04/09/11

Today we got together with from girls from Ann’s REDES group who volunteered to help us prime the wall we’ll be painting on Saturday. And since it was six young girls and three white girls, we had to deal with a constant barrage of crude men all afternoon. At one point a pickup truck with four young men pulled up next to us just to ogle. Ann told them to leave but they didn’t. I told them that if they didn’t leave I’d throw paint at their car. They just laughed. So I threw paint at their car. Not quite far enough to hit it, but close enough to make their eyes widen and make them stop laughing. They yelled at me as they drove away. Another truck turned around to drive veeeeeery slowly by us a total of three times.
When we were about halfway through painting, a men’s soccer game started on the inside of the wall we were painting. Some of them were harassing us and some of the girls, emboldened by Ann and me, yelled back at them. Then, as we were standing there painting, a small rock that someone had thrown hit Ann’s sunglasses. Another one landed next to me a little while later. I was annoyed but there was nothing we could do, there were at least 100 guys inside the stadium and who knows which one threw it. I was glad that Ann wasn’t hurt, but I thought that maybe if she had been nicked by it and had started to bleed, then I could have called the police chief on her personal cell phone and raised hell. It wasn’t until hours later that night that I realized, today guys threw rocks at us and we just shrugged it off, like boys will be boys. And not because it’s okay, but just because we don’t expect anything better from them. That’s pretty messed up.