Several years ago I was walking alone to my car which I had left in a parking structure in downtown Ann Arbor, MI. It was late – I had waited until after the structure closed to get my car, feeling too cheap to pay the cost of parking. As I walked down the ramp a man approached me from behind and to the side, he put a knife at my throat and demanded I give him my bag.
As I started to hand it over I remembered that I was “on call” and had the emergency phone in my purse. Michigan Peace Team (see the website @ http://www.michiganpeaceteam.org/ or our new blog @ http://michiganpeaceteam.wordpress.com/) had a team on the ground in Palestine. One way we offer support to those there is to provide an emergency phone that is answered as close to 24/7 as is humanly and technologically possible. The team that summer was in Gaza and many of them were new to peace team work – making this “life line” even more important than usual.
I said to the man, “you have all the power here, I’m not going to argue with a knife at my throat – I will give you my money, which is what I assume you want. I need the phone in this bag. It is an emergency phone and I’m on call. People’s safety depends on that phone getting answered and on the person answering it knowing what to do.”
He did not respond, but my not immediately giving in did not seem to escalate him either.
I continued. “I am going to reach in my purse… you can watch me or you can reach in and get out the phone. Then I can give you the bag.”
As I reached in I remembered this particular bag was a gift from my first trip to Palestine. It was dirty, the zipper broken, worth nothing monetarily – but a great deal sentimentally. “Actually,” I heard myself saying, “you’re likely just gonna toss this bag in the garbage somewhere. But it means a lot to me. I’ll just take the money out and give it to you. I don’t have any credit cards, and you and I know I’ll cancel the debt card immediately so the only thing in here that will be of use to you is the cash. I’m reaching in to get it.”
I did – and gave him all the cash I had. He left. I was unharmed and had the phone, the bag… all but the cash.
You might say I was still a victim… I was robbed. But I didn’t feel victimized. I made a decision about what was important to me – what I would give and what I would risk not giving – and I stuck to that.
I know I was lucky. I know it could have ended differently.
But to me – it was empowering and a reminder we sometimes have more power and more choices in how we react than we might first think. I think somewhere in my spirit I knew I could do this because on earlier encounter…
In November of 2001 I traveled to Columbus, Georgia as I had for several previous years to take part in the annual demonstration at the gates of Ft. Benning to call for the closing of the US Army School of Americas/ Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (check out http://www.soaw.org/.)
I had planned to help out with nonviolence training. For a variety of reasons I ended up finishing up early.
Some friends were supposed to meet me later, but since I finished so early I decided to walk over and meet them. I left the theater where the training was being held – the street was well lit with several restaurants and lots of people walking around, many who were in town for the demonstration the next day. I turned the corner and walked a little way before realizing the street I had turned on to was not so well lit. In fact, it was fairly dark. It was also not so full of people. In fact, it was fairly deserted. And I realized I only mostly knew where I was going.
As I continued to walk 2 men approached me. They looked to be in their early 20s, average height (but since I’m 4’11” and was scared they seemed pretty tall.) They weren’t super muscular, but defiantly in shape. They stepped in front of me, not quite blocking my path completely, but making it impossible to get past them without pushing them out of the way.
They started talking to each other about me:
“Oh, here is one of those people who come to town to tell us what bad Americans we are.”
“Yep, we don’t like people like that in our town do we?”
“No, actually she’s probably here to tell us how bad America is – let’s show her what happens to people like that in our town.”
They started to poke at me in the shoulder as they said it. I was wondering how I was gonna get out of the situation when I heard myself talking. I remember thinking “hmm… I wonder what I’m gonna say”
And what I heard myself say was:
“Oh thank god you guys are here. I grew up with a lot of people who joined the military and they all think my politics are screwed too. They are always teasing me about it – just like you are now, so it’s sort of comforting. But, my friends are expecting me any minute and I just realized how stupid it was for me to walk over to get them on dark streets alone. And I hate to play in to all the stereotypes you have about women being helpless, and needing men – but I am gonna have to. I’m wondering if you might be willing to escort me to meet my friends.”
Suddenly things changed. After a few glances over my head back and forth that seemed to imply that the guys clearly thought I was the dumbest person ever to walk the earth, the voice of the 2 guys seemed to change, become a bit kinder as they said “Of course mame, we’d be happy to, we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you when you were here in our town.”
They then walked me over to the hotel where my friends were, “chatting” with me the whole time.
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