2011-10-26 1AM (90 minutes after the last gassing)

I sat down on the computer this evening to find a growing stream of reports of police attacking the Occupy Oakland march downtown.  I was glued to the screen for three hours, trying to find live video streams, with #occupyoakland tweets coming in 20-per-minute… but the ABC7 helicopter (the only one left after the police apparently requested the media to leave) kept going offline for refueling whenever action started, and the only video-phone feed I could find ran out of batteries by 10pm and went home to recharge.  For such an intense event, I couldn’t hardly find any live information, and Twitter was an unnavigable mess of retweets and old footage.  This got entirely too frustrating, so at about 11pm I downloaded the UStream app to my android and, after a brief struggle trying to learn how to stream video, biked the 30 blocks to downtown to document the Occupation myself if I had to.

Fortunately (after 5 tear gas events that evening), I arrived to find a calmer scene.  The dissipating tear gas was still pungent three block away where I locked my bike.  I walked past cop cars and barricades, past solemn faces of occupiers as they sulked away in scattered groups, to find an intersection where only 100 people continued to stand and stare at the riot police (whittled down from perhaps 2000 people who had marched that evening).  I took a walk around the perimeter of the block, entirely barricaded by police in riot gear, and was particularly astounded by the parking lot of cop cars that used to be Clay street.  When I got back to Broadway the crowd was even smaller, visibly tired, some angry, with only one group still attempting to hold up a banner, dead on their feet.  At least half the people left had enormous cameras, but no one had anything to point them at.

There’s not much to do at a standoff; when I don’t have anything to do, I tend to draw.  I’ve never drawn a sheriff in a gas mask before, certainly not in the atmosphere immediately following a struggle (and/or while intermittently coughing from the residual tear gas), so I took this as a unique opportunity.  I’ve drawn a lot of people, but I discovered two particular things tonight, which I’d like to take the time to explain.  The officers’ faces were obscured by two layers of glass (shield and mask), which caught so much glare that I could never, no matter how hard I tried, see the darks of their eyes.  Drawing a portrait of someone with no eyes is… well, disturbing to put it simply - maybe like trying to have a conversation with someone who’s mind is gone.  About 5 minutes into my drawing the sheriffs changed guard, and the man (kid?) I was drawing was replaced by an identically outfitted officer.  Being so similar with standard-issue-everything, I figured I would just keep drawing as if he was the same person - honestly, I couldn’t hardly tell the difference between the one in front of me and the one next to him - but as I continued, I found that these guys were, in fact, not the same at all.  This one held his chin up higher.  His undershirt was black, while the previous one was light and had a collar.  The collar of his vest was cinched up next to his neck, rather than sagging toward his breastbone.  His mic was crooked on his shoulder.  I wonder, if I was able to stand there long enough drawing, if I would have eventually been able to notice enough about him to understand his personality beneath all that body armor and protective glass.  Perhaps I would even have been able to see his eyes… but after another 30 minutes, the guard changed again and I was staring at someone entirely new.

I’m not sure where I heard this first, but the last time I heard it said it came out of some gentlemen from Cabinet Magazine:  that drawing something is the only way to get to know it, and that you don’t ever know anything until you’ve drawn it.  Some of the Occupiers were impressed that I was just standing there with watercolors, even though I know of at least one other person who is documenting this event through drawing - but if the Occupation movement is driven by peace, love and knowledge, then I don’t think there could have been anything more appropriate for me to be doing at that moment.  These last two weeks, though I have known that the Occupation represents me probably more than most, I haven’t known how I should be contributing.  I think, now, if I go back, I will just keep drawing.