.C. chapter of the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild. It’s our responsibility to stand up to injustice. In the spirit of the hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples demanding justice of the IMF and World Bank, the least we can do is secure our own civil rights as we protest in solidarity against those same institutions. Political differences aside, my mother and I were in unprecedented agreement about the civil rights violations carried out by the police. I am not about to watch passively as our First Amendment rights are trampled and forgotten. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that we stand up to institutions abusive of power, whether it’s the IMF, World Bank, U.S. government or our very own MPD force. What else is there to stop an institution of power from violating our civil rights besides our rising up and fighting back?
Ginny Leavell is a sophomore in the College. She is a redhead ready for some mad trick-or-treating, vegan goodies and a “regime change” … in the United States.
