#jjayolsen

Three protest in Five days and I’m exhausted. 

With the hail coming down, hands and feet frozen, voice crackling, stomach empty I am so fully exhausted; but proud, because even though I feel dead, I also feel..

Last night it’s become clear to me that I must I must bring gloves to work to stand outside as the protest last Thursday, January 19th and last night, January 24th at Trump International Hotel Columbus Circle were last minute with the Women’s March in NYC on Saturday

There were definitely some eye-opening experiences in both good and bad ways; and I’m glad I experienced them both. First, I realized how bad my social anxiety is as it took me a while to feel comfortable chanting in the crowd. 

Second, and more global, was that I don’t believe in always chanting the phrases or agreeing with them just because I’m in the group and while for now I can just not chant what I don’t believe in, I wonder how I will feel in the long run. Being at the protest, demonstration is a show of one more person who doesn’t want the Dakota Access Pipeline, or is upset that woman are still not equal. But does my being there for one action, even though a lot of these are connected and I agree with most, automatically support the others.

Ones I agree with:

“Native Life Matters”

“We Stand with Standing Rock” and “City by City, Block by Block”-->This was probably my favorite overall as it encompasses not only the protest and the Dakota Access Pipeline itself by that those at Standing Rock and across the country were together 

“Water is Life”

“Show me what Democracy looks like, this is what Democracy looks like”

“Love Trumps Hate”

“Whose streets? Our streets!”

And Ones I didn’t agree with:

“Stop the pipeline, not the people” 

“Dump Trump”--> I don’t like him either, but this just isn’t going to solve anything now. I understand what is meant behind this when they say “Not My President”. They want to make it clear that all of the hate he spews is not representative of all of this. But I feel this is more of a divider than anything else

My final and most critical eye opening experience was the fear. I’ve been trying, as a white person, to see how those of other races feel walking down the street. I cannot fully ever understand it, I wasn’t raised to because I wasn’t raised to have to but I feel I got some of it last night. Walking from Trump International Hotel across Central Park South the police were at first just casually around and helped direct a few people and then escorted us blocking traffic as we went towards Trump Tower. but then, two blocks north of our destination we were stopped. Directed onto the left we were lead into, what seemed to be a trap. The gates went all around and we were not allowed to move them. For the next thirty minutes I saw the police officers surrounding the front of the protest grow, and I don’t mean grew as we were all closer together and now so were they grow, I mean REALLY GROW. 

At first nothing was going on, but when asked why we weren’t allowed to cross and why were trapped in we received no response (but this I understand as the officers around us surely weren’t the ones in charge and didn’t want to escalate any feelings). But as the Women’s March Protest on Saturday and the previous Trump International Hotel Protest on Thursday had been peaceful it didn’t make sense and obviously protesting two blocks north would not be effective as we are protesting the President’s actions that day of moving forward with the Dakota Access Pipeline and KeystoneXL. All I know is that the police number grew slowly at first and then in a surge. They had called for backup and where officers had stood comfortably apart, they were now forming a barricade; in a protest of an estimated two thousand, I felt overwhelmed by their presence. Overwhelmed and scared. Eventually the protest got around the barricade and moved all they way down to Time Square and I’ve yet to hear of any violence.