“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde,  The Importance of Being Earnest

Part One: Modern Prometheus
“It’s Alive!  It’s Alive!” – Victor Frankenstein

At first, I carried no sign.  In 2020, I marched with a notebook and a backpack for my first three protests.  The things I carried were extra covid masks, hand sanitizer, baby wipes (which were hard to find those early days), dark glasses, emergency jacket, water, cereal bars, and an assortment of flyers, newsletters and leaflets other protestors handed out and gave to me, but no sign.  I marched “unarmed”.  

Rally leaders told the “armed” protestors “Hold your signs up high!” as the police and media helicopters circled city hall. “And if you don’t have a sign, put your fists up!  This is what America looks like!” And that to me summed it all.  The protest sign as fist.  Or better yet, knuckle duster.

Cardboard resistance, nonvocal annunciation, creative rebellion. Combined with chanting, combined with physical demonstration, protest signs contribute to the full range of ancient performance poetry.  Integrative poetry.  Similar to what graffiti is to the elements of hip hop.  The written word in sync with the spoken and performed word.

Knuckle dusters showed up as diverse as LA.  Some signs had sticks attached to them to be held like a handle.  Some were just poster boards held with hands.  Some were poor man’s signs—simple sheets of notebook paper with a slogan.  Some people wore their signs.  Helmets of varying types—construction hats, football helmets, bicycle helmets all painted with slogans; or white T-shirts with messages on the front and back written with permanent markers.  DIY fashion as protest.  There was even activist cosplay.  One guy dressed up as Pancho Villa and had a sign that said “Poncho Villa”.

One Juneteenth rally held at the south lawn of city hall was dedicated solely to making signs.  Tables were set up for new activists to construct theirs. Cardboard, colored markers, glue, tape, glitter, construction paper, all made accessible—a total arts and crafts day.  Many of the handmade signs I saw were simple but effective.  When I say simple, I mean Sharpie-on-white.  White cardboard with black writing.

BLACK LIVES MATTER; WHITE SILENCE = VIOLENCE; AM I NEXT?  HOW MANY WEREN’T FILMED?  I CAN’T BREATHE.  If signs had pictures, they were usually of George Floyd’s selfie or maybe a picture of Martin or Malcolm with a quote.  One Sharpie-on-white I liked was “I’M SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED” a quote made famous by Activist Fannie Lou Hamer.  I wanted more than just sharpie on white, more than just a bumper sticker slogan re-written on cardboard.  There were tens of thousands of protesters in LA.  A sea of signs.  And they all said what needed to be said brilliantly.  And many of them had so much swagger.  I just felt like disrupting the swagger and bringing a nerd element that was uniquely me. 

Black Lives Matter Los Angeles spearheaded the whole Defund the Police chants.  I wanted to ask the question “And then what?” as a response.  My personal belief is that even if cops stopped abusing their power, other forces in power would still be abusing power.  Defund and then what?  I wanted to say that but not in a slogan.  As much as Fox News hated the protests, Fox News still profited.  Pundits like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson expressed their discontent but still received high ratings.  They were paid to disagree.  It was revolution for some and business for others.  

Working in higher academia I read and listen to scholars who say smart things, but they say the same things the same way and those who debate them say the same things the same way.  Scholars regurgitating the same old information.  The same old way.  Smart thought isn’t always original thought.  And that is an issue that bugs me.  I would like to think of constructive thinking as being composed of critical thinking, deep thinking, and original thinking.  A critical thinker is going to ask questions.  When the studies show that 6 out of 10 men “prefer (fill in the blank) to (fill in the blank)” or 75% of women are most likely to (“fill in the blank)” a critical thinker is going to ask how old are the men, the women?  What educational background of the men the women?  Etc.  Anything to get to the specifics.  They don’t just take research at face value just because it’s research.  A deep thinker is going to look for principles over details.  Core elements.  While activists and social critics criticize capitalism, the deeper thinker will criticize greed and exploitation.  Greed and exploitation being elements in capitalism but are also elements in other things. Did capitalism exist in 334 BCE when Alexander the Great was invading and conquering lands?  An original thinker brings to the table a subjective element.  They address concepts and ideas in a way that is characteristic of their unique way of thinking. 

Growing up in the church I had to read about Jesus.  I always found him to be a true original thinker.  He came out of left field criticizing both the Scribes and the Pharisees and got his message out through the telling of story.  To this day Christians, atheists, and followers of other faiths use the term “good Samaritan” to describe a person who helps those in distress.  It isn’t that original thinkers are saying anything new.  Nothing is totally new.  But due to the fear of sounding unprofessional or inarticulate or too simplistic many adults hide their original thought, thus limiting their full human effect.  Working in higher academia I have witnessed this trend.  A lot of intelligence, but not a lot of wisdom.  Children, I feel, tend to be the best original thinkers.  Original thinkers tend to be childlike but not childish.  One of my wishes in life is to be a Deep/Original/Critical thinker or “DOC thinker” as I like to call it.  DOC thought. It’s something I feel I both achieve and fail at daily.   

Prior to the pandemic I was in probate court for 4 years.  My aunt coerced my grandmother to sign a document while she had dementia in an attempt to make her the sole trustee of the estate.  I was raised by my grandparents since I was 3 months old, grew up and became their caregiver and power of attorney.  I confronted my aunt about it in 2010 informing her that what she did was elder abuse and showed her what the penalty was for such crime.  Her response was “Oh!  Oh!  Okay!  Never mind!”  Three years later, as soon as my grandma died my aunt whipped out the document, used it to evict me and sell the house despite there being a living trust prohibiting it.  My attorney tried to get the unlawful detainer dismissed and take the case to probate but the judge went forward with the eviction.  My aunt had filed the right paperwork in the right court at the right time, before we could file a demurrer, so I became homeless.  I couch surfed.  I slept in my car.  I slept in a laundry room.  My German shepherd went to live in a kennel and I would visit her on the weekends.  When I went to work I would cry on my lunch break then go back to work holding it in. 

I was given a record with an eviction which caused my credit score to go from “very good” to “poor and below average” for a duration of 7 years.  The court garnished my wages to pay my aunt for back rent despite there never being a rental agreement.  Despite having 2 bachelor’s degrees and 1 master’s degree, my academic library job wasn’t enough; so to support myself and my legal fight I took a second job at night working for the caregiving industry and that money went to pay my attorney for probate.  For 4 years I fought to prove that my aunt was not the owner.  I kept my receipts for the mortgage, property tax, insurance, and maintenance bills that I paid for.  I kept my grandmother’s medical records showing that she was being treated for Alzheimer’s.  I compiled a list of witnesses from doctors, clergy, and neighbors in the community.  My aunt had nothing.  In the end I got my money back and proved that my aunt was not the trustee but it taught me how racist court was. 

After my first day of testifying before the judge, my attorney took me to one of the conference rooms inside Stanely Mosk Courthouse inside downtown Los Angeles.  This was the same courthouse that OJ Simpson, and Charles Manson had their cases at.  My attorney goes: 

“Larry, I have to be honest with you.  I’m a White guy, and the judge is a White guy, and you are Black.  And the way that you spoke today, you were calm, you were confident, and you were organized.  That blew him away.  I saw the look in his eyes.  That is going to be our ammo!”  

My attorney was charging me $300 an hour, which meant $75 for every 15 minutes.  I wasn’t going to waste time talking about race, so I changed the subject quick to save money.  But it hung over my head.  How being calm and confident and organized could blow a judge away.  Isn’t that what I was supposed to be?  I’m in court.  Hasn’t a “White guy” ever seen a “calm, confident, organized” “Black guy” before?  What about all those Black lawyers and judges?  What was so special about me?  I remember how difficult it was in the beginning to find an attorney to represent my case.  The consultations were brutal.  In one month, I talked to six different attorneys alone pitching my case.  I had older White attorneys talking down to me at the consultations.  Two attorneys yelled at me and talked over me as if I were their opposing counsel.  Afterwards I still had to pay them for their time—$50 here, $75 there, $100 all to be rejected.  It gave me the conclusion that lawyers are just as racist as cops, they just don’t beat you or shoot you in the back.  But they see you the same way.  A smudge.  Gum under their shoe.  Law goes beyond the gun and the badge.  And so I wanted to show that somehow in my sign. 

There are higher levels of racism.  The unnecessary “game” of probate court got me thinking about a video game “system”.  And what exactly is a system anyway?  A series of different parts working together for the whole.  The circulatory system in the human body consists of the blood, the blood vessels, and the heart and within those components you have a series of arteries, capillaries, veins, atriums, ventricles, and valves.  The cooling system in a car consists of a water pump, a thermostat, a radiator, a fan.  When one part is defective the whole system becomes out of balance.  And that’s America.  That’s the American legal system.  So while the streets were yelling “Defund the police!”, “Abolish the police!”, “Reform the police!” and essentially saying the same things I responded with the principles of D.O.C. thought. 

June 5, 2020 would have been Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday.  She died by police gunfire on March 18th the same year.  On June 5th I went to a BLM rally outside the Hall of (In)Justice—as the protestors called it—for a birthday celebration in Breonna’s honor.  The event was called “The Rose that Grew from Concrete” named after the Tupac Shakur poem.  Protestors and those in attendance were encouraged to take a rose from a table and place a rose by the memorial.  Later that evening on my caregiving shift, while my client slept, I drew a blueprint for my protest sign at his kitchen table.  “The System is a Racist Video Game” I wrote.  That alone would have been my “sharpie on white” but being the librarian that I am I had to do it up infographic style.  

So, I went deeper.  As my client snored, I drew stick people on paper and made a list of racists up the racist ladder: police, lawyers, judges, jurors, politicians, business owners, neighborhood watch, ordinary people; but I still needed to make it all sing.  I was taking several poetry classes on Zoom led by the great scholar and poet Annie Finch.  Her lessons were all based on traditional poetic meter and the musicality of words.  So, I edited and categorized my list based on alliteration.  Police became Cops.  Lawyers and judges combined became Courts.  Politicians became Candidates.  Business owners became Corporations.  Ordinary people became Communities.  Cops, Courts, Candidates, Corporations, Communities = The tongue-twisting five Cs.   

The next day, Saturday, I skipped the protest and took the time to construct my sign.  Across from the library where I worked was the 99 Cent Store.  Originally, I went there looking for colorful posterboard paper to use as the actual sign itself.  I could place images on it.  But then I saw they were selling carboard trifolds.  The kind kids used for middle school science fair projects.  I found the trifold design was large enough to fit all of my ideas on, sturdier than posterboard paper, plus I could glue the posterboard paper on to it—the best of both worlds.  

The library was closed due to quarantine, but I had a key.  I used the conference table in the back room as my laboratory.  I literally became Dr. Frankenstein and was no longer making a protest sign but a creature.  

I Googled video game characters from my middle school days.  Super Mario Bros, the Legend of Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.  Since I love all things folklore, I see video games as a form of modern-day folklore.  I printed the characters out in color and embarked on the liberating process of cutting and gluing.  Kindergarten had prepared me for this day.

In Calibri font size 72 I pasted “THE SYSTEM IS A RACIST VIDEO GAME!” 

Next to Doc and Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out it read:

Level 1

Racist Cops

(Cops Are Just the Foot Soldiers.  Don’t Be Fooled!)

Next to Samus Aran from Metroid it read

Level 2

Racist Courts

(Lawyers, District Attorneys, Judges, Juries)

Next to Link from The Legend of Zelda it read

Level 3

Racist Candidates

(Mayors, Governors, Senators, Representatives, Presidents)

Next to Mega Man from Mega Man it read

Level 4

Racist Corporations

(Corporations Fund Politics; Corporations Run Sweat Shops; Corporations Control the Media)

And finally next to Fire Mario from Super Mario Bros it read

Level 5

Racist Communities

It’s We the People vs. They the People

I gave my creature a gender and made it a she.  I needed a yin to compliment my yang.  I named her Peggy after Peggy Carter, killer of Nazis, and Captain America’s dear heart.  Since Cap carried a shield, I noticed my creature was big enough to function as one.  A large trifold 24 inches tall and 18 inches long when closed, but when opened, possessed a 36 inch wingspan.  One hell of a protest shield.  The creature would protect me from projectiles thrown my way, protect me from the summer heat when used as a parasol, and be padding for my knees during demonstrations where we’d drop to a knee for 9 minutes in the middle of the street.

I Googled pictures of Peggy Carter and found two pictures of Hailey Atwell aiming guns at the viewer.  I taped them to the back of the trifold and then…“It’s alive!  It’s alive!”

One of my concerns was that my sign wasn’t “Black” enough.  After all, many of the marches were inspired by or led by Black Lives Matter activists.  And many of the signs had specific Black imagery or Black quotes.  There wasn’t a single Black person on my sign except Doc from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.  And Doc was important because of the DOC thought and the pun associated with it.  I even named my creature after a White woman from a comic book.  My creature was more philosophical and conceptual than tangibly political. 

I always got called “Not Black enough” by folks growing up.  I wasn’t Black enough because I liked rock bands or because I liked mayonnaise on my sandwich, because I failed at games like spades, and sucked at the electric slide, or this: the great grand Uncle Tom of Uncle Tomisms I liked a White girl, or two.  Actually, on second thought, it was three—and none of them had curves.  But no matter what I liked I was always Black enough for the cops.  And getting screwed over by them was my racial rite of passage.  To heck with my preferences and that is the reason why I always say swagger is the new superstition. 

After some soul searching, and soul power searching I said fuck it and put my insecurities aside.  After all, it was the pandemic.  I’d be wearing a mask and dark glasses anyway.  Who would know me?  Not a single soul.  And it’s Los Angeles, everyone’s a little off.   

Sunday June 7, 2020 was Peggy’s first call to action and she responded effectively.  I kept her folded up on the train to downtown LA.  We got off at Union Station, walked past the homeless encampments at what used to be called Father Sera Park, crossed over the 101 freeway overpass and made it to Spring Street.  Helicopters circled overhead.  Some LAPD, some NBC News, some drones. 

In the early days of the 2020 LA protests, police on motorcycles would direct traffic so that we could do our demonstrations.  Thousands of us took over Spring Street.  It was more than a parade.  Peggy’s left and right wings opened, and the nerdy video game characters began speaking.  Rather than being the laughed at like Carrie at her pig-blood prom, Peggy was given the red carpet treatment.

“Hey, bro, let me see that sign.  Shit.  That’s a cold one.  That’s what’s up.”

“Excuse me.  Can I take a picture of your sign?”

“Oh shit.  C-5.  I gotta remember that.  Can I take a picture?”

“Did you make that?”

“When all of this is over with, I hope you laminate that sign.”

The streets had our approval, and it was enough to know that Peggy would be back.

Part Two: Axel F

“Stir it up, got to break it up now/
When I think about tomorrow…/
I don´t wanna take it anymore.” – Patti LaBelle, “Stir it Up”

The first R rated movie I saw as a kid was Beverly Hills Cop.  I saw it in the theater when I was 7 years old.  My mother and grandmother both took me to see it.  Two other R rated movies I saw latter on would be the purples.  Purple Rain on VHS and The Color Purple in the theater.  The purples traumatized me a bit.  What Prince did with Apollonia in the barn—Woah!  And then how the White mob circled Sophia prior to the cop bashing her eye with the gun handle—double woah!  I gave up on R for a while.  I stuck to Indiana Jones and the chilled monkey brains.  That was the 80s for me.  Watching how adults acted perplexed me.  I was a kid instructed by the adult world to be good but the adult world never practiced what it preached.  The adult world was too complicated for me.  Some would say no parent should ever take their kid to see such things.  But I’m glad they did, it helped me be a better teenager and an introspective writer at 15.

But Axel Foley outsmarting the cops and those in authority had a deep impact on me.  He was Br’er Rabbit in the flesh and did what Shaft did but in a comedic way.  Aside from Lucille Ball and the Three Stooges, Eddie Murphy was my introduction to comedy and especially the Black/White dynamic on screen.  

Though the streets of Beverly Hills had changed since ’84, the snobbery had not.  How Axel Foley insulted authority was still timely. When 2020 came, I got to be my own version of Axel Foley.  For months MAGA supporters had taken over Beverly Gardens holding rallies.  And week by week their numbers grew to thousands.  They had every right to gather, every right to express their patriotism.  They had every right to vote for Trump.  But these were not just Trump voters, these were Trump cultists.

 Signs that once read: “God and Country” now read “God Guns and Trump”.  There were signs that read “White Genocide is Real”.  On national television during the presidential debate Trump said: “Proud Boys stand back and stand by!”  And after that, very proudly the boys showed up to Beverly Hills.  Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, QAnon Followers, those attempting to resurrect the Tea Party.  Months later those same forces would storm the US Capital.  

 Together, Peggy and I, marched with 75 counter protestors from Roxbury Park to Beverly Gardens.  Google Maps had it at only 1.2 miles.  Roxbury Dr. was residential.  We passed houses chanting: “Out of your homes and into the streets!  While you’re sleeping, people are dying!  Out of your homes and into the streets!”

 That 1.2 miles felt longer.  Rich liberals came out of their homes and clapped.  They threw up a rich liberal fist.  They knew where we were going but did not join us.  Why would they anyway?  They were rich.  And they were liberal.  As we marched on we wound up on their Instagrams.  If the revolution wasn’t going to be televised it would be tweeted.

We changed streets, turned right on Wilshire where there was more traffic.  The quarantine was lifted, people were out driving.  The noises returned but we made a bigger noise.  Supporters honked their horns.  They knew where we were going but did not join.  We looked like the crew who would put bananas in their tailpipes.  On Wilshire the chants were: “How do you spell raaa-cist?  B-H-P-D!  How do you spell raaa-cist?  B-H-P-D!” 

We made a left on Rodeo Dr.  The street I watched Axel Foley cruise to the Patti LaBelle “Stir it Up” track 35 years prior.  A different decade but same game and same rules.  We paused so the posh could see our black-clothed glory.

“Out of the stores and into the streets!  While you’re shopping people are dying!  Out of the stores and into the streets!”

  The power of attention was surreal.  The posh and the plastic withdrew from their stores for a moment to film us.

“Out of the stores and into the streets!  While you’re buying people are dying!  Out of the stores and into the streets!”

 The audacity Foley had to park a dented Nova next to a Mercedes.  Each one of us a blue Nova in black, our lives mattered.  Picking up the pace, we moved forward.  Patti LaBelle sang in my head but we chanted as we marched passed restaurants: 

“Out of the bars and into the streets!  While you’re drinking, people are dying!  Out of the bars and into the streets!”

“Out of the clubs and into the streets!  Join us!  Out of the clubs and into the streets!  Join us!”

No one did.  Who would anyway?  They watched, filmed us with their phones, and raised their spectator fists in rich liberal solidarity.  So we marched on alone until we turned right on Santa Monica Blvd and there was where we faced 2000+ Trump and MAGA supporters.  75 against 2000.

Beverly Hills was awkward.  The police seemed to let people fight, as long as it was one on one and not a mob attack, meaning if you squared off, they let it happen.  I saw it as their way of saying if you want us to be defunded then this is what you get. 

A White woman with a cell phone videoed a Proud Boy who then slapped the phone out of her hand.

“Did you see that, officer?”  She said. “Oh my God!  Did you see that?!”

The cop saw, said nothing, then looked away.  The Beverly Hills cops were there to stop a riot, they weren’t there to stop what would cause one.

Our signs read Black Lives Matter.

Our signs read No Justice No Peace.

Not a single sign of ours mentioned Joe Biden’s name or the Democratic Party.  For us it wasn’t about partisan politics, it was about something else.  It was about standing up to a political cult, which in a materialistic secular humanistic world is far more dangerous than a religious one.

It wasn’t supposed to be a fistfight.  It was supposed to be a chant off.  Our signs vs. their signs.  Our songs vs. their songs.  The purest purpose of counter protest, and we had a legal permit by the city to do this.  The Beverly Hills Police department formed a line to divide our motely crew from their MAGA crew.  The line was ineffective as folks crossed over from both crews. 

“Hey, Helmet Man!  Hey, Helmet Man!  Let’s go one on one!”  A Proud Boy called out to a member of our crew who wore a safety helmet, challenging him to a fight.  Helmet Man did nothing and walked away. 

“But you’re not Blaaack!  You’re not Blaaack!”  A MAGA supporter yelled to a Latina ally who was holding a Black Lives Matter sign.  

Peaceful protests are subjective.   For some people it means no blows thrown.  But even those types of protests may be void of the spirit of peace.  Nonviolence and peace are two different things when pondering the concept of inner peace.  Neither crews seemed to have had inner peace that day.

I held Peggy up.  She said nothing about defunding the police, nothing about BLM, and nothing that criticized Trump.  Peggy just called out the system for what it was.  And with that she shut up screams. 

“Hey, let me see that sign.” A Proud Boy asked.  I turned to him and let him read.  He gave it a long look, then walked away.  He didn’t debate me.  He didn’t say bullshit, he just quietly walked away. 

A right-wing media reporter kept trying to get a woman in our crew to talk.  “What’s your end goal?  Why are you here?  Tell us your end goal.”  His camera and microphone followed her every evasive move. 

Back at Roxbury Park we had all been instructed to not talk to right-wing media, so the woman stayed silent.  He was quite larger, and she was quite smaller.  Peggy was large enough to function as a wall, so I stepped in between the two of them which allowed the woman to slip away from the reporter. 

“The goal is to win the game,” I said to him.  The reporter then took the time to film my sign; and just like the Proud Boy he, too, walked away.  I was asked zero questions. 

Damn.  Peggy was a right-wing repellant it seemed.  For better or for worse. 

When I was kid reading those stories about Jesus, there was a tale of him stopping an angry mob from stoning a woman by saying: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  But that wasn’t the weird thing that stopped them from stoning.  Jesus knelt and began writing in the sand and as he wrote people watched and one by one they walked away dropping their rocks.  No one knows what the hell he was writing.  Some say they know but the Bible never says specifically what it was.  Whatever he wrote it worked.

I held Peggy high with Christ in mind but eventually a fight did break.  An angry patriot with an American flag wrapped the banner around the pole, then used it as a baseball bat to knock one of our guys to the ground.  I watched the whole thing happen.  He then threw the American flag on the ground committing a sin worse than Kaepernick.  He climbed on top of our guy and started pounding him.  Helmet Man and the other security from our crew rushed in to pull the patriot off.  As they pulled him off the Proud Boys rushed in to fight and the melee followed.  Our guy was still on the ground.

The cops came with their Beverly Hill-billy clubs and began swinging them horizontally at everyone—mostly our crew. 

“Allies to the front,” someone shouted.

Brave White women and White-passing Latinas opened their umbrellas creating a Spartan-style phalanx wall and ran towards the cops.  When nightsticks battle umbrellas, nightsticks always win, but the black umbrellas served as snares snagging the batons once they tore into them.  A blinding net.  This allowed our fallen guy to finally get up and escape from being trampled, arrested or beaten. 

As the clouds parted, a voice arose either from Beverly Hill Heaven or a loudspeaker saying:

The Beverly Hills Police Department has declared this to be an unlawful assembly.  You are now ordered to disperse.  Failure to comply will result in arrest or other police action.  You have 4 minutes to disperse.

This message was only to our crew.  The MAGA rally continued.  So, dispersing is what we did.  $1,000 or 6 months in jail would be the penalty if we didn’t.  We turned around and marched our arses back to Roxbury Park with the BHPD’s Lenco BearCat, it’s armored SWAT vehicle, making sure we did.

We never stopped the cult from believing.

We never stopped the cult from storming the United States Capital building 68 days later.

We never stopped the cult from reelecting The Orange Man who would later have Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, by his side and in his ear.

We simply took a stand for a few minutes just to say no.  

In 2020 I attended 27 protests.  A small number compared to the full-time activists.

Today Peggy sits in my office.  I’ve never laminated or framed her.  I keep her as a conversation piece. 

I show her to younger people, older people, and people of all races.  With her, I tell my story of resistance. 

I start with her and work my way back to the first night I was stopped by the police.  

November 1998:

My grandmother in the driver’s seat and I in the passenger’s.

Her taillight was out.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff asked to see her identification then asked to see mine.  I was just a passenger.  

But he asked to see mine.

When he gave me my ID back after scanning it in his database, he looked at me and said: “It’s a good thing no one in this car is wanted for murder.”

What a random thing to say.

He gave my grandmother a correctible violation, also known as a fix-it ticket.

But the light was never out to begin with.

Let me repeat that.

I said the light was never out to begin with.