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Daneca turns and gives him a look. I can tell he surprised her, too.
“Well, it is,” he says. “One way or another.”
I guess he’s right. Either Proposition 2 will get voted down and workers will see that organizing works and do a whole lot more of it, or Proposition 2 will pass and other states will fall all over themselves to try the same trick.
“Changing is what people do when they have no options left,” Lila says cryptically.
I try to catch her eye, but she’s too busy watching the crowd.
We walk like that for a few more blocks and start to see signs.
WE ARE NOT A CURSE, one reads.
I wonder what kind of slogans they had at the press conference Mom attended.
A group of kids are sitting on the steps of a Fidelity bank. One throws a beer in the direction of the protesters. It shatters, glass and foam making everyone near its impact start shouting.
A man whose huge beard is long enough to overlap his T-shirt jumps up onto the hood of a car and yells louder than the others, “Down with Proposition 2! Flatten Patton!”
A policeman standing in front of a bodega picks up his radio and starts speaking rapidly into it. He looks flustered.
“I think the park is this way,” Daneca says, pointing from the screen of her phone to a side street. I’m not sure she noticed anything else.
A couple more blocks and the crowd becomes so thick that it’s more like a tide we have been swept up in. We’re a vein rushing blood toward the heart, a furnace of sun-warmed body heat, a herd barreling toward a cliff.
I see more and more signs.
HANDS OFF OUR RIGHTS.
TESTING EVERYONE/TRUSTING NO ONE.
THIS ISN’T WORKING.
“How many people are they estimating will come out for this?” Lila shouts.
“Twenty, maybe fifty thousand maximum,” Daneca shouts back.
Lila looks toward where our street intersects with Broad, where the main protest is. We can’t see too far, but the wall of noise—of slogans being screamed through bullhorns, of drums, of sirens—is almost deafening. “I think that number was off—way off.”
As we get closer, it’s easy to see why. I no longer have to imagine what signs Patton’s supporters might have been waving around. They are out in force, lining the street on either side of the march.
MURDERERS AND MANIPULATORS OUT OF MY STATE, says one sign.
NO MORE HEEBEEGEEBIES.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO HIDE?
And finally, simply, GOTCHA, with a circle drawn to look like the crosshairs of a gun. That one is held up by an old woman with frizzy red hair and bright pink lipstick.
She’s standing on the steps of city hall, the golden dome glowing above her.
As I scan the crowd of Proposition 2 supporters, I see a familiar face far in the back. Janssen’s mistress. She’s got her dark hair pulled into a ponytail, sunglasses on top of her head. No poodles with her today.
I slow down, trying to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.
She’s taking bills from someone, both of them standing close to the glass window of a restaurant.
The crowd keeps moving around me, pushing me along with it. Someone’s shoulder bangs into my arm. A guy a little older than me, snapping pictures.
