Hands Off Baton Rouge

On attending my first protest event with a veteran of the fight, my friend Maxine.

The Vintage was busy with about sixty white people drinking blended coffees and downing breakfast bites and mini-beignets. Motown classics played over the conversations and clearing of dishes.

At a table near the window, four people in their mid-thirties wearing “Resist” branded t-shirts were making protests signs with a selection of colored markers. They were raising and showing each other their work. They were sharing the markers.

The line for more coffee extended out the door and on to the street, where young families pushed kids in strollers and carried camp chairs in slings around their shoulders.

The Capital City’s first pro-democracy demonstration of the second Trump presidency was scheduled on the same weekend as the Baton Rouge Blues Festival and same day as the farmers’ market.

Certainly, many of the people on 3rd Street and in this corner cafe would be making a day of it, attending all three events.

Maxine Crump, spry at 78, weaved past the coffee line in white capri pants and sunglasses, searching for me inside. I stood and waved. She set her camp chair down beneath our table.

“That’s Movement music,” she said, pointing at the ceiling where the speakers hung and shaking her shoulders.

Maxine was the first Black woman to live on campus at LSU, integrating Louisiana’s flagship state university back in 1964. She was also, incidentally, the first Black woman to wear pants on campus, a fact recorded (at least for now) on the university’s own website.

I’ve known Maxine fifteen years or more. I served most of those years on the board of her nonprofit, Dialogue on Race Louisiana, a long-running community program dedicated to ending racism through education and action.

I couldn’t think of better company for a protest.

I was worried about attending alone, to be honest; I’ve never been to one. My idea of resistance is a sternly worded letter, often left unsent. The thought of chanting slogans with full voice and raised fist is never the first to come to mind, even now, when I’m sure it’s a sensible and likely useful thing to do.

Following my more familiar impulse, I asked Maxine if I could record her answers to a few questions before we finished our coffees and joined the Resistance.

You’re an expert on the power of protest, the need for protest, and Americans’ sort-of unique relationship to protest. You’ve done this before. Why are you here today?

“Because it is part of democracy for citizens to protest; part of the voice of a country, of a nation. It's one of the ways you say, ‘This is what I want in my country.’ So, the right to protest comes with a democracy.”

The Vintage café is across the street from the Kress Building, where in 1960, a group of Black students from nearby Southern University braved a sit-in at a “whites-only” lunch counter.

Seven years prior to that, Black Baton Rouge citizens organized the nation’s first bus boycott. Rev. King came down here to see how it was done.

Do you see any parallels between what we're doing today and civil rights actions generally? What's the through-line?

“This is another civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Era never ended. . .We do not have civil rights fully, yet. We have them on paper. We have the laws.”

Maxine explained the difference between having civil rights laws and having civil rights, actually.

“You know, the Constitution and other civil rights laws are just on paper. What's the accountability if someone breaks a civil rights law? Nothing. There's no accountability, except maybe you can sue and prove yourself right.”

The burden of proof, she noted, is on you, the victim. And that goes double in Trump’s Department of Justice.

“Civil Rights never became full law because it didn't have enforcement. Traffic laws have more enforcement!”

What do you expect to see today when we walk down there?

Neither of us had any idea what sort of crowd might turn up.

“I expect, if it's a massive crowd, that will make national news. It would give just one more crack in the dark dome that's over Louisiana.

“In the minds of the nation, we're this Red State, mostly made up of Republicans, and this will say there are voices that have another idea of democracy: [We] want the democracy that's on the paper.”

What are some of the other audiences, other people you would like to see take notice of dissent in Baton Rouge? Do you expect that our state and federal representatives would learn something from this?

“It would get their attention. If it's very massive, yes, I think they'll learn something from it.”

Maxine suggested another good audience might be the police.

“One of the things that stands out to me about protests, especially the way they’re treated nationwide, is how the police [can] treat protesters like they’re criminals. Who are the police out there to protect? What is the job of police [regarding] protesters, given that people protesting government is a right? The police’s job is to protect the people.”

In a state led by our former Attorney General and bellicose Trump loyalist, Jeff Landry, the question of police monitoring stands wide open, and how protestors might be treated, even long after a protest ends, deserves considering.

The history of policing in the US is not unrelated to civil rights and conflict between Black and white people, right? The protection of property and businesses, sure, but also maintenance of the status quo. Isn't that the truth?

“Yes, that's very much the truth. The reason police officers react the way they did during Jim Crow is they believed Black people had been given their place by law, and they were to stay in it.

“They were out of their place if they were marching on the public street or walking into this coffee house. They were breaking the law, because the law was for white people. All institutions were for white people. America was for white people, and Black people could be only where white people didn't want to be.

“White schools, water fountains, transportation, restaurants, real estate: All of that was protected [by] Jim Crow laws. And so, when there was a protest—in particular, a protest against the status quo—Black people were treated as if they were out of their places.”

Is there anything inherently dangerous about protesting now? What do people risk when they protest?

“Well, these days they risk counter-protesters, people coming out to protest the protesters. That's where the trouble starts.

“And the other [danger] is how police see it: What they observe, what they think, and how they present themselves.”

Maxine gestured in the opposite direction of the Capital, down to where the Blues Fest will be happening.

“For the festival, the police present themselves very friendly. You don't see them watching. But at a protest, that's not how it looks. It looks like they're watching the protest, which is a different feel. And so that's the danger, to me: What the police find errant, or if the counter-protesters show up.”

Maxine and I picked up our coffees and joined a smattering of others to stroll up 3rd street toward the Capitol steps. We walked past the Kress Building with its brass placard commemorating the 1960 sit-in.

We didn’t know what to expect at the event: lines of armored police, as we recalled from the Alton Sterling protests of 2016? Camera drones circling and scanning faces? Menacing counter-protestors wielding clubs?

None of that met us at the Capitol. Our city’s inaugural pro-democracy event of the Trump 2.0 era drew a modest crowd of mostly white people and small dogs on leashes.

There were speeches, some chanting of slogans, a few raised fists, and those signs we saw being colored in at The Vintage.

The speakers did accurately and with admirable fervor present the problems at hand—the pending end of our Constitutional democracy and rule of laws, both on paper and in fact. The near absence of good government, or any government. The grim reappearance of persons disappearing.

One speaker called Jeff Landry an asshole from the podium. We all applauded that plain truth.

But on the whole, our Hands Off crowd was a few hundred polite festival goers and farmers’ market regulars, supervised by a single Sheriff’s deputy from the shade of a big spruce.

I don’t mean to diminish the event. For Baton Rouge, it was probably bigger than anyone expected. But was it big enough, I wonder, or diverse enough, or loud enough, or angry enough for a nation to take notice?