I am with ANTIFA. I drive my motorcycle from city to city, protest to protest, riot to riot.

I see some of the same people in these locations. Many of them were taking photographs.

They are not with ANTIFA.

Whenever I tried to get closer to these people, they disappeared. None of them gave the impression they possessed magical powers. What they had was training.

I can’t say I saw them setting buildings on fire. I can say I saw them taking photographs of fires. Then. They vanished.

Seattle. Portland. Keenosha. Minneapolis. The same people popping up.

They were “at” protests. They were separate as well. Inviolate. Divorced from the issues that drive dissent.

I am not detached from the issues that drive resistance. I am there to witness America come apart at the seams. That will sound uncivil. That is the point of protest. To dispute the status quo. To defy prosecution in the here and now.

That is why you will never, ever read anything by anyone who was not compliant.

My side of the drama.

Media gatekeepers don’t get it. They censor so as to not to upset the audience.

The irony to opposition is the diversity of it. It is not violence that authority fears. It is not conformity in that the protestors all look rather alike. It is the ubiquitous complicity of camouflage, the ability to obscure identity, the disguise of dissimulation as a smoke-screen that evades the weapons of the law. The real veil of secrecy exists writ large as pursuance by the federal government.

Anonymous@NYT

Tim, are you serious?

Dear Anonymous,

 I am never sure what people mean when they ask me if I am serious. How am I not serious about what.

BEARING WITNESS: It’s not simply the law, the inequality, the poverty, the meanness of America. It’s the bearing witness to time. The bearing witness of an existence. I am disapproved of and denounced so often that it just has no meaning for me. It all began with protesting the War in Vietnam. I remain a radical. An anarchist. It can all go up in smoke tomorrow. I am bearing witness to the evil in an entire culture. America is a ruinous society for the entire planet.

ANTIFA. It’s the only group I am intimately acquainted with that puts its money where is mouth is. Resistance to facsism has to be more than just another abstract idea. It’s a spectrum I can stand behind.

The bike (?) is safer than a car, and quite out of doors. I am writing a book (it will never get published, but there it is) about the travels, the diseases (HIV and Covid), the riots, the photographs we take (I have already published many of them), and my relationship with the teenager I am riding shotgun with who is now seeing the world we have visited with very different eyes. I knew he would grow. And I am bearing witness to what has become a deeply-felt relationship. Our second selves.

The camouflage of authority? Or the insidiousness of it.

Media gatekeepers? Please. They have all washed their hands of me. It infuses me with a breathtaking freedom. What do you mean by serious. I AM serious.

AnonymousNW12m ago

@Tim traveling from city to city during a global pandemic is breathtakingly selfish and irresponsible.

I know. I am conflicted about it. The bigger question is – are the people who have participated in protests selfish and irresponsible. Should we be punished. Is this a legal landscape. I am not defending it. I am just posing the question. Are the Trump rallies selfish and irresponsible. Frankly, I do not know. We do wear masks. In fact, our motorcycle helmets with face shields go a long way as masks, and we also wear masks underneath the helmets. We wore the helmets in the riots, too. I have been wondering if local prosecutions of demonstrators would go off the deep end and indict people based on the wearing of masks in the marches. Some of it is that I want to be where the action is. Some of it is I want to provoke authority. Some of it is that I can usually find some damaged adolescent to go on the ride. To share the adventure with. Life exploits life. I am not going to pretend I am responsible. I have never been responsible. I don’t even know what responsible is. It is probably totally irresponsible to make this record of what we have heard and seen. But there it is.