Saturday on Freedom Bridge… Where to start? I have this delightful photo of my 8 year old niece in her red, white and blue scarf, her pink camo leggings and her pink WSU sweatshirt holding the flag that flew in front of the military quarters in which her mother grew up and then my camera died. Well, she was undoubtedly the cutest patriot on the bridge that day, anyway. Saturday on Freedom Bridge… It was indeed a day of exercising the freedoms for which many generations of American men and women have fought and some have died. The men now serving, who slipped behind the lines and stood with us, in spite of “guidance” from command to do otherwise, have served to make me more humbly aware of the quality and caliber of our military... but I grew up among such men. How then could those, protesting these fine individuals, even be expected to understand who they were denouncing? It would be like the worm denouncing the earth that gives it life for being so dirty; so clueless a characterization of something so important to our way of life and so beyond the scope, the narrow vision of the worm. So, that said, let me begin.
Hannah and I arrived at Freedom Bridge, which runs from the town of Tillicum to the Madigan entrance of Ft Lewis, at about noon. We unfurled our flag and walked up to the bridge to join the small group of patriots waving flags and waving at passing cars on the bridge and on the freeway below. The sidewalks were marked off with cones and yellow tape, which was totally new in my bridge flag waving experience, so I sensed that this was going to be a different experience from past events on Freedom Bridge. There were already numerous police officers on site, which was also a new experience. I began to wonder if I was bringing my little niece into the middle of a maelstrom that was going to be wilder than I’d expected.
We spoke with a police officer who told us that the 150 or so protestors formed up in the nearby park would be directed to the north side of the bridge and we would be on the south as there is a monument to our soldiers on the southern side of the bridge and the police didn’t want the protesters to have any chance of getting near it. I asked one of the officers if we HAD to let them on the bridge. He said that they had a permit and were allowed to access the bridge, so the police and our group had to let them do so. I asked him what kind of man he was to allow that… I told him to give me his wife’s phone number and I bet she would chastise him for his attitude. He laughed and assured me that he would be with us if he was not on duty, but, since he was on duty, he had to be impartial. Insightfully I pointed out to him, “So, basically, it sucks to be you today? Huh?!!” He laughed so hard I thought he was going to cry, but he did agree with me. All things considered, Hannah and I decided to set up on the southern walkway to start with and avoid having to move when the darksiders came to the party.
We had settled in quite nicely and were waving at lots of cars passing by with military stickers on the windshield when a small group of darksiders, 8-12, came up to the bridge. There were apparently a lot of folk who had not heard that they were to have the northern side of the bridge and refused to let them on. So they came to our side. Now the panic set in. I was not letting THEM past me to where the memorial was, but I didn’t want my little niece seeing her aunt in full fledged conflict with darksiders. So I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Fortunately, there was a gallant gentleman, a hero from a past war, who flung his flag sideways across the entrance to the walkway and shoved the oncoming darksiders back off the curb and into the street. The police, realizing that some of our group had not gotten the word on the set up, came over and re-directed the darksiders to their side of the bridge and asked all of our people to move to the south side.
I had thought that the pushing and shoving might have unsettled Hannah, but I found out later that my little niece had spotted a younger protester on the other side of the bridge and she had engaged him in a bit of a battle of her own. Apparently he had stuck his tongue out at her so she countered with a mean face. He responded in kind and she crossed her eyes at him and he turned away. Her aunt, and later her mother, was quite proud of her prowess in facing down darksiders! The family tradition carries on!
The dozen or so darksiders were just a vanguard for the main group. They came ahead to hold their place on the bridge for the remainder of the group… a group of about 100 to 150 who were meeting in a Tillicum park. Our group grew in size and I was relieved as the numbers grew to close to what the darksiders were said to have mustered. It still seemed like too small a number for what was coming.
Hannah had become a bit too chilled on the windy bridge and when she asked to go home I was relieved. I was worried that this really was going to be a different sort of event from past Freedom Bridge rallies. So we called her mom and met her at the bottom of the hill. I waved good-bye to my gallant little warrior niece and I returned to take up my post on Freedom bridge, braced to enjoy whatever came our way.
As with last weekend, there were a few soldiers who came out to watch and see what was being said about them. Quiet young men with short hair and closed expressions lingered about at the far end of the bridge near Tillicum. As I passed by one of them I remembered what we had heard last week about them being told to stay away so I turned and, in jest, asked him if he was supposed to be there. He looked quite startled and then very sheepishly he admitted that he was not. His expression clearly indicated that he wanted to know how I had known that. I started to explain to him that I am a woman and, therefore know everything…. But I decided that I’d keep that secret and let his future wife explain to him how that works. Instead I put my arm around him and thanked him for coming and told him we were delighted to have him with us… even if he wasn’t “really” there! There was that smile I’d come to recognize and the quiet “thank you, ma’am” from a hero.
That had been such fun that I tried the same line on a couple of other soldiers. One defiantly stated that he had not “gotten the memo” telling him not to show up and he planned to stay and watch the show. Seems he’d just recently come back from Iraq and he was interested in what these folk who’d never been there had to say about it all. Another soldier, who had been with us from near the start of the day, simply indicated that he’d come to “take pictures of the hippies” because his wonderful wife had let him! “She would have been here herself,” he told us, “but we have two little kids. So she stayed with them. But she let me use her camera!” When someone questioned him regarding how he felt about all this, he told us that he was glad they were out here protesting. He said that he had served 16 years in the military to assure that they had the right to speak their minds. We acquiesced quietly, and a bit shamefacedly, to his forthright statement, but we laughed out right when he followed on by admitting that he’d also served to assure that he had the right not to have to stand there and LISTEN to them when they spoke their mind! As I said, there are remarkable, tolerant and wholly delightful young men serving this country. And some of them are down right funny!
About 2:30 our dozen darksiders packed it in to go join up with the main group. We waved them off and spread out to cover both flanks of the bridge again. Rumors started to spread that the group at the park had broken up and only 30 or so remained. Then we got word that the number was still over 100 and that at 3:00 they planned to storm the bridge and head straight up the road to the gate of the Army Base and hold a “vigil” for the dead soldiers and the “murdered Iraqis” while blocking the gate to all traffic. Again I asked the question of a police officer… do we HAVE to let them do that? Again I was told that they have a permit to do that and we are NOT allowed to stop them. Suddenly the jest wasn’t as funny as it had been earlier in the day. I had to stand there and let these ignorant boors storm past me chanting insults at the men and women who assure them that right and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. No, the jest wasn’t funny at all, because, suddenly, today it sucked to be me, too.
Well 3:00 came on and we were all moved back to the south side of the bridge. The ranks formed up a couple of people deep, but it sure didn’t look like 100 people on our side to me. Our soldier friend with the camera started looking at his watch. Seems he doesn’t make enough as a soldier with 16 years in service to take care of his family in our expensive area so he works a second job; a second job to which he was going to be late if “the hippies” didn’t get there soon. In fact, he made a couple of insightful comments which had me laughing all over again about the unreliability of hippies and their poor sense of timeliness. Only it wasn’t phrased quite as politely as that.
I did notice as I stood there waiting for chaos to unleash itself on our quiet little bridge that the make-up of our side was pretty full spectrum America. We had a few of our bikers from the previous weekend, though many were attending a funeral for a young soldier who had been killed in Iraq so they couldn’t join us on the bridge. There were house wives and teens and seniors. There were a few folk who had obviously lived real hard, a few soldiers recently separated from service and there was even the State Senator for Lakewood and his wife who are always the first to rally support for these events. Yep, all walks of life and all ages were out there lined up on the bridge to stand for the men who hold the line against the dark for all of us. Okay, so what if we were outnumbered? We were America encapsulated. We’d hold the line!
Finally, about 10 or 15 minutes late, we heard them coming down the street… and then they rounded the corner. Carrying big banners that proclaimed death counts and others that pretended to support the soldiers whose deaths they were heralding came the darksiders. And there were a lot of them. And they proceeded up the hill toward the bridge and straight at us… until the police line stepped in and read them a set of rules that were slightly different than what we had first been told!!! They HAD to stay on the sidewalk and could not go into the street or they would be arrested. They could not leave the bridge and move toward the base or they would be arrested. They could not cut our yellow ribbons off the bridge, as some were trying to do, or they would be arrested for defacing the bridge. They could not hang banners off the bridge or they would be arrested. In fact, all they could do was stand there, facing us, waving their signs and listening to the loud patriotic music that some of our side had brought along for exactly that purpose. And what interesting signs they had; signs supporting Ehren Watada and the Palestinians, signs questioning who Jesus would have bombed this Easter or declaring affinity with various socialist organizations. There were signs covering all the usual leftist rants and topics. There was even one beautifully crafted and painted sign depicting a large rainbow colored salmon. The smaller sign underneath the fish declared “salmon need peace”…. Okay that one really had me confused, too. But what the heck, it’s a party and everybody’s welcome!!!
Hannah and I arrived at Freedom Bridge, which runs from the town of Tillicum to the Madigan entrance of Ft Lewis, at about noon. We unfurled our flag and walked up to the bridge to join the small group of patriots waving flags and waving at passing cars on the bridge and on the freeway below. The sidewalks were marked off with cones and yellow tape, which was totally new in my bridge flag waving experience, so I sensed that this was going to be a different experience from past events on Freedom Bridge. There were already numerous police officers on site, which was also a new experience. I began to wonder if I was bringing my little niece into the middle of a maelstrom that was going to be wilder than I’d expected.
We spoke with a police officer who told us that the 150 or so protestors formed up in the nearby park would be directed to the north side of the bridge and we would be on the south as there is a monument to our soldiers on the southern side of the bridge and the police didn’t want the protesters to have any chance of getting near it. I asked one of the officers if we HAD to let them on the bridge. He said that they had a permit and were allowed to access the bridge, so the police and our group had to let them do so. I asked him what kind of man he was to allow that… I told him to give me his wife’s phone number and I bet she would chastise him for his attitude. He laughed and assured me that he would be with us if he was not on duty, but, since he was on duty, he had to be impartial. Insightfully I pointed out to him, “So, basically, it sucks to be you today? Huh?!!” He laughed so hard I thought he was going to cry, but he did agree with me. All things considered, Hannah and I decided to set up on the southern walkway to start with and avoid having to move when the darksiders came to the party.
We had settled in quite nicely and were waving at lots of cars passing by with military stickers on the windshield when a small group of darksiders, 8-12, came up to the bridge. There were apparently a lot of folk who had not heard that they were to have the northern side of the bridge and refused to let them on. So they came to our side. Now the panic set in. I was not letting THEM past me to where the memorial was, but I didn’t want my little niece seeing her aunt in full fledged conflict with darksiders. So I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Fortunately, there was a gallant gentleman, a hero from a past war, who flung his flag sideways across the entrance to the walkway and shoved the oncoming darksiders back off the curb and into the street. The police, realizing that some of our group had not gotten the word on the set up, came over and re-directed the darksiders to their side of the bridge and asked all of our people to move to the south side.
I had thought that the pushing and shoving might have unsettled Hannah, but I found out later that my little niece had spotted a younger protester on the other side of the bridge and she had engaged him in a bit of a battle of her own. Apparently he had stuck his tongue out at her so she countered with a mean face. He responded in kind and she crossed her eyes at him and he turned away. Her aunt, and later her mother, was quite proud of her prowess in facing down darksiders! The family tradition carries on!
The dozen or so darksiders were just a vanguard for the main group. They came ahead to hold their place on the bridge for the remainder of the group… a group of about 100 to 150 who were meeting in a Tillicum park. Our group grew in size and I was relieved as the numbers grew to close to what the darksiders were said to have mustered. It still seemed like too small a number for what was coming.
Hannah had become a bit too chilled on the windy bridge and when she asked to go home I was relieved. I was worried that this really was going to be a different sort of event from past Freedom Bridge rallies. So we called her mom and met her at the bottom of the hill. I waved good-bye to my gallant little warrior niece and I returned to take up my post on Freedom bridge, braced to enjoy whatever came our way.
As with last weekend, there were a few soldiers who came out to watch and see what was being said about them. Quiet young men with short hair and closed expressions lingered about at the far end of the bridge near Tillicum. As I passed by one of them I remembered what we had heard last week about them being told to stay away so I turned and, in jest, asked him if he was supposed to be there. He looked quite startled and then very sheepishly he admitted that he was not. His expression clearly indicated that he wanted to know how I had known that. I started to explain to him that I am a woman and, therefore know everything…. But I decided that I’d keep that secret and let his future wife explain to him how that works. Instead I put my arm around him and thanked him for coming and told him we were delighted to have him with us… even if he wasn’t “really” there! There was that smile I’d come to recognize and the quiet “thank you, ma’am” from a hero.
That had been such fun that I tried the same line on a couple of other soldiers. One defiantly stated that he had not “gotten the memo” telling him not to show up and he planned to stay and watch the show. Seems he’d just recently come back from Iraq and he was interested in what these folk who’d never been there had to say about it all. Another soldier, who had been with us from near the start of the day, simply indicated that he’d come to “take pictures of the hippies” because his wonderful wife had let him! “She would have been here herself,” he told us, “but we have two little kids. So she stayed with them. But she let me use her camera!” When someone questioned him regarding how he felt about all this, he told us that he was glad they were out here protesting. He said that he had served 16 years in the military to assure that they had the right to speak their minds. We acquiesced quietly, and a bit shamefacedly, to his forthright statement, but we laughed out right when he followed on by admitting that he’d also served to assure that he had the right not to have to stand there and LISTEN to them when they spoke their mind! As I said, there are remarkable, tolerant and wholly delightful young men serving this country. And some of them are down right funny!
About 2:30 our dozen darksiders packed it in to go join up with the main group. We waved them off and spread out to cover both flanks of the bridge again. Rumors started to spread that the group at the park had broken up and only 30 or so remained. Then we got word that the number was still over 100 and that at 3:00 they planned to storm the bridge and head straight up the road to the gate of the Army Base and hold a “vigil” for the dead soldiers and the “murdered Iraqis” while blocking the gate to all traffic. Again I asked the question of a police officer… do we HAVE to let them do that? Again I was told that they have a permit to do that and we are NOT allowed to stop them. Suddenly the jest wasn’t as funny as it had been earlier in the day. I had to stand there and let these ignorant boors storm past me chanting insults at the men and women who assure them that right and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. No, the jest wasn’t funny at all, because, suddenly, today it sucked to be me, too.
Well 3:00 came on and we were all moved back to the south side of the bridge. The ranks formed up a couple of people deep, but it sure didn’t look like 100 people on our side to me. Our soldier friend with the camera started looking at his watch. Seems he doesn’t make enough as a soldier with 16 years in service to take care of his family in our expensive area so he works a second job; a second job to which he was going to be late if “the hippies” didn’t get there soon. In fact, he made a couple of insightful comments which had me laughing all over again about the unreliability of hippies and their poor sense of timeliness. Only it wasn’t phrased quite as politely as that.
I did notice as I stood there waiting for chaos to unleash itself on our quiet little bridge that the make-up of our side was pretty full spectrum America. We had a few of our bikers from the previous weekend, though many were attending a funeral for a young soldier who had been killed in Iraq so they couldn’t join us on the bridge. There were house wives and teens and seniors. There were a few folk who had obviously lived real hard, a few soldiers recently separated from service and there was even the State Senator for Lakewood and his wife who are always the first to rally support for these events. Yep, all walks of life and all ages were out there lined up on the bridge to stand for the men who hold the line against the dark for all of us. Okay, so what if we were outnumbered? We were America encapsulated. We’d hold the line!
Finally, about 10 or 15 minutes late, we heard them coming down the street… and then they rounded the corner. Carrying big banners that proclaimed death counts and others that pretended to support the soldiers whose deaths they were heralding came the darksiders. And there were a lot of them. And they proceeded up the hill toward the bridge and straight at us… until the police line stepped in and read them a set of rules that were slightly different than what we had first been told!!! They HAD to stay on the sidewalk and could not go into the street or they would be arrested. They could not leave the bridge and move toward the base or they would be arrested. They could not cut our yellow ribbons off the bridge, as some were trying to do, or they would be arrested for defacing the bridge. They could not hang banners off the bridge or they would be arrested. In fact, all they could do was stand there, facing us, waving their signs and listening to the loud patriotic music that some of our side had brought along for exactly that purpose. And what interesting signs they had; signs supporting Ehren Watada and the Palestinians, signs questioning who Jesus would have bombed this Easter or declaring affinity with various socialist organizations. There were signs covering all the usual leftist rants and topics. There was even one beautifully crafted and painted sign depicting a large rainbow colored salmon. The smaller sign underneath the fish declared “salmon need peace”…. Okay that one really had me confused, too. But what the heck, it’s a party and everybody’s welcome!!!
And the press was all there; all the local stations with cameras and microphones at the ready to capture all the news that was newsworthy - on the darksiders half of the bridge. Of course, someone came by looking for a soldier to interview, and I can only imagine what those questions would have been. The soldier who had “not gotten the memo” apparently really had, because when he was asked if he’d been in Iraq and had confirmed that he had been recently, he declined to speak to the reporter. When asked, in a rather indignant tone, why he would not, he stated that A) he wasn’t supposed to be there and B) he didn’t think the reporter would be interested in what he had to say so it would be best not to say it. Ah discretion AND valor… and at such a young age.
I began to notice, as I looked up and down the lines on both sides of the bridge, that our ranks had filled out quite a bit. Apparently quite a few folk on our side had been down at the park watching that event unfold or had been having a bite at the local restaurants, but they all came out to join the fray when the darksiders showed up on the bridge. All in all, I think the sides were pretty evenly matched. Still, clustered down at the far end of the bridge, down at the bottom of the rise away from the actual goings on, was that small cluster of quiet soldiers; just watching the fruits of their sweat, blood and tears blossom before their eyes… The darksiders must not have gotten the thrill they wanted out of the whole thing, and the one or two who tested the resolve of the police found it firm and moved back onto the sidewalk rather than take a ride downtown. But, for whatever reason, they only lingered on the bridge for about a half an hour or so. Since they were not going to be able to hold their vigil in front of the gate, they decided to pack it up and go somewhere else. I was actually quite stunned at how soon they opted to leave and how quickly they left when the decision was made. I remember thinking to myself, “they can’t be going so soon. It must be a ruse…” But apparently they really were leaving and it wasn’t quite 4:00. Since they couldn’t hold their vigil in front of the gate, they stopped in front of a local restaurant and laundry and all sat down in the parking lot there to hold their vigil… Again, what the heck! It’s all about the protest, right? Who needs it to make sense?
And I know you’re wondering how I know about the great laundry vigil… Well, I had a meeting in Renton, about 50 minutes drive away, that started at 4:00. So as they left the bridge, I followed them out. Their little vigil was setting up in the parking lot right beside my car, so I had to walk through the crowd to get to my car. Flag still unfurled, I walked right through them and up to my car. I unlocked it, opened it, rolled my flag onto the pole and put it in the back of the car. The darksiders were milling about saying things like “we can’t go yet”, “can’t we do some chants” and “why are we stopping over here out of the street? We can’t block traffic here”. Even the motorcycle cop who was leading them back down the street seemed confused as to why they had stepped off the road and had settled into an out of the way parking lot. I rolled down my window and asked him if I could pull out. He waved me out and off I went, leaving a very anti-climactic rabble milling around wondering why their protest just didn’t have the bang they’d expected…. And so was I? As many of them as there had been, I just really expected more out of them… We were there, we sang our songs, we proclaimed our pride and faith in our soldiers, we denounced the darksiders who came into our world to stir up trouble and we held the honor of Freedom Bridge. The police kept things calm, they kept things orderly and they made sure that everyone had a chance to speak if they wanted to do so. The darksiders… they milled around, looked defiant, then confused and then bored. And then they left. I guess that the echo chamber effect in Seattle and Olympia is vital to sustaining a good protest. I guess that what they had come to say wasn’t worth saying if the folk to whom they spoke responded with a different opinion. I guess it’s just no fun holding a protest if you have to follow the rules and allow the other side a voice. I guess... I’m not really sure I can explain anything about them, so I’m going to quit trying. Other than that, it was a good day on Freedom Bridge and the men and women who serve this nation are heroes and their families are more than that!!
I began to notice, as I looked up and down the lines on both sides of the bridge, that our ranks had filled out quite a bit. Apparently quite a few folk on our side had been down at the park watching that event unfold or had been having a bite at the local restaurants, but they all came out to join the fray when the darksiders showed up on the bridge. All in all, I think the sides were pretty evenly matched. Still, clustered down at the far end of the bridge, down at the bottom of the rise away from the actual goings on, was that small cluster of quiet soldiers; just watching the fruits of their sweat, blood and tears blossom before their eyes… The darksiders must not have gotten the thrill they wanted out of the whole thing, and the one or two who tested the resolve of the police found it firm and moved back onto the sidewalk rather than take a ride downtown. But, for whatever reason, they only lingered on the bridge for about a half an hour or so. Since they were not going to be able to hold their vigil in front of the gate, they decided to pack it up and go somewhere else. I was actually quite stunned at how soon they opted to leave and how quickly they left when the decision was made. I remember thinking to myself, “they can’t be going so soon. It must be a ruse…” But apparently they really were leaving and it wasn’t quite 4:00. Since they couldn’t hold their vigil in front of the gate, they stopped in front of a local restaurant and laundry and all sat down in the parking lot there to hold their vigil… Again, what the heck! It’s all about the protest, right? Who needs it to make sense?
And I know you’re wondering how I know about the great laundry vigil… Well, I had a meeting in Renton, about 50 minutes drive away, that started at 4:00. So as they left the bridge, I followed them out. Their little vigil was setting up in the parking lot right beside my car, so I had to walk through the crowd to get to my car. Flag still unfurled, I walked right through them and up to my car. I unlocked it, opened it, rolled my flag onto the pole and put it in the back of the car. The darksiders were milling about saying things like “we can’t go yet”, “can’t we do some chants” and “why are we stopping over here out of the street? We can’t block traffic here”. Even the motorcycle cop who was leading them back down the street seemed confused as to why they had stepped off the road and had settled into an out of the way parking lot. I rolled down my window and asked him if I could pull out. He waved me out and off I went, leaving a very anti-climactic rabble milling around wondering why their protest just didn’t have the bang they’d expected…. And so was I? As many of them as there had been, I just really expected more out of them… We were there, we sang our songs, we proclaimed our pride and faith in our soldiers, we denounced the darksiders who came into our world to stir up trouble and we held the honor of Freedom Bridge. The police kept things calm, they kept things orderly and they made sure that everyone had a chance to speak if they wanted to do so. The darksiders… they milled around, looked defiant, then confused and then bored. And then they left. I guess that the echo chamber effect in Seattle and Olympia is vital to sustaining a good protest. I guess that what they had come to say wasn’t worth saying if the folk to whom they spoke responded with a different opinion. I guess it’s just no fun holding a protest if you have to follow the rules and allow the other side a voice. I guess... I’m not really sure I can explain anything about them, so I’m going to quit trying. Other than that, it was a good day on Freedom Bridge and the men and women who serve this nation are heroes and their families are more than that!!
God bless them all!!!
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