Writing

Docked at Faslane base, an hour and a half north of Glasgow, there are four Trident-class submarines, each armed with enough nuclear warheads to kill millions of people. Besides the danger of accidents and the possibility of making Scotland a target for nuclear attack, the Trident subs are directly against humanitarian law. According to the UN, all weapons must be able to distinguish between military targets and innocent civilians. Trident subs are dangerous, illegal, and immoral. For years, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends Service Committee, and Ploughshares have been trying to shut down Faslane base and put the Trident subs out of commission. They have set up a Peace camp near the base to express their opposition and act as a center for education and outreach. The the main event of the year is the Big Blockade, which happens every February, near Valentine’s Day. Hundreds of people from all walks of life gather to show their support for peace and nonviolence. This is my experience at the Big Blockade, 2001.

Feet sore from three hours of intense Scottish country dance and slowly soaking from the rain, I arrived home on Sunday afternoon. I was running late, as usual. I fretted over what to bring and what to leave behind, afraid of overpacking or being underprepared. Exactly how waterproof is waterproof? Drum or no drum? How the hell was I going to strap my bag of food to the outside of my stuffed pack? I had no idea what it was going to be like, and I was scared. Of what, I don’t know.

I left the house at 6:15 and made my way to Glasgow. The Friends Meeting House was lovely. Charming, and filled with little old grannies with shawls and canes and cookies. I really admired these women, some travelling great distances and sleeping on the floor to do this blockade. They were very friendly and their smiles encouraged and comforted me. If 80-year-olds had nothing to fear, a 19-year-old certainly would be fine.

I was late for the lengthy briefing, but I learned what I needed to learn. I got the ultra-abbreviated nonviolence workshjop – about 45 minutes. I was really surprised at the diversity of the people in the briefing and the workshop. Unfortunately it wasn’t very racially diverse, but there were hippies and punks and churchmen and anarchists and old grannies, all united in a common cause. A pale boy with blue dreadlocks seemed friendly, so we formed a mock affinity group with two Edinburgh Socialist girls to discuss decision-making and our reasons for being at the blockade.

After the workshop, Jeremiah (blue dreads) offered us places in his affinity group, but the Edinburgh girls were meeting up with other Socialists the next morning, and I was off to find my friend Joe and the People & Planet group. I was glad for the offer, though, later, when I heard that People & Planet had gone to the Kinning Park Complex, wherever that was.

I sat in the dining area and had a cup of homemade chai while filling out my paperwork and figuring out what to do. The small dining room was full of people chatting and eating hummus sandwiches.... A few people were practicing chaining themselves around a wheelchair, a heated discussion was going on about transport issues, legal papers were being shuffled and counted and shuffled some more.... At a table in the corner sat a scruffy man in his 50s and a woman with blonde dreadlocks – Seize The Day, an activist band I’d seen in LA – small world! Through my nervousness, I was starting to get excited.

Jeremiah and his friends came into the room, and I asked if I could join their affinity group, since mine had mysteriously vanished. They welcomed me and we exchanged names (which I promptly forgot) and I sat back and listened to their conversation of sleeping arrangements, which had evidently started earlier. They were inviting a German woman to stay at their flat a few blocks away so she would wake up on time.... Their flat? My heart leapt.... Might I get to sleep on somebody’s living room floor that night instead of a classroom or chapel? But I was not invited, and soon they were getting ready to leave.

Someone announced that the bus to Kinning Park Complex would be departing shortly. My mind raced.... KPC with Joe and Phil and the other Edinburgh people, or here, with nobody I knew but lots of friendly old grannies? I chose KPC, thanked my new friends for their help but informed them of my search for my group. I gathered my stuff and went outside to queue for the minibus. I spotted a guy I’d met last weekend at the Globalise Resistance conference and struck up a conversation, relieved to see a semi-familiar face. We chatted on the busride to KPC, which was longer than I’d expected. Glasgow is a big place.

KPC was a large brick building in a dimly lit, run-down neighborhood. An overly keen Socialist (most Scottish Socialists are overly keen) showed me the way in, and my enthusiasm for the place waned considerably. This was an old school building, run-down and rough and dark except for naked bulbs which hung ominously from the shadowy ceilings. It was much more crowded than the Friends Meeting House, but the lights were harsh and it was hard to see people’s faces. Between the ambiance and the tough-looking people, I felt like I’d stepped into a cyberpunk novel. I didn’t like the vibe at all.

Resolutely, I walked up the stairs in search of my “affinity group.” I found them in a huge clapboard gym, sitting in a circle on their massed sleeping bags. Joe was nearby, digging though his bag for something, but I’d recognize his scraggly hair anywhere. I whacked him on the head with a book and sarcastically thanked him for abandoning me. He said he’d left a note at the front desk, dude, so I forgave him.

The People & Planet kids who recognized me didn’t look happy to see me, and the rest looked at me like an imposter. In a room full of hippies and punks, they looked like a group of prissy, priviledged college kids. Which they were. I remembered how much I disliked them. Still, I set out my sleeping bag and sat down to write in my journal. Joe came over awhile later and admitted that he didn’t like many of the People & Planet kids either, and that made me feel somewhat better. I had a walk around the building, and a cup of tea, and got more comfortable with the situation. The KPC wasn’t so bad, and the people weren’t unfriendly, they were just involved in their own conversations.

I went back upstairs to settle in for the night and decided that I still didn’t like the P&P kids. They were fake and unwelcoming, and I felt like an outsider. But, I was there and had to make the best of it. I changed my clothes and laid down to sleep around 10:30.

Bad idea.

Trying to sleep in a room with over a hundred strangers, next to a group of people I neither liked nor trusted, was impossible. It didn’t make matters any better that my usual bedtime was about 2:00 am.... I tried reading for awhile, then sat up and surveyed the scene. About a third of the room was now making some effort towards sleep. The rest engaged in hushed conversations or moved about quietly. It felt like a mixture of slumber party and refugee camp. Everyone was nervous and uncertain beneath their excitement, and my isolation amongst strangers magnified my fears.

I laid back down to begin my difficult night. The hours slipped by, and my mind raced trying not to think about my fears and worries. I tossed and turned. It was too hot, too cold, too noisy.... The lights finally went out around midnight and soon the only sounds were the traffic outside and the light snores of sleeping people. I lay awake, listening, watching, thinking, willing myself to sleep but unable to.

Around 1:00, I realized I had to pee. Between myself and the door, there were dozens of sleeping people. I held it and tried even harder to sleep. At 2:00, I tried reading by the light of my watch. I was ravenously hungry, but I didn’t want to waste my food for the blockade. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I finally ate a sesame bar.... The zippers of my bag, the crackling of the wrapper, my crunching teeth…. I thought I would wake up the entire room! I finally drifted off around 3:00.

Five minutes to 4:00, I opened my eyes. Some people were up already, moving around quietly in the half-darkness. Someone’s alarm clock buzzed, and suddenly the lights were on. A hundred bleary-eyed people started grumbling about the early hour. I pulled on my extra layers, and sat watching everyone get ready. It was amazing how fast this was accomplished. The room was cleared in half an hour, and I brushed my teeth with the stragglers in the communal bathroom no later than 4:45.

Downstairs I had a hummus sandwich for breakfast and put my rucksack on the van for the Friends Meeting House. I boarded the bus (one of the seven that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had hired) along with the P&P kids before 5:00 am. The sky was still dark, and a waning moon hung behind the swiftly moving haze.

The bus ride was long, but I made pleasant conversation with the girl sitting next to me. Someone with a bullhorn in the back of the bus started asking ridiculous multiple-choice questions in a dull monotone.... “Which of these is a random number between 1 and 100 – 47, 9, or 8?” “What is the capital of France – Brussels, Paris, or Nice?” If it hadn’t been 5:30 in the morning, it would not have been funny, but in that situation it was perfect.

We stopped in a parking lot in Helensburgh to wait for the other busses. We had to go to the base in a convoy because it was illegal to park anywhere near it. A woman came and gave us a last-minute briefing, telling us to “keep it fluffy” – a good philosophy!

We arrived at the North Gate of the base before 7:00. Dozens of police stood near the gate, and we milled around on the pavement for awhile, waiting for the other blockaders to arrive. Our bus had been the first in the convoy. The hardcore CND people were already there, perched in their gigantic tripods, decorated with signs and banners. More CND folks arrived soon after us, in white hazmat suits and various other costumes. The sky in the east was just starting to grow lighter, and the moon moved slowly into the west. The first round of arrests started just past 7:00. The blockade had begun.

The first thing I realized was that Socialists can be really annoying. They were leading chants of “nuclear weapons are insane, shut down Faslane!” and “say hey, say ho, Faslane has got to go!” Cool and exciting for the first few minutes, quickly becoming frustrating and repetitive. I was already sick of standing with P&P, so I took a walk around to check out the scene.

Faslane was parallel to the road, and the North Gate formed a four-way intersection with the motorway. In the southeast corner was a steep hill, with a few bare trees and bushes that blended into the nearby woods. The northeast corner was flat and grassy, with the “Jeely Peace Café” set up in a mini geodesic dome. Over the hills opposite the base, the sun was starting to rise.

Beyond the gates was a beautiful spot on the River Clyde. There was little habitation on the opposite bank, providing lovely forest and hill scenery. In the distance, hills melted into misty mountains, and as the haze burned off, I could see well into the Highlands. The pre-dawn reflection of the moon on the river was incredible.

The base itself was an expanse of ugly concrete and steel in the midst of this beautiful countryside, with sumbarines floating ominously by the docks. Just inside the fence was a huge watchtower, not unlike a prison. But the fences were the worst. Ten feet tall, rigid metal grids too narrow to get even a finger through, painted a dark greenish-grey (the color agreed-upon by the neighbors, as if they had much of a choice). The pair of parallel fences ran ten feet apart, crowned by four lines of electified wire and huge rolls of razor wire. The ground between them was covered with great menacing tunnels of razor wire. It was horrifyingly engineered to keep everyone out – or in? Terrifying if anyone ever wanted to go on strike from the inside.

In the middle of the intersection was a roundabout which had good rails for sitting on, and plenty of open space. Some Buddhists had set up an altar on a big concrete slab, and built a small cairn of rocks underneath it. A group with six enormous drums was playing samba beats, providing a merry atmosphere. A few folk musicians gathered near them, playing more quietly.

I started feeling guilty for leaving my group, so I headed back towards the gate. The Socialists there were just annoying, so I sought out Joe to tell him where I’d be. He and Fiona wanted to check out the hill, so I tagged along. The view was fantastic. The cops were lines of yellow around the moving mass of protesters. Joe remarked at how organized it all was. I wished I had a camera.

The hill was interesting, but I wanted to be down with the people. I went back to the roundabout to listen to the drumming. The sun was rising and first wave of arrests had happened. I was surprised at first that each time someone was carried off, a round of clapping and cheering swept through the crowd like fire.... Cheering to support the people arrested, and to show that we were joyful to support this cause. The drumming filled the background of everything like a heartbeat. I couldn’t help but tap my feet and move a little, in a restrained way – I couldn’t dance in front of all these people!

But as I hovered at the roundabout, the rhythm overcame my shyness. It was useless to resist. Slowly, my feet began to tap harder, my hands began to move, and I stopped caring what anyone thought. There was music, and rhythm, and I was outside in a beautiful place under the rising sun, surrounded by positive, creative, visionary people…. And suddenly I was dancing! Dancing as I’d always been afraid to in public, moving as I’d only moved when I was certain nobody was watching…. Like throwing off an old coat at the end of a long winter, I released my self-consciousness and fear, filled with joy and freedom. I suddenly knew, this was what I should have been doing all along.

Jugglers arrived as the moon was setting, wearing silly exaggerated nuclear disaster costumes. They juggled flourescent cones and flaming poi. A woman in her mid-fifties came over and started ranting, a combination of beat poetry, singing, and tai-chi movements. She was wonderful and eccentric, a little bit removed from everyone else’s reality, but amusing and inspiring and free. There was a younger woman with a similar vibe about her, singing beautifully and dancing with a dramatic and flowing style.

There were some dour-looking men in suits clustered at one edge of the roundabout, taking notes and looking very out of place. Later, I found that they were aides for the Parliament men who were being arrested. I decided to try to get these unsmiling suits to dance. Bad idea. They didn’t even crack a smile at my efforts!

Then I went to dance with some other dour people – the police. It was 9:00 and full daylight. Several groups of people had locked down, connecting their arms in PVC pipes, chaining and tying themselves to a wheelchair, sitting in the road with their arms linked. A few Edinburgh people I recognized had joined the wheelchair group. The cops were standing in neat lines around these groups, with their arms linked. It was a strange parody of order, very surreal. I started dancing up and down these long lines of cops, twirling and smiling…. It was fantastic! Somebody tossed me a shaker, and I danced all around the whole blockade, cheered on by some old Quaker ladies, punks with crazy piercings, and anarchists all in black…. I really hoped to start something, but when I tried to get some of the other girls to dance with me, they held back. No matter, I was having a great time, and some of the cops were smiling. At one point, I thought the drummers were taking a break, so I went to eat a bit of lunch (at 9:30 in the morning) – but they started again, and so I resumed my dancing, eating a peanut butter sandwich at the same time.... That gave the cops a laugh!

It was clear that they were preparing for another mass-arrest, but I continued dancing around them as they moved in to carry people away. One particularly dour officer grabbed me harshly by the wrist and growled, “onto to the pavement or you’ll go to jail!” So I danced onto the pavement!

All the while, I was glad that I had P&P as an affinity group. I didn’t particularly like them, but I recognized their faces and that made the whole scene a lot less intimidating than it could have been. Everywhere I looked, there was a semi-familiar face, and that was comforting.

When the main drummers finally did take a break, a small group of people with djembes and dumbeks started playing nearer the gate. These drums were too soft to be heard throughout the blockade, so I danced with a few nearby girls for awhile. When the big drummers came back, we all gathered on the roundabout. Several Edinburgh girls picked up the beat by chanting “this is what democracy looks like!” and “ain’t no power like the power of the people cause the power of the people don’t stop!” Their words were interspersed with high mournful singing from the woman in pink sweatpants and counter-chants from the boy with blue dreadlocks. Soon, the big drums departed again to support a wave of South Gate arrests, but the jam continued on the roundabout. More drums appeared out of nowhere, along with guitars, dijeridoos, and of course more dancers. Styles from techno to ballet were represented.

Sometimes I danced, sometimes I just watched the landscape of bodies, vivid as a storybook. A young Earth Mama laughed from behind waist-length blonde dreadlocks and clothes of every imaginable shade of brown. A lanky Pan with a braided goatee and a striped wool caftan bobbed his head in time with the beat. His hands seemed unconnected to his body, an indistinct blur on the surface of his djembe. A tall punk with a shaved head and gaunt face, adorned in spikes and chains, lost his tough façade when his gaze turned to his German shephard puppy. Rebecca, a girl I recognized from Edinburgh, was a grinning sprite, black curls trailing out behind her dancing body, clad in an explosion of tie-dye color.

Others came and went, contributing their dances, and people seemed to enjoy watching us. I was completely free and comfortable, full of joy from the music and the other dancers and the lovely early spring sunshine…. I was getting tired, but the combination of endorphins, sleep deprivation, and a worthwhile cause gave me an incredible high. Around 10:30, things were tense again, with three groups on the road and the cops standing around them. There’d been no action for awhile and another wave of arrests began. The dancing and music helped alleviate stress, and we cheered for the people in the road as they were carried away.

Once the arrests were through, an exhausted calm swept through the crowd. I rested and ate a bit, offering around my veggie sticks. A Buddhist monk took one, placed it in front of the Buddha on the shrine, and bowed to it before he ate it. I walked around and sat down with Joe and Fiona for awhile, then headed back to the roundabout for some water around 11:00.

There were cops all over the roundabout like a swarm of day-glo bees. I moved through them to get my bag and watched as they cleared away all the drummers and dancers. They’d finally figured out that this concentration of organic power was the heartbeat of the site, and they sought to kill it. Most of us, being supporters and unwilling to be arrested, went quietly to the other side of the road. But a dark-haired young man sat down on his drum next to the roundabout and started to eat his lunch of rice and vegetables in a plastic box. The cops surrounded him and asked him to move. I couldn’t hear their exchange, but he seemed to be asking to finish his lunch. As the cops grew more agitated, he grew more stubborn until one of them took his fork, another took his rice, and four more carried him off to the police van, leaving his drum on the street. His girlfriend rushed over to see what was going on. She didn’t speak English (they were from Spain) and tried to get to him. The cops made it easy for her – they arrested her and carried her off, crying.

A Legal Support guy tried to step in, and they arrested him, too. I was really pissed off that the police were now arresting obvious support people, especially when there were plenty of people willing to get arrested. That was dealt with soon, though. At noon the police moved in for the final big arrest. Joe jumped in, along with a few other Edinburgh folks. The big drums returned and I danced in earnest with the other girls, somehow getting another second wind. When Joe was carried off, a bunch of us chanted his name. It was a big joyful finale, but I was still thirsty for more.

When the last arrest were made, the rest of us stood on the sidewalk and the police did a very nice job of blocking the road for us. I thought this was a good strategy for continuing the blockade, which had been wildly successful for over five hours now. Obviously, the other people didn’t think so. They formed a big march and moved down to South Gate, singing and waving banners.

I still wasn’t convinced. There were half a dozen old Quaker ladies left, lingering across the road and helping dismantle the Jeely Peace Café. The only person left near the gate was a young hippie, crouched on a djembe, wearing in a tattered camoflage jacket and an old knitted cap. I realized the drum belonged to the Spaniard who had been arrested for eating his lunch, and the one playing it now had been drumming throughout the day. Now he was rockin’ out all on his own, belting “I am no man’s slave, I am no man’s master….” I hung around and listened for awhile, considering what to do. I had no particular desire to go to South Gate; I wanted to see what would happen here. Besides, this guy was sitting all alone…. He’d played for my dancing earlier, so the least I could do was support him now. He stopped playing at the end of his song and we chatted for awhile. The rest of his affinity group had been arrested, and he was perfectly content to sit there all day and entertain the sixty cops who were still around. A few of them were actually talking with us. They were very nice people, genuinely upset that Daviyd didn’t know any of the songs they requested. So there we were, two people blockading the gate to an entire naval base with the help of sixty cops. Another surreal moment in a surreal day.

After awhile, the Quaker women finished with the Jeely Peace Café. One of the organizers came and invited us to a little closing ceremony of the North Gate portion of the blockade. We gathered, hands joined in a circle of about twenty, while one of the Quaker women made some remarks about freedom and peace and the divine force of love…. It was beautiful. We walked around clockwise singing Give Peace a Chance, then departed for South Gate. It was 1:00.

On the twenty-minute walk, Daviyd was full of stories. He’d left a bad family situation, working odd jobs where he could in the south of England. He lived on the streets of London for awhile, helping people overcome their drug addictions and encouraging them to busk rather than beg. Now he was living with various friends in Edinburgh, busking for cash. I felt a sudden and intense connection with this person I’d just met, and I knew it was no coincidence that I’d lingered at North Gate.

It was strange and dreamlike to pass by beautiful forest with waterfalls and streams, just over the road from razor wire and concrete. We came upon a few oak leaves caught in the fence – nature trapped by ugliness and oppression. I could not fathom how the leaves had become entangled in the fence, the spaces between bars were so small. But there they were. At length, I rescued one of the little leaves, and it’s the centerpiece of my dreamcatcher now.

At South Gate, the party was in full swing! The space was much more constrained here – a single road, edged by drystone walls that seemed to belong near a country cottage rather than a naval base. Beyond one wall, the land sloped down to an inviting beach; beyond the other, a lovely forest. The gate to the base was further down the road from the festivities. Over a hundred people lined the road, with more down by the gate. The police were keeping everyone on the narrow sidewalks, making dancing difficult – but that didn’t stop the drummers and musicians! Fiddles, accordions, and flutes joined the ubiquitous guitars, drums, and dijeridoos to make a merry racket. Food Not Bombs had a station set up along a portion of the wall, and I borrowed a wooden spoon and a pot lid for a makeshift bodhran. Unfortunately, the sound was more loud than it was pleasant, so I returned the kitchen supplies and made my best attempt on one of Daviyd’s spare hand-drums.

When I got tired of playing, I spotted the punk who’d been on the roundabout earlier. He turned out to be a sweetie with an unlikely name for such a tough-looking chracter: Bobby. He wanted to get arrested, but was concerned about what the police would do to his puppy, Spike. I suggested leaving Spike with a friend, but Bobby was adamant. He didn’t trust anyone else with his dog.

I chatted with the blonde-dreadlocked girl, and found that her many layers of sweaters were hand-knitted by her mother. Her accent suggested that she was from Germany or Scandinavia. I got some nice tomato soup from Food Not Bombs, and narrowly avoided an argument with a vegan who accused us all of cow rape over the cream in the soup.

The day began to wind down. People who worked at the base had been transported in on boats, and the protesters who tried to enter the base by swimming there had been arrested. After seven hours, North Gate was open again, and a few cars were driving by the protesters into South Gate. We waved our signs at them, but didn’t heckle or hiss – someday, when we finally succeed in ending the threat of nuclear war, these people would be the ones to dismantle the bombs.

Around 3:00, the remaining blockaders – about 50 of us – marched away from the base, triumphantly. We marched through the surrounding neighborhoods, which were eerily vacant, and ended at the Faslane Peace Camp, a beautiful settlement full of merrily-painted trailers and handmade buildings. The residents of the camp invited all of us to stay overnight, but I had to get back to Edinburgh. I spotted Daviyd in the crowd, and made my way over to say good-bye. We chatted for a few minutes, and I gave him my phone number, welcoming him to visit if he ever needed a place to stay in Edinburgh.

There was a single van headed back to the Friends Meeting House, a bit anticlimactic after the seven busses that morning. My seat was a wheelbarrow, crowded in with other people and various farm equipment. We had to keep our heads down so the cops wouldn’t see the “illegal” passengers in the back of the van, and soon I was asleep on my knapsack. I dreamed of dancing a new world to life.