Part II, A Companion Piece

to Part I, a photo essay, from May 1, 2015
#DallastoBaltimore:
#BlackLivesMatter meets #OpenCarry

Dallas was warm that night, the first night of the year when a man would sweat along his spine where a backpack held the heat close or a woman perspire where the strap of a semi-automatic pressed against her skin. After that night the rains came, for the next 21 days.

It was Friday and, the week’s work not quite complete, we met outside the jailhouse a few blocks from downtown — just down the hill, 100 yards maybe, from the grassy knoll where “the South” took down its second mark. I took the train and then my feet, crossing under I-35 beneath the roar of the cars along sidewalks built 50 years ago and forgotten since. Soon, the sidewalk ended — my body, spit out onto a highway entrance ramp. The landscape, approaching the jail on foot: dirt paths along the road beaten into overgrown grass; a loose-gravel, frightening intersection so large it took five minutes to cross.

In the instant crush of the corner we were briefly one thing, one sign, one idea — #blacklivesmatter — one song, even. But the corner was small, and the meeting was a half block further down along the downtown side of the jail. And, so, we walked down the leafy sidewalk, past a few television crews setting up and a few armed men and one woman in camouflage hanging back in the shade to our left. The short walk left us in a wide, crescent-shaped concrete enclosure.

It was quiet here and mostly shaded, the sun low in the sky directly behind the jail. The crowd milling about was more than half black; the rest were white, Hispanic, and Asian, or so it seemed; it seemed the lighter the skin the higher the propensity for bandanas tied over the face in a pointing-down triangle. The men and one woman carrying guns were taking positions now. The mind, it is said, will fill in gaps and create patterns: what my mind saw was a perimeter set, an equidistant force field of guns strapped to shoulders, an array, a constellation, dots of dull metal surrounding us, obliquely. The gun carriers wore camouflage, the sandy brown most appropriate to Texas and the Middle East, and boots, and backup ammunition in bands across their middles.

The crowd gathering for #dallastobaltimore — 2015's first #blacklivesmatter protest in Dallas and focused on Freddie Gray — eyed the gun carriers suspiciously, cautiously, rarely looking directly at them. The two groups did not mix; the open carriers stationed in ones and twos around us with their blank faces were neither menacing nor reassuring; no obvious signs of either solidarity or contempt. The wedding of Dallas to Baltimore crashed, in a suburban, empty kind of way.

Finally, there were speeches. At several points there were liaisons, self-appointed, who crossed the perimeter and mixed: one man with a gun came into the mix of us, addressing a protester his age and build — explaining himself, calmly, his words met with open, polite disagreement. Later, a young woman in a bandana stood arms-crossed near a group of armed men who told her they weren’t counter-protesting at all. The mixing was between oil and water: momentary: glinting in the sun.

Finally we were off and the chants were echoing off the sides of the jail to our right. As if it were pre-arranged, the open carriers stayed in ones and twos (twos, mostly,) and mixed into the march as if on rotation every few minutes, but not ‘in’ as much as ‘alongside.’ I ran back and forth taking photographs, surprised by the pace.

This was the alchemy of the protest and the non-counter-protest that went alongside but not inside: slack bodies, watchful eyes.

Later, a woman ahead was both holding a sign and pushing a stroller: as she crossed a crosswalk, the wheels turned suddenly into the car to her left. She hadn’t noticed immediately, focused on her chants as she was, and an armed woman rushed up to correct the stroller.

No words, just eyes. Help refused; the silent rebuke, shrugged off.