Would Brother Martin Want ME Out here Today?

by Joe Bolden

A light drizzle comes down on a gray misty, near cloudless sunless day, Monday, Jan. 21, 2002 - Martin Luther King's Birthday/Holiday.

(When I get the assignment from POOR Magazine to march with the parade on MLK day, I get a knee-jerk feeling of working on a holiday especially his, I don't like it).

Doesn't set right being that it is a legal holiday and wouldn't Brother Martin want me free enough to do what I want to even if it means honoring his sacrifice by enjoying the day?

You see, I planned to do nothing today, as my personal form of freedom, celebrating the Honorable Reverend Martin Luther King's holiday. I'm told one march is to begin at Powell Street going down Market Street ending at the Bill Graham Auditorium.

I am given one disposable PO’ color camera with a flash and along with my trusty tape recorder, I begin the MLK assignment…

I overhear, "A neighbor told me it was supposed to rain last night." I think, ok, rain will happen sometime today, that's just ducky. White sky, gray sad clouds and chilly with a little wind thrown in.

[Oh, yeah, I'm 'lovin this 'walkin in a soon-to-be rainy, protest, rally there's nothing better that to jumpstart my day.]

I'm also supposed to be one the folks representin’ POOR Magazine/ PNN with, complete with signage, both covering and being part of the news..

By 11:11 am. I'm in my SRO's community kitchen looking out of a large picture window onto Market Street in San Francisco. The wet red brick, black tar and white crosswalk has a few people walking but not much is going on. By 11:13 am its time to check out Powell Street.

Powell Street is nearly bone dry of people, no march/ protest gathering here. I don't want to walk to 3rd Street for the San Francisco Labor Council, AFL-CIO but I guess I must!

At Yerba Buena or 3rd. Street I see a multitude of people waiting patiently in line as organizers from Glide Memorial Church, Local Warehouse(ILWU) members, and other both familiar and unfamiliar folks. I check the mixed crowds of old and young people some with signs, some not, a few shivering.

I am still unable to find any other POOR Magazine folks out and about. (I excuse my editor, Tiny, as I know she is sick, otherwise she'd be here, she is one of the most dedicated marchers I have ever seen). A green Banner in yellow letters reads Junior ROTC San Francisco Leadership Excellence. Full of now and future activist youth, so culturally diverse, though mostly Asian and Pacific Islanders, I'll only say a rainbow of nations stood there.

There's always a few false starts before any march begins in earnest; Nervousness, tensions, trembling from excitement, fear, wind, rain, and cold or a combination of all of this. Especially at this time post September 11, 2001 - Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Enron, and all that other stuff, I guess it all comes to a head and this is one of the days reminding us that there was a different life-time and we can get back to it.

I interview one person who's part of Glide Memorial Church, but I wasn't able to get his name. So I call him "The Glide Man" (TGM) he is a tall black man wearing a yellow band over an orange traffic vest.

"Are you part of this right here? I ask him, "I'm Joseph, of POOR Magazine"

(TGM)"We're trying to keep to one side, you-know so people can walk through."

"Ok, in what capacity are you in?"

"I'm with Glide."

"Glide Memorial?"

"Glide Memorial, yes."

I see you’re wearing a red and yellow 'kind of knit patch..."

"This is a vest-Identification vest."

"I will take one picture of you."

"I won't be smiling in this weather."

I certainly understood that. After snapping a close up of the man I thanked him before moving on, I didn't get his name because of other loud voices in the crowd.

Everything is orderly and controlled thanks to people like the Glide Man overseeing the march along with another group in the same capacity.

11:38 People are calm as more people late to the King march get in line and other people spontaneously join in.

I crisscross between Yerba Buena Center and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art trying to find where best to begin shooting film.

At this point I have given up being part of the Martin Luther King Birthday/Celebration March because I couldn't take shots and be a part of it. It feels too much like practicing astro project- tion being in-out of bed confusing the self until the subtle second body frees itself.

One more person I run into is someone campaigning for Mr. Steve Phillips (D) who's running for the 13th Assembly District.

We exchanged information - that is, he gave me the orange paper with e-mail on the bottom and I give my PM card with my info on it. And again though I took a picture there is no name. This is precisely why reporting and I go like drinking battery acid. The March did began so did the rain as people and I marched up to and on Market Street.

Its a slow, sloggy, liquidy, joyous occasion as cars, trucks, busses honked, children in strollers protected in their plastic canopy, toddlers walking or carried by parents and every age walking in the rain shouting songs, rhetoric, call-back lines.
And as the rain became a downpour and the sky grayer it only boosted our spirits more. Ok, not every spirit as I passed by my cosy, warm, apartment building.

My end of the March ends at the Bill Graham Auditorium with three Muni buses waiting for the Freedom Rider's to Sacramento and Maybe Washington. Well, I again missed a free serving or two at Saint Anthony's but sometimes one must serve a higher cause - this was mine.

Martin Luther King's Dream will come true because there are too many people, Spiritual son's and daughter's if you will, that will not give up on this country, until it lives up to everyone of MLK’s ideals…

As I carry my soggy body back to the POOR Magazine office to file my report, I decide that Brother Martin probably would’ve wanted me out here – even today.