Got pepper sprayed for the first time today.
I'm just going to copy/paste what I sent a couple of my friends earlier tonight, with a few edits:
So I got up at 9 today and then hopped on a bus at ten to go to Garfield High School, where there was a rally and speeches before the march. I met up with people from the *blank* (I don't know if I should identify them online or not) and helped them pass out flyers for the community panel with John Carlos on Thursday. Apparently I am a flyering machine, according to some other people there 
in about 30 minutes I handed out probably close to 150 to 200 
Also, Macklemore was there. I saw him, but I didn't get to talk to him like a couple of others with us.
So then we grouped up and got relatively close to the front of the march, and I volunteered to help hold the big anti-racism banner we painted on Saturday. We started off, and the number of people at the march was huge. There were thousands, at least. I don't know how many, but I'm guessing probably upwards of 5-6, possibly way more than that. I'm bad at estimating
So anyways, the march started off. Since I was with the *blank*, I was right next to the person with the bullhorn leading a lot of the chanting, and that was fun. My voice is dead right now, and my throat actually hurts a little from today haha. Also I'm pretty sure I'm in a ton of pictures and video, and possibly some news... We kept marching past the youth jail that's in the area, where there were two speakers who made some awesome speeches, and then headed downtown.
There were a couple of pauses along the way for whatever reason, and at one of them, a little girl came up and kinda peeked over the edge of the banner from behind to try and read what it said (*blank*, btw), with the web address of the *blank* underneath). She couldn't see very well so I lifted it up for her and let her run underneath to the front, where she tried very diligently to read it. She got through "*blank*" okay, but then had a little more trouble with "blank". It was adorable. Then she came back under the banner and asked me if she could help hold it, and of course I said yes 
her brother and sister came over and helped too the little boy managed to read the sign, upon which his mom came over and started to explain what racism meant. He then asked me why some people are mean to Mexicans because they come from somewhere else 
little dude had a pretty good idea what was going on... But yeah. I got a picture with the four of us holding the banner
Then we arrived at the federal courthouse downtown, where there were a bunch more speakers. After the speeches, a much smaller group of probably a hundred to three hundred continued in an unpermitted (still legal, to be clear) march. We headed up the street chanting. After a little while blocks, the bicycle cops that were following us must have realized we were heading towards I5, so they formed a line in front of us. The group and them faced off for a bit, and then a couple of protesters broke through the line (which they shouldn't have. We wanted to hold our spot or move fowards on the sidewalks) and then everything kinda broke down. A couple of cops freaked out and started pepper spraying.
One con was flipping shit and spraying it everywhere. Her spray got within a foot of me, but thankfully I was upwind and only got hit with a tiny bit. Otherwise I would have had a facefull. And it was screwed up. She was screaming at this ~75 year old lady to get back and aiming the spray at her, and clouding the air with the shit. Anyways, we all got onto the sidewalks and went around the cops, where an even smaller group (50ish) regrouped and headed up towards the I5 on ramp, while the rest of us followed on the sidewalks. I considered going with them, but I don't want to take the chance of getting arrested till I talk to my boss about the possibility first. They made it up a fair ways before the cops arrived and forced them back (thankfully only a few people got arrested), but they hopped over the divider and blocked the off-ramp instead
The cops took a bit, and then caught up and forced them down to the intersection, where they spread out and almost all the rest of us joined them again. We locked arms and held the intersection for a while. I had to hop out when the cops grouped up again :/ then the protesters regrouped and headed up the street with the cops blocking the way at times, aiming them towards who knows where. We managed to snarl up a ton of downtown though!
At this point, I was following on the sidewalks only because the cops were everywhere and it was getting too sketchy for me to rejoin. After a little while longer, a guy from the *blank* came up to me and asked me to escort him back downtown (since it's not the best idea to be a black man walking alone with cops running everywhere, even if you do nothing wrong). So yeah, I walked back downtown with him, talked to him for a while, and then got on the bus back home. Went to the market with *a friend* and now I'm gonna go for a short bike ride, since my legs are rather sore. We went from Garfield to downtown, to Belltown, and then all the way back downtown again. I hadn't sat down for around 6 hours... but yeah! It was a good, if crazy day
Anyways, that's been my day. I learned that apparently I came within a hair of losing one of my best friends last week (two grand mal seizures, and thank goddess a friend of hers was there), and I'm rather drunk at this point (because death and racism suck), so hopefully this all made sense. Anyways, time for me to sleep
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