Diary of a jail bird
by Sherry Hutchison
Stop the Occupation! Bring the Iowa Guard Home
The weekend of Nov. 15-16, 2002 started with a conference on Saturday at the Drake Olmsted Center, hosted by the Drake chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Those who planned to do civil disobedience the next day at the army National Guard headquarters in Johnston attended a nonviolence training session in the afternoon.
Crossing the Line
Wendy Vasquez and I were among the ten people who planned to cross the line — a red line spray-painted on the grass on the grassy knoll opposite the entrance to the National Guard base.
It was reassuring to see Meeting folks with the meeting’s banner which says, “Peace Is the Answer.”
Carla Dawson, who hadn’t planned to cross the line, had been arrested even before I arrived, for stepping over it to help someone else. Several people made statements, and the Raging Grannies, from Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, sang twice. As Wendy read the statement prepared by the group the day before, she was interrupted by the news that Jane Magers was being arrested, also unexpectedly, while trying to get out of the way of a TV camera.
Carla was supposed to be Wendy’s support person; Jane was supposed to be mine. This left both of us without support persons, to whom you give the stuff you don’t want with you at the jail, and who expect to pick you up at the jail after your release.
The group held hands as we started forward toward the Polk County Sheriff’s deputies, dressed in riot gear (probably to look scary; they’d been told we were nonviolent). They took us by our arms, two of them to each of us, handcuffed us with our hands behind our backs, and led us across the road toward the two paddy wagons. Our nonviolence trainers had advised us to interact with our captors, and we did. They were polite, though obviously eager to arrest as many as possible!
Also, charges against Chris Gaunt, a protester from Grinnell who went limp seem to me to have been exaggerated. She was charged with resisting arrest (for going limp) and assault. The latter charge was added after she’d been thrown into the paddy wagon face down into a narrow space. When she complained that her wrists were hurting, she was advised to wiggle out of there. She could do that only by squirming, and unintentionally touched a trooper with a foot. (She later was my cell-mate in the Polk County jail.)
The ride to the jail was with our hands in handcuffs behind us; no seatbelts. However, the sheriff’s deputies said they’d take the interstate and freeway, to avoid the stops and starts from the shorter route.
After we arrived there, the jailers brought bins for our clothing and all our personal items. We had to put on jail underwear, orange jump suits, socks and slippers. The men were in one glass-enclosed holding cell, the women in another.
A young woman, Desiree, already was in the holding cell. We heard her story; she’d had a marijuana cigarette when she was arrested, but was charged with intent to manufacture and deliver drugs. She was going to plead guilty only to possession, not the additional charges.
Being held in jail was a change of expectations. The people arrested in March for a similar protest had been released on their own recognizance after their information was taken.
The jailers brought supper — a carton of milk, a ham and cheese sandwich on sliced white bread, and Twinkies. Two by two, most of us were told to pick up a blanket and a mat, and were led to a cell, where we were locked in for the night. The only thing that kept us from complete sensory deprivation was having a cell-mate to talk with. Mine, Chris Gaunt, had crossed the line at the School of the Americas and had served time in a county jail in Georgia. She said those jailers were contemptuous of everybody they held. At least, she said, here they were polite.
That mat between me and the bunk didn’t provide much padding; I never could get into a position comfortable enough to go to sleep.
In the morning, they brought us a carton of orange juice and one of milk, and some packaged sweet rolls. The most disorienting thing about being there was not knowing what time it was. I asked the jailer who led us to the courtroom what time it was; it was a little before 9 a.m. We were met there by Kathy, an attorney friend of our lawyer, Sally Frank. Kathy told us what we could expect and what our options were. We each saw the judge, pleaded not guilty, and were led back to our cells.
After a long morning, it was time for lunch — a repeat of last night’s supper menu. A person could get malnutrition while gaining weight on jail food. It was late afternoon when a jailer came and told me to bring my mat and blanket; I was being bailed out! (Owen & D.J. Newlin were my benefactors.) The bail money had been brought that morning; it took all day for the jail & court people to labor through their paperwork.
Wendy and Carla had spent the night in the holding tank with Desiree and another young woman who was brought in. She’d been arrested on a warrant for missing her court date; she’d been giving birth to a baby at that time.
It was a relief to be able to change back into my own clothes, get my wrist watch back, and to be able to discipline my hair again with the clips and hair band I’d had to take off — and to see cars driven by friends ready to take us all back to our cars or home. I was thankful merely to feel like a human being again.
