Photo by Trang Angels

By Sarah D. Park 

I’m a 5’2″ slightly-built Korean woman. I’m often mistaken for being a student despite being 30 years old. Because of my petite size and by virtue of being a woman, looking out for my safety has become second nature to me. I also grew up knowing that my body is wired to avoid harm, with innate survival instincts that can cause me to flinch, run, or fight back before I can think to react. So when I heard that white supremacist and alt-right groups known for their violence would be coming to my neighborhood to throw a rally, it never occurred to me to be anywhere near that action.

It was a strange process: me deciding that I was okay with it, and then taking the necessary actions to expose my body to potentially violent elements.

I attended a nonviolent training to get a better idea as to what I was walking into.

We were taught that nonviolent action is a strategic method of creating the conditions to expose injustice: whether it be the complicity of the police in not protecting nonviolent protestors or the moral wrong of the white supremacists should they beat people who refuse to fight back.

I learned how to be arrested, what to say, what to expect. I was instructed to take a photo of myself and put it on Facebook so that people would know what I was wearing should I go missing. I put the phone number of a lawyer’s association in Sharpie on my arm.

Finally, we were advised that it was better to experience people screaming in our faces and aggressively pushing us first in safety than to have our first time experiencing such brutality be out there on the street. We grouped off and I then proceeded to curse as loudly as I could into the face of my friend. I linked arms with another, and that same friend then practiced trying to break our bonds, ramming her body’s weight against mine as I struggled to stay standing.

I was overwhelmed. My brain was frantically trying to remind itself that I was safe, but the adrenaline rushing through my entire body was so intense, I was shaking and near tears.

This did not bode well for my plans to protest.

Protesting wasn’t the only way to participate. My church was one of the main organizers of the counter protest, and our building would also be the site of a safe house for people to find shelter and lament. It made sense that I would help support that specific endeavor – out of harm’s way but still participating in the movement of my church the best way I can.

But was it the best way I could?

I have learned that there is a visibility to my body in these spaces. Despite a general consensus on the importance of working across races, I have rarely seen activist work that is truly multi-racial and moving from and toward an analysis that appreciates how we are all truly connected to one another. So imagine seeing little ol’ me in a sea of Black and white people being attacked by a white supremacist. Or with handcuffs behind my back, looking like someone who doesn’t quite belong in such a setting. I’ve gotten used to my privilege of seeming non-threatening, which has gotten me access to spaces without causing alarm and out of a number of traffic tickets. What a contradiction that would cause — that someone who looks like me would be there in solidarity with people who look like them. Like black people. Like people who don’t look like my family. I didn’t realize I could use that same privilege to create a contradiction — that someone who looked like me could be threatening to the very power structures that devalue black bodies as well as my own.

At the end of the day, I chose to protest because I love my friend who is Black, his wife who is Korean, and their daughter who bears the legacies of their two narratives. If their bodies have been and will be subjected to this treatment, and I had a choice to stand next to them in that treatment, then the answer is yes.

I called up my mom and asked her to pray for the protestors — my cousin advised me that the prayers of mothers are powerful — leaving out the detail that I would be one of them. I hoped to stand in the gap. I hoped to put my body between my friends and someone who would hurt them. I hoped to take on wounds that would’ve been meant for them.

Truth be told, I was afraid — of the hatred I would see in people’s eyes, of seeing a side of humanity I’ve frankly never been exposed to, of seeing things I could not unsee. But it was the first time I was not afraid of becoming physically hurt. Because I look at my Black friend and I see me. I may not take up a lot of space, but I take up space. There is more power to my small body after all.

Sarah D. Park is a freelance writer and editor, currently working in the Bay Area with a nod to her LA and OC roots. For more on how the protest turned out, see bysarahpark.wordpress.com.