FIERCE

My facebook friend posted this old photo of a FIERCE protest from 2002.
This protest was the day that Kate Spencer and I used bolt cutters to cut the chain link fence blocking access to the Christopher St pier while Bob Kohler held our stuff and the kids stood on the other side of West St chanting "two Kates cut the gate!" (the chant was not planned lol). Cutting the fence felt good, like a knife going through slightly softened butter. But we didnt get to do that much cutting before the police grabbed us. It was Kate Spencer's first arrest and she had some kind of ailment. It's my policy to never mention that kind of thing to the police, because it just complicates things, but Kate said too much about it and they carted her off to the hospital, separating us. I'm OK in a cell alone. My approach to jail is just to get as physically comfortable as possible and then zone out. But for Kate's first arrest, being separated was pretty scary. When I got to court the next day, I was sitting on the bench near the judge waiting for my case to be called, when Stephen Edwards walked into the courtroom. At that point, I just knew him as a public defender who would actually fight for my clients. The first time we met, I was in court with K, a young black trans woman who had been arrested while sitting on a stoop in the west village eating a cup of noodles. Although she did sometimes sex work, she wasn't doing it then, but they charged her with it anyway. Usually in court overburdened public defenders would tell trans women to just plead guilty, figuring it was a minor charge. But that left the police with no reason to stop doing it, and the trans women with lengthening rap sheets. Stephen just happened to be assigned to K's case that day, but he did something I had never seen before. He believed her when she told him she wasn't working at the time, he fought the charge and he won! After that, I always called him when my clients were arrested. Anyway, he walked in and was startled to find me on the other side of the courtroom, in the defendant's seat. He grabbed my file, and got rid of the "possession of burglary instruments" charge and went on to represent me and many other activists, including the Diamond District 16 on the case that went all the way to the court of appeals and resulted in a precedent-setting decision. Kate, on the other hand, got a random public defender who did the usual bullshit of pressuring her to plead guilty, and she gave in instead of pleading not guilty so than an activist lawyer could fight the case later as she had been told to do. She wound up with the burglary intruments charge on her record and was never willing to do civil disobedience again. Instead she used her perfect lettering and art skills on all kinds of signs and banners.

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