After the story was over, a few people played instruments and sang songs for the crowd. That was the signal for Jamie, a puppetista, to get into the coffin, which we carried to the fence. At this point, Jamie “resurrected” and climbed over the fence, as did one of the pallbearers. The other pallbearers and I then picked up the empty coffin and carried it back to the area where the puppetistas kept their props.

Later that day, I joined a group outside of the Muscogee County Jail. We stood outside of the doors and started singing. Before long, some not-very-official looking person came up to our group and told us to stop blocking the sidewalk. We didn’t really want to leave. We did, however, stop blocking the sidewalk.

After a short time, the mystery man let us know that we were to remove ourselves from jail property. His tone had become a little bit more ominous and threatening.

An agreement was made for everyone to march around the block that the jail occupied, on the sidewalk. People joined us with drums, a guitar, and a flute. People from inside the jail were waving from the windows and dancing. The cops could see us, too. They were driving around the block in cars. One of the cops was videotaping our activities.

One of our folks from the SOA Watch legal collective came to us as we were enjoying the height of musical entertainment, with loud singing and all instruments going at once, and informed us that the cops said that we could be in groups of no more than fifteen persons. By this time, our group had grown to somewhere around fifty.

At this point, I saw some vans marked with “Muscogee Parks and Recreation” on the street. I wondered what sort of recreational activities went on in Muscogee County parks at night but decided not to comment on something that seemed to me to be very weird.

When we rounded the corner, we saw hordes of police. I have no idea of where they came from. Apparently, the cops told some of the group that we had ten minutes to disperse or else. It was very obvious that the entire group was being threatened with arrest. Most of the group, however, did not hear the message. We continued walking, very slowly, although we had stopped singing.

The ten minutes that we didn’t know that we had expired. Cops began pouring out of vehicles, including from the parks and recreation vans. There were so many cops in those vans that I don’t know how they managed to squeeze themselves inside. My friends Gary and Shirley and I walked by a parking garage and peeked inside. The parking garage was full of police dressed in riot gear, standing in rows. They weren’t moving, and they resembled Robocops. It was a very surreal sight.

The police, however, were ready to arrest everyone. Fortunately, they were slow, so most everyone got into cars and drove away before the cops could grab us. Three people who were still standing on a street corner and chatting after everyone left were arrested and charged with “failure to disperse.” They were kept in jail overnight, taken to court in the morning, and fined $200 each.

That not-very-official looking individual who kept changing the rules, seemingly every two minutes orchestrated the whole melodrama.

Later on, the SOA Watch attorneys, who had gone inside the jail to visit the line crossers, said that our friends were able to hear us singing and playing instruments before our rather abrupt departure. So much for freedom of speech. By Alice E. Gerard

Earlier this month, I went to my fourth SOA Watch vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia. This time, unlike the past two years, I knew that I had no intentions of “crossing the line” onto the grounds of Fort Benning. In the past two years, I have spent nine months in federal prison. I feel very good about the actions that I chose to take at Fort Benning that resulted in the two sentences meted out by U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Mallon Faircloth. I have never had any doubts or regrets about my decision to challenge the U.S. government in that way.
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