Chapter 30 Lina & Sadie
LINA the Griffiths’ lawyers had the judge on a string.
Still, when she went to speak at the podium, Lina told her story with passion. Recounting it to Sadie in private had made it easier to share in public. Her people shushed to hear it, and the dozen commissioners gave their attention.
The Freedom School. The smoke. The boys, Francis and William—Mr. William would testify next. How she’d almost lost her life. How she’d held herself responsible for so long. The victims and their families deserved reparations, she argued, and that meant returning the land to the people.
After her speech, as she looked into the commissioners’ eyes and saw the consternation on their faces, she thought for a moment that they really had heard her and understood—that anything less than the CLT was a betrayal of the community yet again.
If the commission stopped the Bernard in this way, no one could be dragged off without the rest. Meanwhile, their whole group cheered for the council members who voted against, booed those who voted for, and finally halted the vote altogether, chorusing:
“Community control now! Community control now!”
“We say power! You say Brownsville!”
“Power!”
“Brownsville!”
“Power!”
“Brownsville!”
Eventually, the speaker of the council hollered up at the balcony. “Please respect your council members and let the vote proceed.”
“Community control now! Community control now!”
“This is not a school cafeteria!” the chair of the Land Use committee barked up at them. “Please maintain decorum in the council chambers, or our security staff will remove you!”
The council sent fifteen security officers to escort the protestors out of the building.
While most of the community members complied, the six arrest-riskers remained seated and bound to each other.
They had become one entity, a centipede in blue jeans.
They would not budge until the NYPD sliced the cords.
An officer tried to drag Tyrell from one end, and he yelped in pain.
“This is all on camera!” Sadie snapped, pointing to the press booth downstairs where several reporters were capturing the protest on their phones.
The officers then left them alone and wired to the precinct for a cord-cutter.
Twenty minutes later, a troop of NYPD officers cut them apart, packed them into a police van with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and had them fingerprinted and photographed at the precinct.
But they had expected all this, had packed their medications and scrawled the lawyer hotline on their forearms. Lina and Sadie ended up in the same cell, where they fantasized about sesame chicken and pollo guisado and roti and chocolate and LUNA Bars.
About twenty-four hours later, they were back in Brownsville, holding their goodbye party for the garden in the lot, with Trini bread pudding and currant rolls for all. A local assemblywoman had asked the precinct to stand back, giving the party her unofficial sanction.
Lina was satisfied, at least enough to get up and do the whole thing over again for another lot on Livonia Avenue. The Bernard it left no room to segue into all the things she really wanted to convey.
One day at the garden, he placed a hand on her shoulder. When she looked up, he was beaming, and she nearly fell through the earth.
“There’s someone I want you to meet today,” he said.