Weekend Freewrite -2/1/2020 - Single Prompt Option: Futility
You know that feeling you get when you know you have gotten to the safe side of a mess, just in time?
Everyone in Big Loft's police department who was following the lead of Commissioner Scott toward actually working to protect and serve all citizens of Big Loft felt that way at exactly 12:00noon, when the first delegation of family members to the 12,000 Black and Latino servants came downtown to the county courthouse to demand that charges of first-degree murder for each of the 12,000 victims under-counted by the BLPD be added to the 120 counts already allocated to Bruce Deadwood, the man who had set the Ridgeline Fire.
The first delegation, and every one thereafter, represented 1,200 victims.
Every adult in the families of the victims who could get off at lunchtime came downtown, driving all the major arteries.
The result: by 12:10, downtown Big Loft came to a complete halt. All of its businesses, banks, and important civic functions halted at the door, because traffic was locked up, to the point of utter futility for those already parked.
Nobody could even go get lunch out of walking distance.
This was not a protest. This was direct action.
“We can't even get backup in here except on foot to beat them out of here,” one officer to BLPD said to another.
“Well, that's good, though – God knows we don't want to create another incident, if this is going to be the response,” said another officer. “We can't get cars out of here to respond to anything.”
It took one hour to drain all that traffic through, so downtown Big Loft was locked up until 1:30.
Captain Lee, who always lunched in his quiet office, changed his routine to make a quick walk through downtown to look things over before eating his lunch. He then returned and ate his lunch.
“You're so calm,” Lieutenant Jackson said. “They've got us pinned, and you're so calm.”
“Two good reasons, that you can share: first, we have done our jobs, relative to these people expressing their constitutional to present their grievances to their government. Second, there are only enough cars out there to represent one-tenth of the victims, so, either this will happen again for the next ten business days, or they will lock us up again at rush hour and then do this twice a day for the rest of the week. They are within their rights. We have no cause to stop them. So, why worry?”
Photo by Iwona Castiello d'Antonio on Unsplash