-Cancer Mob Logic

On the left side of my neck sits a gob of sterile wadding under two strips of surgical tape. This wad of cotton covers the spot where a smaller and much more troubling lump lived under my skin until yesterday afternoon. The operation took less than an hour, and the offending material squirms under a microscope somewhere, being tested for cancerousness.

Perhaps the doctor over-reacted by by removing the lymph node--I hope in hindsight, that I can laugh and say exactly that. For the moment, I can tell you nothing certain. I keep waiting for my phone to ring with news of my future. Maybe tomorrow, I'll be able to think, "Oh, that's all it was? An infection. Huh".

I hope not to make too strained an analogy with the much discussed (at least locally) neo-Nazi rally of February 25 in downtown Orlando. Having heard the rally discussed five different times in three different media during the week prior, I was eager to witness the event. Like my lump, this rally had much destructive potential--an event planned by the same group, the National Socialist Movement , in Toledo, Ohio resulted in extended rioting and mob violence.
Assuming the worst outcome, my lump may be found malignant--lymphoma is the only specific word I recall among the many I heard in discussions of the nodes running riot in my neck. Cancer--the rioting mob of the human body, growing without reason or logic, beating back barricades and ignoring rules for how individual cells should behave in the orgy of group activity. I have not allowed myself to think about it very much. It is in my family, certainly, and so may be in me.

All of a sudden, as soon as things looked a bit "concerning", as the doctor put it, all sorts of things started happening. Pre-op meetings and calls from the doctor, CT scans and calls from siblings. My parents flew in. I did not then know how to feel about any of it, nor do I now. I pledged not to eat after midnight, and no chewing gum, either, the night before.

The preparations the city took were apparent as I sought a parking space half an hour before the rally's scheduled start time. Streets were blocked in all directions several blocks from the planned route the Nazis would take. I circled the downtown area for a few minutes and finally found a space on Church Street, only a few hundred yards from a set of orange barrels and flashing lights.

As I locked the car and turned toward the action, I saw a line of riot-suited cops marching in line under the highway, and heard the helicopters overhead. I had only a vague sense of where things were to happen, but many folks seemed to be milling down the way. I moved to join them.

The Nazis were nowhere in sight, and none of the crowd gathered against them particularly surprising to me--"a "hate is not a family value" poster here, tattoos and black t-shirts there--typical alterna-twenties crowd for the most part, with a smattering of lefties in their thirties and forties. Just what I expected. Some highlights to set the scene:
*Ministers wearing "Operation Be Cool" t-shirts
*A Jewish group wearing yellow, cardboard stars of David pinned to their shirts
*An unwitting wedding amid the mayhem
*A multi-racial breakdance crew carrying their own boom-box and roll of linoleum flooring (I would swear that I heard "beat street" emanating from the speakers of the radio)
*Hundreds of police officers, most of them in full riot gear, shields and all
*Five helicopters circling, hovering, jockeying for position in the sky above

The counter demonstrators stood in knots along Church Street, a great distance from what appeared to be the starting point of our marching Nazi hosts. Without leaders, people moved randomly and in small groups, carrying cameras, signs and water bottles.

At some unseen signal, all of us starting moving down Hughey Avenue toward the allotted counter protest area. I can't say who directed this motion or when, but there was a discernible coalescence--the cops made it happen some way, though I can't say how. The tow trucks dragged off the strays in the protest area under the highway, and the cops directed us like cattle. From a command and control perspective, they worked masterfully. As I shot a picture of one of our police handlers along the path, the response I received was silent and actively unfriendly.
Upon arrival at the tables separating the free cattle from those penned in the protest area, I learned my camera bag was not allowed in the protest area. As I exited to return to Church Street, I saw that the trickle I had walked among had become a torrent. I still do not know where all of those people had been, but they were intent on being a part of the protest, contained by the riot police. Had I been intent on mayhem, simply walking in the opposite direction of the mass of protesters would have been a good strategy.

Once I got back to the corner of Church and Hughey, I could still see the cops and the gaggle of penned protesters a couple hundred yards away. The helicopters hummed overhead, awaiting the action below. It was not long before marked and unmarked police vehicles began moving in quick patterns that were incomprehensible to me.
As I watched the formations shift, a young white man on a cell phone passed me, walking quickly away from events. Perhaps it was the recent crew-cut I'd been given, but the man perceived me as an ally for some reason. As he passed, he pulled the phone from his face and asked, "It sure is a nigger's world, ain't it?". I failed to respond. The black ministers in their blue "Operation Be Cool" t-shirts were just far enough away to have missed his words.

Just a few minutes later, the march began. The Nazis walked up Hughey toward Church, in my direction. Surrounded by armed riot cops, these were the safest folks in the city. Those in the protest area were very quickly left behind, effectively neutralized and contained behind layers of jersey wall, saw horses, unmarked cars and riot cops. Only those in uniform got anywhere near the swastika'd few as they marched my way.
When the signs of the protesters got close enough to read the cops began yelling at me and the other few stragglers, ordering us back across Church Street. They were far away enough to allow me time to take a few pictures before I moved as directed. It was as I focused that the foolishness and absurdity of the day's events became fully apparent to me. A pathetic group of men stood in a line, with posters and flags and quasi-unforms, waiting as the police determined how best to keep them away from the hundreds of protesters who had swelled out into another protest area. I could have thrown a rock and hit a skinhead.

The newspaper Sunday morning counted 22 marchers. I can count 20 at most from the several shots I was able to get in before the wave of cops moved us back. As I walked and sought a vantage point, I saw a man in a yarmulke detained by police, arguing loudly with them. I asked him after his release what had happened. He told me the cops had accused him of being a militant. He pointed vaguely toward a large group some fifty feet away, telling me the real troublemakers could be found among them. I parted without comment, and saw a patch with the word "Israel" fastened to his collar with a safety pin.

I saw no more of the marchers after that--most of the noise and activity happened around the antis. A man told me that the line of wagons and vans speeding by us contained the Nazis, that the cops had pulled them out in motorized escort for everyone's safety. I don't know if it was true, and I realized that I didn't really care anymore. They ended at the courthouse, I ended much sooner. I walked back to my car, stepping around the piles of horse shit left by the mounted officers controlling the crowd.

All of this for them, I thought. The Sunday paper recorded Orlando's police chief as having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the overtime and equipment to protect the city, to eliminate contact between the two groups. Want to hold a city hostage? Slip on an SS uniform and apply for a permit.

So back to my analogy--Here I sit with stitches in my neck. As he probed with his fingers for the shrunken lump, the doctor told me he'd have cancelled the surgery but for those intangible dots on the CT scan. Cancerous lumps don't shrink, he told us, but let's be sure. That phone call should come tomorrow to provide me with a chance to say, "An operation, all that fuss, for nothing!". I wonder if I'll have a scar.

Want to hold a person hostage? Have him slip on a hospital gown and tell him you're going to take it out anyway, for testing, just to be sure.

PS--Not cancer, the Nazis failed--forces of order and health prevail. So we go.