Oral History

At this week's Rise and Resist meeting, a member proposed doing an oral history project with his youth arts organization. With multiple members lost in the past several years, the idea of preserving these stories in compelling. During the discussion, Naomi pointed out that the ACT UP oral history project had been used in court against activists. I had been listening quietly, but at that point I raised my hand. "I was one of the activists whose oral history interview was used by the prosecution," I said, and gave a brief summary of what was a much larger story. On March 16th, 2003, a 23 year old American activist named Rachel Corrie was in Rafah, in the Gaza strip. At that time, there were international observers from a variety of countries in Gaza using their presumed privilege to try to protect Palestinians. Several of my friends had spent time doing that. 'On this day, Rachel Corrie, in a high visibility vest, was trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian doctor's home. She was shouting and waving her arms when she was mowed down by an IDF bulldozer, which then reversed and ran over her again. When word of her murder reached the US, an assortment of activists from Fed Up Queers and Jews Against The Occupation and various other groups, decided a response was necessary. In order to avoid surveillance, we dismantled phone wiring, covered the windows to keep from having our lips read, and did not speak out loud, writing on an easel instead. On the day of the action, we blocked 5th Ave in front of the Israeli bank in midtown at rush hour with our arms chained together inside PVC pipes. In 2003, there was much less understanding of what was happening to the palestinians and way less support for anti-occupation activism. As we waited for the police, orthodox men were throwing hot coffee at us and calling us whores in Hebrew. There was also a group of young men who decided to stand there and chant "USA, USA!" as though that meant something. The emergency services unit showed up and cut little windows in the pipes so they could see where our arms were before cutting through the rest, always a scary moment. We were removed from the street and carted off to holding cells. When she showed up for our court date it started to become clear that this was not going to be handled like a standard protest case. With a zionist mayor and district attorney, and a judge who sat on his synagogue's Israel committee, they had decided to single us out for harsher prosecution. They refused to come down from the misdemeanor "Obstruction of Government Administration" charge, and the judge denied every motion our lawyer made. Months passed with lengthy meetings of our group and our attorneys, and court dates, until finally we got to the trial. Activist cases usually get settled before trial, but since we were not being offered a deal, we wound up having a six day jury trial. During the trial, which involved two ADAs and lots of poster size color photos of the action, they dragged in various "witnesses" who had just been doing their jobs that morning - taxi drivers, bus drivers, etc to testify about how they had to change their routes because of our action. In the end, the judge gave the jury such narrow instructions that all they could do was convict us. One juror was so reluctant to do it that she was in tears. Once convicted, the next phase is sentencing. Non-violent protests usually get community service, a length of time to stay out of trouble, maybe fines or some combination. We were startled when the prosecutor decided to argue for jail time. Hundreds of people who knew us sent in letters of support, but the prosecuton unsealed our old ACD's cases, which were supposedly sealed, going all the way back to the anti-apartheid movement to argue for jail time due to our histories of activism. Our volunteer lawyer, Stephen, wound up filing an appeal with the NYS Court of Appeals and various lawyers working on civil liberties and social justice role played with him to get him ready for that court's unusual format. At the hearing, the justices peppered both our lawyer and the ADA with questions. Stephen handled his easily, while the ADA seemed to be unprepared and struggling. Our side won a unanimous, precedent-setting verdict that says that ACD's cases cannot be unsealed for this purpose. Having lost that material, the prosecutors then went to the ACT UP Oral History project and downloaded lengthy transcripts of several of us discussing our activist experiences and used that to support their claim that we were repeat offenders who deserved jail time. When we showed up for sentencing, we had no idea what to expect. We had had to prepare our lives because if the sentence is incarceration, they take you directly from the courtroom. We each had a chance to make a statement before sentencing, which presented a question - use the time to plead for leniency or make a political statement. We all chose political statements. Then we waited, palms sweating, supporters in the courtroom at the edge of their seats, for the judge's pronouncement. In the end, we wound up with ten days of community service. Normally, with a group that included a teacher, a social workers, a food pantry director, and me, a shelter director, we would be allowed to do the community service at a nonprofit where our skills would be useful. This judge insisted that we do it cleaning parks. Cleaning Tompkins Square Park in the August heat, I discovered that they did not even have a sharps container and were dealing with used syringes by sticking them in soda bottles with the lid on. Tompkins Square was close to a needle exchage, so I was able to get them a proper sharps container. The other people doing their community service for assault, robbery, etc. had two or three days. When they heard we had ten, they were startled and wanted to know what we had done. When we went back to court, a different judge was on the bench. He called me up and said, "you did 8 days, why not the whole 10?" I said, "your honor, I am the directory of an emergency shelter for LGBTQ homeless youth and sometimes there are emergencies..". He cut me off. "Your whole life is community service, I'm dismissing this." He asked the next person up why she had not finished hers. "Your honor, I am the director of a housing program for people with AIDS..." He didn't let her finish, the annoyance clear on his face as he dismissed hers, too.