I came to Tomball, TX with Anti Racist Action (ARA), with the objective of making it as difficult as possible for the Ku Klux Klan to hold their meeting, and as difficult as possible for the city of Tomball to host meetings for fascists.
There were about 50 people there associated with ARA, about half of whom were masked up. We arrived just before 11:00 am and unloaded our banners and began making our way toward the designated protest zone. When we stopped on a street corner to wait for the rest of our group to gather with us before we moved, a cop drove up in a squad car and yelled at us that we could only protest in the designated protest zone a few blocks away. We responded that we were only waiting for our friends, but the cop wouldn’t listen. Yet, she didn’t seem to have a problem with the 2 dozen Christian group protestors who were lined up on the sidewalk across the street. We were also informed that backpacks were not allowed in the protest zone, severely inhibiting our ability to carry water on an extremely hot day. After returning our bags to our vehicle, we made our way to the protest zone, a dusty piece of land across the street from the Tomball Community Center where the Klan was meeting, closed on two sides with orange construction netting.
We milled around for a while trying to decide what to do. We couldn’t keep the Klan out, but since it was advertised as a public meeting, we thought we might be able to get ourselves inside in sufficient numbers to disrupt things. We made our first move at about noon when the meeting was supposed to be open to the public. ARA and some others moved across the street en masse down an alley toward the parking lot through which the cops made us pass through to enter the community center from the opposite side as the protest zone. We made it ten feet down the alley before the cops pushed us back, nudging people with batons. This is the point when the first arrest was made. Joey from Sugar Land was picked off and arrested for disorderly conduct, though he was not doing anything the other 50 of us were not doing. It was clearly an intimidation and harassment tactic by the cops.
I’ll take a moment here to describe the police presence. There were a lot of cops. Corporate media reported 70-80 officers, all to protect 30-40 ignorant racists. In addition to numbers, these cops were armed to the teeth. All the cops had tasers and batons. Many had pepper spray. Half a dozen cops were in full SWAT body armor with 12-gauge “non-lethal” shotguns. Also, there was a fire engine set up with the hose pressurized and pointed at the protest zone as a makeshift water canon. A helicopter hovered over head.
I’m not positive about chronology exactly but it was either before or after this first attempt to enter the meeting that we identified a Klansman in the protest zone. He had a barbed wire Texas outline with a Confederate flag tattooed on his arm and had been seen earlier driving by yelling “white power.” One ARA member confronted him while the rest of the ARA bloc surrounded him. He acted dumb, like he didn’t know what we were talking about. When asked about his tattoo, he replied “I’m just tryin’ to represent me.” The cops noticed the commotion and came to remove him, as well as our guy who confronted him, barring him from returning to the rally after a desperate attempt to pin a crime on him. The communists with the Progressive Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC) who helped organize the anti-Klan rally tried desperately to return attention to their weak speeches and trite chants, as they did every time a confrontation took place that drew attention away from them.
Soon after, we made a second attempt to enter the meeting. We made it all the way to the Klan checkpoint before we were turned away, this time with batons drawn and tasers pointed at us. We linked arms to prevent further arrests as we moved back. Once in the alley again, as the cops calmed down some, we broke out dancing to taunt the cops. We retuned to the protest zone once more. Soon after, the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) arrived.
A Klan family had moved into the protest zone from the rear; 4-5 adult males, 2-3 adult females, and about 6 kids from ages 3-7. Because of the children, we did not make a physical advance against them, but rather made a line to keep them from coming in any more and confronted them verbally, telling the kids not to listen to their parents. They moved around the side of the protest area towards the alley, and we moved with them, continuing our verbal attack. On the side of the protest zone, some of the men lagged behind the others and the Panthers ran to block their advance toward the community center. The cops pushed the Panthers back into the protest zone and a stand off between the cops and the Panthers and ARA ensued. A black man began yelling “Black Power!” repeatedly at a black cop, often acting like he was going to physically attack the cop if he weren’t being restrained. ARA people along with others began chastising the cops, especially the black one, for defending racism. At one point, one ARA kid said something along the lines of “How are you going to go home to your family and tell them you made your paycheck defending a bunch of racist scum that would lynch your wife and kids if they got the chance?” I heard later that this black cop and a white cop with him both began crying and had to leave. Again, PWOC tried desperately to return the attention to them.
Quanell X of the NBPP began speaking on the PWOC sound system about the need to take the streets to confront the Klan directly. He said we should spread out and go different directions so the cops couldn’t follow very easily. Then the asshole commies pulled the plug on him. When they came back on, they again urged people to stay peaceful inside the protest pen like sheep. They said people were free to do what ever they wished as long as it didn’t threaten the people inside the net (“What if I get caught?” “Fuck that! You’re already caught! What if you get free?”) and that they were “with us in spirit.” The truth is that they had sold ARA out to the cops before we even arrived and were now literally silencing those who threatened their monopoly on the event.
The Panthers moved to the back corner of the protest pen and a little ways into the street before the cops blocked them, with ARA and a number of black youth behind the NBPP. Quanell X negotiated with the cops for a while, insisting that since the cops didn’t need a permit to block streets for the Klan, we didn’t need a permit to march. After 10 minutes of negotiations, the Panthers and maybe one or two dozen others began jogging down the street away from the Community Center. Two black youth took off across the protest zone and out the other way, and most of the ARA bloc and some others followed. Moving in a swift tight bloc, the cops were unable to react immediately as we marched the residential streets behind the community center, dismantling some police roadblocks, and met up with the Panthers and their group. The helicopter soon showed up to report our movements to the cops on the ground.
Realizing that the police were slowly boxing us in, myself and about a dozen others broke off from the main group to avoid arrest. The rest of this paragraph is a second hand account. The cops trapped the bloc in an intersection, threatening arrest for blocking a road. When the bloc moved into a yard, the cops threatened arrest for trespassing before the home owner came out and told the cops the protesters were allowed to be there. I believe two arrests were made around this time anyway.
From our vantage point down the street, it looked like the bloc was trapped and it was just a matter of time before they were all arrested, even though the cops insisted that people could come and go by simply walking around the block. We finally determined this was true and no mass arrest was imminent. To get to the next block, though, we had to pass through a yard, which the owners gave us permission to do, saying their house was a “peace and love house.” We rejoined the bloc and moved to the end of the street where the Panthers were and the police had set up a line between us and the parking lot with the Klan bus.
After cooling in the shade of some supportive resident’s yard, we received a report that 4 Klansmen had entered the Café on Main Street that had been giving free water to protestors and displaying anti-Klan signs earlier. We moved quickly to confront these racist scum. The ARA bloc took off down the street, through the “peace and love” yard and through a field at a full run. It was a glorious sight, all of us running, with our black and red flag flying high. The cops were again caught off guard and were unable to follow us for a while.
We got to the café and four Klansmen came out and a verbal confrontation and stand off ensued because we didn’t want a physical confrontation inside the café. When the owner urged the Klansmen back in and closed the doors, several black youth entered the café briefly before being pushed out. The manager locked the doors, even though several ARA people were still inside. The ARA people made it out a side door about the time the cops showed up. The cops said the manager closed the café, even though the Klansmen were still inside, and that if we didn’t get off the property and past the trees, we would be arrested. The cops pushed us back to the tree line with tasers and batons out and we began chanting the two most popular chants of the day: “Cops and Klan go hand in hand” and “F-U-C-K K-K-K.” The cops began pushing us back toward the protest zone. We were retreating when the cops made two more arrests of people walking on the sidewalk, charging them with obstructing a passageway.
At this point, any cohesion left in our group broke down. Some people were going to the protest zone, some were returning to the street behind the bus parking lot where the Panthers had remained, some were going back to cars to leave. There was very little communication or coordination happening. I was heading toward the protest zone when I realized my buddy had gone across the parking lot toward the Panther position. I started moving across the parking lot, hoping to get through before the cops that were moving through perpendicular to my path intercepted me. I didn’t move soon enough or fast enough, however, and I found myself face to face, alone, with an asshole cop in full SWAT gear, demanding to know where I was going. “My ride is over here” I said pointing towards the group in the field on the way to the Panthers. “Your car is over here? I don’t believe any one was allowed to park over here,” he responded sternly. “You need to return to the protest zone.” “No, not my car. My friend who drove me is over here and I need to get him so we can leave.” I was scared shitless, fearing I was about to be beaten and/or arrested without any witnesses. “Well if I don’t see you and your friend immediately get in a car and leave, there’s going to be trouble,” and he moved on. A sense of relief washed over me and I ran to get my buddy. “I’m not comfortable anymore. It’s not safe. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I told my buddy and she agreed.
We returned to our vehicle and then rendezvoused with the whole ARA group a few blocks away to make sure no one was left behind. While we were doing a final head count before leaving, a police cruiser pulled up and two cops got out, again threatening arrest if we didn’t leave. We did, and quickly.
While we were unable to stop or significantly disrupt the Klan meeting, I would consider this ARA action a success. The state made it very apparent to what lengths they will go to defend racism. Usually the type of police presence we saw is used only to squash free speech (i.e. Seattle 1999, Miami 2003, etc.) but when it’s the Klan or the Aryan Nations or such groups, free speech is the justification for such force.
Also, we made it expensive, inconvenient, and frustrating for Tomball to host the Klan rally, making it very unlikely that they will do so again any time soon. Also, the next place that considers hosting a racist group will know that it will be very expensive to do so, a disincentive to hosting such groups. After all, these racist groups couldn’t meet anywhere in public with out the full force of the state defending them.
We offered a liberating alternative to being locked up in a protest pen with boring chants. The large number of people that joined us and the Panthers on our breakaway marches showed that not every one is looking for a passive, polite opposition, and many recognize the need for higher confrontation with groups like the KKK.
Finally, we demonstrated that a group of people working together can in fact out smart and out maneuver the police.
