Today, from September 2010, "Confessions of a pro-life tagger" (mirrored here)
Confessions from a Pro-Life Tagger
Running
from the police is one of life's great joys. Or so I'm told. Hiding
behind dumpsters, shedding clothing and evidence, trying to make the
calm and cool getaway... a successful guerrilla operation is a rare and
beautiful moment. Even more rare on an American college campus.
I'm getting ahead. We'll come back to the police.There is a theory behind what is a "proper" liberal arts campus. The brick buildings, a holdover from nineteenth century architectural styles, provide an air of aloofness, dominion and detachment. The campus is stark. Scrubbed. Bleached. Sanitary. Airport modern. It resembles a hospital even in its sidewalks. Clean, white sidewalks. Posters advertise milquetoast affairs of special lectures and symphonic recitals. Even the ‘radicalism’ is chic, come hear the lecture on ‘white privilege’ or the essay on ‘institutional racism’ all contained within these scrubbed, bleached, sanitary modern walls.
The
campus is small. Intimate. The paths between the dorms and the
classrooms intersect, forcing students into interaction. Morris was
founded with these ideals in mind. It is a special affair for the
intelligent and gifted, the best in the Minnesota system. The honors
student. There is an expected decorum held sacred by which all speech,
must it happen at all, be bland and passionless. Intellectual. Rules,
speech codes and administrative pressure are expected to keep the peace.
Such a model invites entropy. Such a model needs entropy.
In
a poorly lit room, tucked away in one of those imposing brick
structures, six individuals sit preparing to fuck the system. I'm one of
them. This was a training exercise. Some off-campus leaders thought it
necessary and decided to help out the local riffraff develop some
guerrilla skills. We had started earlier, with small stuff. "Big R" was
one of the off campus pros. "Little e" was the organizer, known for
holding his knowledge close to the chest. Organizing guerrilla campaigns
requires wavering attention spans and incoherent mumblings. Little e
has mastered the art of comprehensible incomprehension. One pictures
Lenin mumbling something about storming the gates, or Trotsky obliquely
mentioning the advancing white guards.
The night before, a dozen younglings sat and learned while Big R and Little e sent them on their missions. First, collecting posters. Later, burning said posters. Light, happy, fun, soft rebellion. I was there too; another off-campus pro.
Back in the room, we sit. Cardboard cut outs are made, to be used as stencils. Posters are conceived and printed. Plans are made. Bullshit is had. The mission later is simple. Training in a classroom is great. Action in the field is better. A message is formulated. This time it was about life and its sanctity. Abortion is the destruction of something; some say it's a human life. Others say not quite. Years ago, before my own birth, seven men dictated the policy that removed the protection nascent life enjoyed. Some of us, frustrated by the bleached, boring, meaningless drivel of "politics" on the news, decide to open uncomfortable discussions. In a world of sterile learning environments, we are about to bring some color.
Guerrilla marketing is a fine way to do so.
It creates humorous moments. Taking a life-sized plastic fetus, meant to represent the human being at eight weeks, looping fishing line around two of them to create an easily delivered tree ornament would fit the description. The hollow plastic models make surprisingly good projectiles. The night started with innocent postering. A few of the fetus ornaments made their ways into trees. Such operations can attract the curious. One such woman, following me, was rudely solicited for sexual favors. Guess she didn't need any cash. Perhaps she could tell I didn’t have much.
Once everything is set, we head back to the upstairs command center. Your campus should get more serious about locking doors. Or should I have mentioned that?
The night before, a dozen younglings sat and learned while Big R and Little e sent them on their missions. First, collecting posters. Later, burning said posters. Light, happy, fun, soft rebellion. I was there too; another off-campus pro.
Back in the room, we sit. Cardboard cut outs are made, to be used as stencils. Posters are conceived and printed. Plans are made. Bullshit is had. The mission later is simple. Training in a classroom is great. Action in the field is better. A message is formulated. This time it was about life and its sanctity. Abortion is the destruction of something; some say it's a human life. Others say not quite. Years ago, before my own birth, seven men dictated the policy that removed the protection nascent life enjoyed. Some of us, frustrated by the bleached, boring, meaningless drivel of "politics" on the news, decide to open uncomfortable discussions. In a world of sterile learning environments, we are about to bring some color.
Guerrilla marketing is a fine way to do so.
It creates humorous moments. Taking a life-sized plastic fetus, meant to represent the human being at eight weeks, looping fishing line around two of them to create an easily delivered tree ornament would fit the description. The hollow plastic models make surprisingly good projectiles. The night started with innocent postering. A few of the fetus ornaments made their ways into trees. Such operations can attract the curious. One such woman, following me, was rudely solicited for sexual favors. Guess she didn't need any cash. Perhaps she could tell I didn’t have much.
Once everything is set, we head back to the upstairs command center. Your campus should get more serious about locking doors. Or should I have mentioned that?
A
man leaves, to protect his alibi. More waiting. Tension builds in idle
hands. Campuses are notorious for late nights and moderate insomnia.
But the later it gets the fewer witnesses one expects.
The ridiculous nature of the crime must be revealed. Our sin was having an opinion on abortion and wishing to express it. In sidewalk chalk. The stencils were gross approximations of a baby clinging to life inside a woman's womb. The finer details are lacking, but even our rough first attempt was convincing enough for a group of confrontational bystanders.
And I'll admit, this wasn't standard chalk. We think of chalk as small cylinders of authority wielded by ancient elementary school teachers. Ours was in a can. Spray chalk. Designed for the blue collar world where lines, arrows and notes are kept on concrete and asphalt. It's good stuff. A little unwieldy. It fit well into my past juvenile delinquency. Tagging was a popular past time before Facebook.
Our goal was to produce a little graffiti without the danger of actual vandalism. Our mistake. The campus was so slow to respond we should have used real spray paint.
This sort of thinking is disruptive to the powers that be at Morris. Speech must be regulated. Expression by permission. Chalking by bureaucracy. Every campus has a political officer, usually denoted by the title “Vice President of Students,” as if there were any choice in the matter by the students. Morris’ commissar of student thought and activity is Sandy Loy. From what we’re told, an entirely predictable bureaucrat.
But the later it gets the fewer witnesses one expects.
The ridiculous nature of the crime must be revealed. Our sin was having an opinion on abortion and wishing to express it. In sidewalk chalk. The stencils were gross approximations of a baby clinging to life inside a woman's womb. The finer details are lacking, but even our rough first attempt was convincing enough for a group of confrontational bystanders.
And I'll admit, this wasn't standard chalk. We think of chalk as small cylinders of authority wielded by ancient elementary school teachers. Ours was in a can. Spray chalk. Designed for the blue collar world where lines, arrows and notes are kept on concrete and asphalt. It's good stuff. A little unwieldy. It fit well into my past juvenile delinquency. Tagging was a popular past time before Facebook.
Our goal was to produce a little graffiti without the danger of actual vandalism. Our mistake. The campus was so slow to respond we should have used real spray paint.
This sort of thinking is disruptive to the powers that be at Morris. Speech must be regulated. Expression by permission. Chalking by bureaucracy. Every campus has a political officer, usually denoted by the title “Vice President of Students,” as if there were any choice in the matter by the students. Morris’ commissar of student thought and activity is Sandy Loy. From what we’re told, an entirely predictable bureaucrat.
She's the kind of woman who lives for the job of speech regulation. The ambition to rise through the ranks of a passionless and detached campus. I never thought those running Soviet gulags would have ambitious careerists playing office politics in their midst; I guess I always supposed they somehow knew what they were doing was wrong.
But bureaucrats don’t think that way. They operate according to a rulebook to enforce the party orthodoxy they know without having to read it. They take their silent unwritten commands from superiors and graft policies to enable those results.
Morris is intellectually impotent because this woman has deigned it inconvenient for dissent.
We’re wantonly breaking this bitch’s rules.
Previously, a few years ago, chalking wasn't allowed at all. A quick hat tip from a legal professional after an earlier vigilante pushed and prodded forced a change and now the Administrators set forth rules and regulations in the slim hopes the burden of openness forces away the discomfort. Then the bleached and aloof campus can return.
Fuck them.
Fifty million aborted American fetuses since Roe weighs on my conscience.
In the office, we pair up. I go with a portly stout herein known as "Neil." Big R is given a robust underclassman, Little e decides to go rogue. Another individual, "Francis", is given the task of following the campus cop. Francis is an interesting character. Tall, thin, with a sharp nose that gives his face a spear-like effect.
Cell phones replace the walkie-talkies of our youth.
All
this precaution is necessary because Morris believes in speech codes.
If we happen to offend someone, the burden is ours to bear. Speech isn't
a right, it's a privilege. The campus Volksgemeinschaft cannot be
intruded upon.
The campus is split into grids. Neil and I walk to our grid. Francis takes his place of reconnoiter. Big R and company start milling about. Little e slips away into the night. We start. The fetus stencils are hard to use at first. It's been a decade since I last played the tagging game. Neil doesn't seem to have any trouble. I was supposed to do most of the watching, he most of the spraying. But that's boring. So are stencils. I trash it, and start leaving overt pro-life messages instead. Pithy, edgy, it wasn't poetry. Didn't have time to pre-write anything. It wasn't my operation.
The messages were the blunt force trauma of dissident political speech sprayed across a sterile sidewalk. My words don’t do it justice. But when a precocious 20 year old undergraduate spends three years at a place and walks the same half mile to class each day over a pristine white walkway, to encounter “abortion kills” sprayed in red gets noticed.
Soon enough, we're almost out of material. Neil and I leave our remaining chalk cans near a trash bin, in hopes we can pick it up later. I go off in search of a bathroom to wash my hands, the red chalk giving literal meaning to being caught red handed. My knowledge of the campus being what it is, I choose instead to use my own spit and a bunch of leaves for a wash. It sorta works.
Since being outside, at night, in Minnesota, is always a bit of an anomaly, I bum a cigarette from Neil and we hang out. Time goes by. Twenty minutes. An hour. I don't know. At one point Francis stopped by. Big R and friend find us. The campus cop is somewhere innocuous. We sit in the mall, among the trees. A fetus is visible dangling from one. We split up again. Francis is off. Another individual joins the party late. He's another lanky gentleman with nondescript features. Big R encourages pushing the envelope. Vertical surfaces. Big-time rebellion now. The vertical surfaces comically force some of the dangerous "volatile organic compounds" into Big R's lungs. He’s coughing and can taste blood but says he’s only upset that the chalk is inside him and not on the walls. Hearty laughter. Big R is full of life, something he wishes for all.
The final cans of chalk are saved for the science building, or so I can recall; I guess I know where the cop was hanging out. Francis keeps us in the know, he's on cell patrol following the campus’ sole officer between patrols of one classroom and his yahoo account. Sounds like a hard life.
We all split up again. Neil and I, with little chalk available, wait some more. A call comes in to Neil, Francis warns us the cop is on the move. Too late, Neil spots him approaching us, coming in behind me. Wearing gloves to cover up the marks on my hands, I struggle against the wind to light a cigarette as we stand underneath one of those yellow campus lights. It gives the entire air the proper nighttime atmosphere, a yellow filter on everything.
I don't smoke, it's a prop. Just standing there looks, you know, suspicious. I struggle to light the damn thing. Stupid gloves.
The gloves come off. I can only hope the spit and leaves removed enough of the red paint to not get me found out. Getting caught literally red-handed seems fitting, but a little dirt was helping.
The cop is genteel. Polite. He patiently waited a moment for me to light the cigarette before his inquiries. It’s cold, it’s late, and this cop is being genuinely nice to me. Because he thinks I’m a student.
The campus is split into grids. Neil and I walk to our grid. Francis takes his place of reconnoiter. Big R and company start milling about. Little e slips away into the night. We start. The fetus stencils are hard to use at first. It's been a decade since I last played the tagging game. Neil doesn't seem to have any trouble. I was supposed to do most of the watching, he most of the spraying. But that's boring. So are stencils. I trash it, and start leaving overt pro-life messages instead. Pithy, edgy, it wasn't poetry. Didn't have time to pre-write anything. It wasn't my operation.
The messages were the blunt force trauma of dissident political speech sprayed across a sterile sidewalk. My words don’t do it justice. But when a precocious 20 year old undergraduate spends three years at a place and walks the same half mile to class each day over a pristine white walkway, to encounter “abortion kills” sprayed in red gets noticed.
Soon enough, we're almost out of material. Neil and I leave our remaining chalk cans near a trash bin, in hopes we can pick it up later. I go off in search of a bathroom to wash my hands, the red chalk giving literal meaning to being caught red handed. My knowledge of the campus being what it is, I choose instead to use my own spit and a bunch of leaves for a wash. It sorta works.
Since being outside, at night, in Minnesota, is always a bit of an anomaly, I bum a cigarette from Neil and we hang out. Time goes by. Twenty minutes. An hour. I don't know. At one point Francis stopped by. Big R and friend find us. The campus cop is somewhere innocuous. We sit in the mall, among the trees. A fetus is visible dangling from one. We split up again. Francis is off. Another individual joins the party late. He's another lanky gentleman with nondescript features. Big R encourages pushing the envelope. Vertical surfaces. Big-time rebellion now. The vertical surfaces comically force some of the dangerous "volatile organic compounds" into Big R's lungs. He’s coughing and can taste blood but says he’s only upset that the chalk is inside him and not on the walls. Hearty laughter. Big R is full of life, something he wishes for all.
The final cans of chalk are saved for the science building, or so I can recall; I guess I know where the cop was hanging out. Francis keeps us in the know, he's on cell patrol following the campus’ sole officer between patrols of one classroom and his yahoo account. Sounds like a hard life.
We all split up again. Neil and I, with little chalk available, wait some more. A call comes in to Neil, Francis warns us the cop is on the move. Too late, Neil spots him approaching us, coming in behind me. Wearing gloves to cover up the marks on my hands, I struggle against the wind to light a cigarette as we stand underneath one of those yellow campus lights. It gives the entire air the proper nighttime atmosphere, a yellow filter on everything.
I don't smoke, it's a prop. Just standing there looks, you know, suspicious. I struggle to light the damn thing. Stupid gloves.
The gloves come off. I can only hope the spit and leaves removed enough of the red paint to not get me found out. Getting caught literally red-handed seems fitting, but a little dirt was helping.
The cop is genteel. Polite. He patiently waited a moment for me to light the cigarette before his inquiries. It’s cold, it’s late, and this cop is being genuinely nice to me. Because he thinks I’m a student.
"You guys seen anyone spray painting the sidewalk?" The cop asks.
"Yeah," Neil sounds helpful. "There were a couple of guys."
I mentally debate spilling the beans. It is just chalk after all. Letting him in on the joke would free up his evening to check emails and play some more solitaire. I'm about to tell him as I lift my head and take a peek at his expression.
In his face I see pure fear. Any chance of me giving away information to him is now gone. People respond to authority, not to lost little girls.
I couldn't believe the countenance of this law enforcement officer. There was no air of authority. His face belied his inner-self. Fear, anxiety, concern. Here this guy had the perfect job, walking around at night on a campus with no crime in a state with no crime in the middle of nowhere.
"Yeah," Neil sounds helpful. "There were a couple of guys."
I mentally debate spilling the beans. It is just chalk after all. Letting him in on the joke would free up his evening to check emails and play some more solitaire. I'm about to tell him as I lift my head and take a peek at his expression.
In his face I see pure fear. Any chance of me giving away information to him is now gone. People respond to authority, not to lost little girls.
I couldn't believe the countenance of this law enforcement officer. There was no air of authority. His face belied his inner-self. Fear, anxiety, concern. Here this guy had the perfect job, walking around at night on a campus with no crime in a state with no crime in the middle of nowhere.
A rogue fire alarm would be workplace banter for weeks.
He projected the authority of a “please, no smoking” sign. Cowboy up man, there are people vandalizing your campus.
"They were over there," I point towards a path heading away from where I think our guys are. I can't remember if I said "about ten minutes ago" or not. He was gone before my arm had fully extended. Expecting he would ask us to describe these people, I prepared to honestly give a description of the two people he was looking for, us. It would have been fun to see how long it would take him to figure out who the perps were.
Of course, had he asked directly, we would have readily admitted our involvement.
A cell phone holding vigilante caught the officer's attention and then they were gone around a building. Incredible. I felt like laughing. Neil and I stuck out from the crowd here. I'm a large man, I was in brightly white sweatpants and an orange hoodie. Easily identifiable from a distance. The chalk residue on my hands and feet (and pants, I would later find out) should have been observed. The cell phone brandishing vigilantes should have recognized me.
And there were plenty of observers. Within an hour of our start people were appearing from the dorms and milling about. Word was spreading already. Wannabe speech regulators with those fucking cell phones and liberal intentions had started an intelligence network to catch us. I use "intelligence" pejoratively.
We can see them from across the campus quad, walking around, angry at our chalkings, looking around furiously trying to find these miscreants. Hey bitch, we’re over here!
None of them ID'd us, so our getaway was open. Another cell phone call, a warning about the officer's vector. The Science Building was now open. Along the way, Neil and I collect another one of our guys. Forgot his name. They started spray chalking some more fetuses, with the confidence privacy brings.
A few minutes later we were off campus, heading down dark alleys and ditching any evidence we had that might show we were the ones who violated the student conduct code (or whatever) despite the fact a few of us weren't students.
At the safehouse, we waited for our fellow conspirators. It was a hearty time filled with stale stolen donuts and hyperbolic stories. Every moment was relived, every minor detail repeated.
Last to arrive were Big R and Little e.
I guess we all didn’t make a clean getaway.
Turns out they had the most poignant encounter of the night. One that involved fast feet and running from the aforementioned policeman.
Big R was our pack mule. He had the backpack carrying most of the empty chalk cans. As the two were about to make their campus escape, they stopped somewhere only to realize the officer was in the same building they were.
So they waited in a dark room together for about 20 minutes. After they got out, perhaps with mild cabin fever, they decided to survey the campus chalk devastation one last time before leaving.
The "CuhClank-CuhClank-CuhClank" from the cans in Big R's backpack was especially loud in the cold Morris night. The foolishness of this errand wasn’t as easy to foresee at three in the morning. The two walked to one corner of campus, admired some of their work, but as they were walking noticed two shadows were following them, little did they realize it was the campus speech code enforcers looking for them. Thinking nothing of it, they walked back the way they came and were walking up a flight of steps when the two crews ran into one another.
It was fleeting, just a look, a glance. But in that moment the two teams saw who the other was. Realization and recognition took a few moments to sink in.
The shadows were about to have their moment. Their precious campus was being violated with dissident ideas. The careful control, the speech codes, the sanctions, the intimidation, all were being undone in one night. The pair, a lanky young white guy and fattish white chick, traversed the campus looking and hoping for this moment, trusty cell phone in hand, to alert the lone campus policeman on duty as to who and where these future political prisoners were. As Little e and Big R walked up the stairs, their moment had come and gone.
Little e reacted quickly, they picked up their pace. He relayed to Big R that they were being followed. This was not a big deal until the campus policeman flagged down the two informants.
Little e sees the officer turn towards him, and he realizes what’s about to happen.
Little e sees the officer speak to the informants, who point directly towards them.
In this small instant his memory expanded, the adrenaline kicked in and the moment became charged.
Little e tells Big R to walk out of the line of their pursuers' sight. Just as Big R finished the step Little e mumbles something and leaps into flight. The kind of fear that crawls up one's neck and flares out over one's ears overtook him, and he darted himself. Big R does his best to keep up, and his mind changes the 50-something elderly policeman into a track athlete, a marine just back from Iraq, someone whose outstretched hand of authority is reaching two inches behind his running backpack.
The two are going as fast as they can, with the ridiculous sound of spraychalk cans clanking in the backpack echoing between the sterile dorms.
“CuhClank-CuhClank-CuhClank”
Half a campus later, they duck into a parking lot, change clothes, ditch some gear and depart in different directions.
They hunkered down behind a dumpster and shed clothing and some evidence. They made their way unmolested off campus. However, Little e had to make a return. His cellphone had accidentally been ditched in the dumpster. It seemed risky, but a man can't live without his cell phone.
It is just spraychalk after all, but why spoil a nice night with an altercation with authorities?
Of course, with all the chaos on campus at this point, our entire crew could have bivouacked outside the library and not have been noticed. The actual security of this campus was laughable.
Throughout the morning some of our guys returned to campus periodically to reconnoiter the reaction to our exploits. At one point the guard was racing around the central quad in a go-kart, apparently unwilling to be bested in the chase again. Attempts were made, some of them successful, to wash away our chalk, to silence the dissident speech. Powerwashers can do a lot, but even after repeated attempts on their part, a faint glimmer of our rogue fetus remained.
And of course making a red-letter statement wet on white concrete only makes it pink, at best, so our messages remained despite their best efforts.
In the safehouse, when these descriptions came in, a round of hysterical laughter burst out. The satisfaction of being contrarians delighted us.
Especially in the face of the difficulties of authority. Where we were silent, quick and invisible, they were clumsy, confused and disoriented.
And in that way we represented the real threat, a threat they hated: the realization that tired ideas had become stale, and what is old has finally become new. The radicalism of the past has matured into tired, gray, administrative hypocrisy. The fun we were having at this was a subconscious rebellion and rejection of everything these campus administrators had built their lives around.
Sometime after morning we finally slipped off to bed.
The motive here might still elude you. Why would anyone go through all the trouble of making such a ruckus? You see, in our society today we have built thick walls of apathy around us. Sports, Xboxes, iPods, social networking, cell phones. With our modern distractions we protect ourselves from the burdens of democracy, of ideas. Why meditate on the value of life when there's the latest Vikings' game to discuss? These acts of near vandalism were enough to break down some of these protective walls.
It had to look like vandalism. We had to act like we were doing something wrong. We had to get people mad at us. The goal was to break down the walls of apathy and create some discussion.
The spate of campuswide emails apologizing for the rogue conduct, angrily attacking these ghosts in the night were hilarious as well. The commissars were forced to attack an idea, one that they had so long ignored. Campus pro-life groups are well-intentioned, but when manned by 18 year old homeschooled Catholic girls, aren’t exactly known for their confrontational abilities.
We fixed that in one night, in 30 minutes, with a lot of industrial-grade spraychalk.
In our philosophy any discussion about abortion is a positive. Even if the discussion is mostly anathema to our own perspectives.
A long time ago, this was what I did, only without direction or purpose. I did it often and was good at it. To do it again was to feel the forgotten freedom of youth the cynical years of adulthood stripped away. It also gave presence to philosophical concepts that so often sit idly in words stuck in books. The right doesn't do direct action, but ought to. I promise, you concerned pussies at Morris, I will return.
He projected the authority of a “please, no smoking” sign. Cowboy up man, there are people vandalizing your campus.
"They were over there," I point towards a path heading away from where I think our guys are. I can't remember if I said "about ten minutes ago" or not. He was gone before my arm had fully extended. Expecting he would ask us to describe these people, I prepared to honestly give a description of the two people he was looking for, us. It would have been fun to see how long it would take him to figure out who the perps were.
Of course, had he asked directly, we would have readily admitted our involvement.
A cell phone holding vigilante caught the officer's attention and then they were gone around a building. Incredible. I felt like laughing. Neil and I stuck out from the crowd here. I'm a large man, I was in brightly white sweatpants and an orange hoodie. Easily identifiable from a distance. The chalk residue on my hands and feet (and pants, I would later find out) should have been observed. The cell phone brandishing vigilantes should have recognized me.
And there were plenty of observers. Within an hour of our start people were appearing from the dorms and milling about. Word was spreading already. Wannabe speech regulators with those fucking cell phones and liberal intentions had started an intelligence network to catch us. I use "intelligence" pejoratively.
We can see them from across the campus quad, walking around, angry at our chalkings, looking around furiously trying to find these miscreants. Hey bitch, we’re over here!
None of them ID'd us, so our getaway was open. Another cell phone call, a warning about the officer's vector. The Science Building was now open. Along the way, Neil and I collect another one of our guys. Forgot his name. They started spray chalking some more fetuses, with the confidence privacy brings.
A few minutes later we were off campus, heading down dark alleys and ditching any evidence we had that might show we were the ones who violated the student conduct code (or whatever) despite the fact a few of us weren't students.
At the safehouse, we waited for our fellow conspirators. It was a hearty time filled with stale stolen donuts and hyperbolic stories. Every moment was relived, every minor detail repeated.
Last to arrive were Big R and Little e.
I guess we all didn’t make a clean getaway.
Turns out they had the most poignant encounter of the night. One that involved fast feet and running from the aforementioned policeman.
Big R was our pack mule. He had the backpack carrying most of the empty chalk cans. As the two were about to make their campus escape, they stopped somewhere only to realize the officer was in the same building they were.
So they waited in a dark room together for about 20 minutes. After they got out, perhaps with mild cabin fever, they decided to survey the campus chalk devastation one last time before leaving.
The "CuhClank-CuhClank-CuhClank" from the cans in Big R's backpack was especially loud in the cold Morris night. The foolishness of this errand wasn’t as easy to foresee at three in the morning. The two walked to one corner of campus, admired some of their work, but as they were walking noticed two shadows were following them, little did they realize it was the campus speech code enforcers looking for them. Thinking nothing of it, they walked back the way they came and were walking up a flight of steps when the two crews ran into one another.
It was fleeting, just a look, a glance. But in that moment the two teams saw who the other was. Realization and recognition took a few moments to sink in.
The shadows were about to have their moment. Their precious campus was being violated with dissident ideas. The careful control, the speech codes, the sanctions, the intimidation, all were being undone in one night. The pair, a lanky young white guy and fattish white chick, traversed the campus looking and hoping for this moment, trusty cell phone in hand, to alert the lone campus policeman on duty as to who and where these future political prisoners were. As Little e and Big R walked up the stairs, their moment had come and gone.
Little e reacted quickly, they picked up their pace. He relayed to Big R that they were being followed. This was not a big deal until the campus policeman flagged down the two informants.
Little e sees the officer turn towards him, and he realizes what’s about to happen.
Little e sees the officer speak to the informants, who point directly towards them.
In this small instant his memory expanded, the adrenaline kicked in and the moment became charged.
Little e tells Big R to walk out of the line of their pursuers' sight. Just as Big R finished the step Little e mumbles something and leaps into flight. The kind of fear that crawls up one's neck and flares out over one's ears overtook him, and he darted himself. Big R does his best to keep up, and his mind changes the 50-something elderly policeman into a track athlete, a marine just back from Iraq, someone whose outstretched hand of authority is reaching two inches behind his running backpack.
The two are going as fast as they can, with the ridiculous sound of spraychalk cans clanking in the backpack echoing between the sterile dorms.
“CuhClank-CuhClank-CuhClank”
Half a campus later, they duck into a parking lot, change clothes, ditch some gear and depart in different directions.
They hunkered down behind a dumpster and shed clothing and some evidence. They made their way unmolested off campus. However, Little e had to make a return. His cellphone had accidentally been ditched in the dumpster. It seemed risky, but a man can't live without his cell phone.
It is just spraychalk after all, but why spoil a nice night with an altercation with authorities?
Of course, with all the chaos on campus at this point, our entire crew could have bivouacked outside the library and not have been noticed. The actual security of this campus was laughable.
Throughout the morning some of our guys returned to campus periodically to reconnoiter the reaction to our exploits. At one point the guard was racing around the central quad in a go-kart, apparently unwilling to be bested in the chase again. Attempts were made, some of them successful, to wash away our chalk, to silence the dissident speech. Powerwashers can do a lot, but even after repeated attempts on their part, a faint glimmer of our rogue fetus remained.
And of course making a red-letter statement wet on white concrete only makes it pink, at best, so our messages remained despite their best efforts.
In the safehouse, when these descriptions came in, a round of hysterical laughter burst out. The satisfaction of being contrarians delighted us.
Especially in the face of the difficulties of authority. Where we were silent, quick and invisible, they were clumsy, confused and disoriented.
And in that way we represented the real threat, a threat they hated: the realization that tired ideas had become stale, and what is old has finally become new. The radicalism of the past has matured into tired, gray, administrative hypocrisy. The fun we were having at this was a subconscious rebellion and rejection of everything these campus administrators had built their lives around.
Sometime after morning we finally slipped off to bed.
The motive here might still elude you. Why would anyone go through all the trouble of making such a ruckus? You see, in our society today we have built thick walls of apathy around us. Sports, Xboxes, iPods, social networking, cell phones. With our modern distractions we protect ourselves from the burdens of democracy, of ideas. Why meditate on the value of life when there's the latest Vikings' game to discuss? These acts of near vandalism were enough to break down some of these protective walls.
It had to look like vandalism. We had to act like we were doing something wrong. We had to get people mad at us. The goal was to break down the walls of apathy and create some discussion.
The spate of campuswide emails apologizing for the rogue conduct, angrily attacking these ghosts in the night were hilarious as well. The commissars were forced to attack an idea, one that they had so long ignored. Campus pro-life groups are well-intentioned, but when manned by 18 year old homeschooled Catholic girls, aren’t exactly known for their confrontational abilities.
We fixed that in one night, in 30 minutes, with a lot of industrial-grade spraychalk.
In our philosophy any discussion about abortion is a positive. Even if the discussion is mostly anathema to our own perspectives.
A long time ago, this was what I did, only without direction or purpose. I did it often and was good at it. To do it again was to feel the forgotten freedom of youth the cynical years of adulthood stripped away. It also gave presence to philosophical concepts that so often sit idly in words stuck in books. The right doesn't do direct action, but ought to. I promise, you concerned pussies at Morris, I will return.
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