Five hours and two peanut butter sandwiches later,

by Karen Topakian

I emerged into the chilly wind from the outdoor holding pens at 850 Bryant Street, the Hall of Justice. It was 6:30 p.m. on March 19, 2008, the 5th anniversary of the US led invasion of Iraq and more than 100 of us had been arrested for protesting the war.

More women than men filled the three makeshift pens that kept us in place behind concrete walls next to Route 101. We sang, we laughed, we lent each other warm clothes. We did the Bunny Hop and the Hokey Pokey. We even rattled our cages.

I was arrested because I refused to disperse. I disobeyed a police order. At 12 noon, I preferred to lie in the middle of Market Street at Montgomery next to a flower-laden coffin,

Father Louis Vitale, a professor from San Diego in a pin striped suit and other men and women who weren’t going to let this day pass without notice. We were there to say No, not today. Today won’t be like other days in the financial district. Today we will be stopping business as usual.

Our “die-in” lasted for close to an hour. With two spring flowers clutched between my gloved hands, I closed my eyes and wept.

This isn’t the first die-in I’ve been in, nor sadly will it be my last. But this one struck me differently. All I could envision with my eyes closed was a photo that appeared that morning in the New York Times. A color photo of an operating room in Kirkuk where a car-bomb victim, who had just lost his life lay on a rusted gurney under soiled sheets. A defeated hospital employee stood a foot away staring at the blood soaked floor and the discarded evidence of the doctors’ futile efforts. This wasn’t the first casualty photo I had seen, but that day the sheer hopelessness struck me. And so for a few moments I let myself be overwhelmed, and I cried.

When the police took us away, a few women were caught up that had not been part of the demonstration. But there they were being arrested, detained and unable to tell their employers why a one-hour lunch break was going to turn into a daylong affair. Those of us who had been victims of similar events in the past or who just knew the police drill, made sure to stick close to these accidental activists.

As our detainment wore on under an overcast sky, many people became agitated and upset that the police weren’t processing us out fast enough or at all.

The not knowing is the tough part. Would we be released today, tonight? Or would we spend the night? I reminded myself that I came here willingly and intentionally and that I would bear the consequences. For a moment, I tried to put myself in the position of people whose daily fate is tied up in the hands of others: jailers, INS officers, judges, military tribunals. This is how they must feel most of the time, their freedom, their lives, their future is not theirs to decide. With that I tapped into a more patient Karen.

I was one of the last three people to be released. The officer who accompanied me outside the jail walls told me, “We all hate this war, too.”

Photo: Karen Topakian Participating in a Die-In on Market and Montgomery, from IndyBay Media