Almost a year ago to the day, I was jailed for a political protest for the first time in my life. I was arrested, transported and held for approximately six hours with six fellow protestors in one of the cells of a quiet, empty police station in a wealthy D.C. neighborhood. Throughout the process interacting with the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, and the D.C. Metro police, I was treated with courtesy and respect.
As far as arrests go, a political protest in D.C. is about as low stakes as it gets. The only mitigating factor was the proximity of our action to the White House, which increases legal consequence for protestors. Nevertheless, a small group of white and white-passing women with no criminal records, undertaking advance communication with the police over an intended political protest in the nation’s capital, expect and maintain a boatload of privilege throughout such an endeavor.
I was treated with dignity throughout most of the process, and yet my experience demonstrated something I, naively, did not anticipate.
I’m fat — and before you protest at my use of that word, you should note that I, like many fat people, prefer it as a neutral descriptor as opposed to patronizing euphemisms like curvy or hyper-medicalized, dehumanizing terms like ob*se.
I’ve been fat my entire life — and on the Fat Spectrum , a tool created by fat people to more precisely talk about the fat experience, I’ve always fluctuated between Mid-Fat (sizes 20-24) and Super-Fat (sizes 26-32).
What I experienced during my arrest showed in stark relief the deep and extreme danger fat people are in when they are arrested. There are police protocols and infrastructure in place that put our lives at risk — and my experience, which I will relay in detail, gave me new eyes with which to see the murder of Eric Garner and the wrongful deaths of so many others. His death happened in the way it did because of both his race and his body. The racial bias present in our culture and criminal justice system enabled a police officer to feel justified and protected while acting outside of the law to physically punish and dominate Mr. Garner, to the point of death; the weight bias present in our culture and criminal justice system implicitly blamed Mr. Garner’s body and accompanying asthma for his own death at the hands of the police. No person of any race should be put in a chokehold and ignored as they plead for breath, and no person of size should ever be restrained in prone position, which increases chance of death via positional asphyxia for those with a higher body mass index. [i]
During the last half of September 2018, I watched with the rest of the nation as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate about her assault, perpetrated by Supreme Court Justice then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I watched her soft-spoken courage in the midst of a media nightmare, and I watched his indignant, barely contained rage as he rudely scoffed at every question, his entitlement — his ownership of the seat he had not yet been awarded practically oozing out of his pores.
Like so many other women in the U.S. who are survivors of sexual assault, I immediately saw — no — physically felt myself within her testimony. Panic, shame, rage. I felt paralyzed as I watched her tear her wounds back open out of devotion to country, and then be thanked and dismissed by the old white men in power to whom women’s pain means less than nothing.
I couldn’t take it, and I saved my Facebook friends one more rant by jumping in the car and driving down from New York to D.C. to join up with an activist group that was organizing a direct protest action. There were marches planned by other groups I had been involved with, but this time I knew a march alone wasn’t going to be enough to soothe my anger and sadness. I needed more catharsis than a caustic homemade sign could give. I needed to do *something* in order to not feel so damn powerless and alone in my dissent.
By The People — an impeachment-focused group — was the community I found. The action we planned and executed involved a small rally in front of the White House, and then a group of core protestors, including myself, using our bodies to block the Eisenhower Building entrance to the White House. This entrance is the most commonly used for daily White House business, so the goal was to interrupt the flow of Senators and staffers and dignitaries, even for a few minutes, to signal our protest of the Trump administration’s utter disrespect of and disregard for women. BTP organized in a compassionate, people-first way, coaching us on what to expect during our arrest and teaching us the stoplight signal system that allows any participant to cease their involvement at any point during an action, based on their evolving personal needs. I felt anxious, but prepared and determined.
The rally went as planned. I was one of several speakers, relaying briefly my own experience with sexual assault and what it meant to me to be there that day. We collectively marched our banner down the street and around the corner, and then the seven of us continuing the action sat down and locked arms to block the entrance while the rest chanted and cheered us on from across 17th St.
The message on our banner and on our lips: We do not consent.
Tracy protesting in front of the Eisenhower Building entrance to the White House (partial, far right).
As we were on White House grounds, we were arrested by the Secret Service Uniformed Division. My two arresting officers asked me to get to my feet (for our collective safety, the seven core protestors had committed to cooperate with officer instructions once the process of arrest had begun), and then pulled me to the side and began patting me down. At this point, I asked them to cuff me with my hands in front of my body, as my wrists do not comfortably or easily cross behind my back. I was politely refused on the grounds of protocol. Off came the shoelaces and on went the misleadingly harmless-looking plastic zip tie cuffs reserved for protesters and underage drinkers in Adams Morgan.
I was immediately in pain — not unbearable — but my wrists forcefully strained against the cutting plastic, twisting backwards farther than would be comfortable for anyone. It’s important to remember that as a size 26, the circumference my wrists have to travel in order to meet behind my rounded body is simply a farther reach than that for a normative body. My body is larger than average, but my arms are not longer — surely it makes sense to those that don’t live in my body why it would be more taxing and likely more painful for a fat person to be cuffed behind their back.
Once I was put into the wagon, my pain level got significantly worse. The police van had a low bench, about a foot off the floor, on each side, and the van was bisected by a grate front to back to separate the prisoners on each side. I was instructed to step up into the van and sit down on the bench, and upon doing so I realized two things: 1) my shoulders now felt close to dislocation 2) my breathing felt suddenly very shallow. My wrists against the wall of the van pitched my body forward, and my chest met the tops of my knees thanks to that low bench.
My fellow protestors started nervously chatting and singing protest songs to keep each other calm, and all I could do was disengage and quietly focus on my breathing.
I’m an opera singer and have spent more than 15 years of my life in private technical training, post graduate work, and professional apprenticeships studying how breath works and how it can be regulated for the purposes of efficient, resonant, bel canto style singing. I essentially have a Master’s degree in artful respiratory function.
When I folded myself down onto that bench seat with my arms behind my back, I instantly felt the unease of shallow breath. I wasn’t sure if it was possibly the pain and anxiety triggering panic — but I suspected that the position I was in was impacting my ability to fully inflate my lungs. I did the only thing I knew to do and began working through breathing exercises that I would teach in any voice lesson, which by design would keep my breath from getting any “higher”, or more shallow, than it already was. Quietly exhaling on the “s” consonant in a slow count: 5-4-3-2-1 *cool inhale through my nose and mouth with the back of my tongue raised* 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. **repeat**.
The exercises were helping to keep the pain on the edges of my vision, but they were not solving what I realized was becoming a problem: I was not getting enough air. I used all of my concentration to keep the numbers steady and to stay calm.
We were held on site in the van for a half hour, and then they started the engine and we were off to be booked into a police station across the Capital. All told we were in that van for about an hour, and by the end of the winding ride through the endless labyrinth of Washington DC, my breathing had become noticeably ragged. I could only take very short, shallow breaths, pushing them out again as quickly as I could in order to take more air in. The women with me were very concerned and repeatedly asked if they should yell through the divide for help.
According to a 2011 study by Coventry University, “seated restraint positions with the person leant forward may increase the risk of harm or death during prolonged restraint. The risk will be further increased where the person exhibits higher BMI.” This study found that a fat person, or anyone with large waist girth, restrained in a seated position, leaning forward or with their chest near their knees, experiences significant reduction in lung function, and is at a much higher risk of positional asphyxia. In other words: fat people can easily die from asphyxiation when restrained in a leaning forward seated position. [ii]
I had not read this study or the other research on positional asphyxia at the time, but I knew that I couldn’t get enough air and that it was very nearly an emergency situation. Right when my panic was reaching its peak and I was gathering courage to scream my head off for a medic (this is a tip off for how scared I was, as seeking medical attention from a healthcare professional unfamiliar to me is not something I do casually…I don’t know if you know this, but fat people do not always receive compassionate, holistic care from doctors), we pulled into the gated garage of the police station. My eyes watered from the gratitude of impending relief.
They parked the van next to the loading dock in the garage, and the officers in the front of the van opened the divider to inform us that we would be taken inside, one by one, to be booked. My new friends frantically told them I was having trouble breathing and needed assistance. The officers called out to me, concerned: Was I okay? Was I claustrophobic? Did I need medical attention? No. No. I’m not sure.
They opened the back doors of the van and said I needed to be honest if I needed medical attention. I told them I didn’t think I did — “I’m not claustrophobic and I don’t believe I’m having a panic attack — I think the cuffs and the way I’m sitting are keeping me from being able to breathe”. They didn’t have a response to that or really seem to believe me, but one officer stepped up and in to unbuckle my seatbelt, asking me to stand up and exit the van after her.
Now for the especially fun part: while 6 protestors and at least 5 police officers watched, I struggled to stand up, and failed. I am not embarrassed to be fat — I believe that the human body comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes and with varying abilities, and that there should be no shame or stigma attached to what form your body takes. But I admit that a situation of this kind, where a group of people are hyper-focused on and befuddled by how my body is differently abled than a normative bodied person, is a personal nightmare. I wouldn’t wish the humiliation of that experience on my worst enemy. Without the use of my hands to push myself off the bench, I couldn’t stand up. The space was too small to leverage the position of my legs to rise. After a minute of struggling, I told them I couldn’t get up and that they would need to remove the cuffs in order for me to do so. Again I was refused on the grounds of protocol. I don’t know if any of those officers considered the unnecessary cruelty of that moment, but they did not let it show.
I struggled for another full minute, distress on my face and in my demeanor, sweat beading on my forehead and running into my eyes and my shoulder feeling like it might pop out of its socket and hit the moon. As I threw every ounce of panicked strength that I had into getting out of this disturbing solo performance of paralysis — I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t see and I couldn’t feel my damn hands — a force was created by my desire to escape that was so strong that I broke out of the plastic handcuffs. I kid you not. My audience was stunned as I finally stood up and my hands simultaneously swung free in front of me. I laughed and said, “well sorry, they came off anyway.” The women laughed in amazement. The cops did not.
I stepped out of the van and was again cuffed behind my back, this time with actual handcuffs (they must have been scared — despite my still ragged and irregular breathing, there was now proof of my incredible superhuman strength). Two officers led me to a corner of the garage — I was to stay with the female officer, my back to the other women, until my breath recovered. I was instructed again, politely and firmly, that I needed to notify them if I felt I needed medical attention.
It took fifteen minutes until I was able to breathe regularly, and by that time half of the other women had been led inside and booked. My turn came and I was fingerprinted, photographed, and led into the cell with the others, where they made sure I was okay and lovingly acted as a mirror so I could wipe away my smeared winged eyeliner and finally get my sweaty hair out of my face ( pro-tip: if you are planning on getting arrested, plait your hair —they take hair elastics away with all other personal items ). We spent our time together laughing and playing games and talking about our very different lives as teachers and organizers and grad students and performers, and before we knew it, were released with a court date.
One of the organizers from By The People met us with water and snacks outside the jail where she had been waiting (outside of my pain and fear of asphyxiation…truly the most wholesome arrest experience I could possibly imagine). They secured quality legal counsel for all of us, as promised, and all of our charges were ultimately reduced to either a warning or a fine.
All of this to say what I said in the beginning: there is police protocol in place which endangers the lives of fat people. I was treated as gently as anyone could possibly be when entering the criminal justice system, but that gentleness, which so many prisoners are not so freely given, still could not protect me from protocol and infrastructure which does harm to fat people by not considering their unique experience in custody. My seatbelt was buckled — a safety precaution so basic as to make the wrongful death of Freddie Gray in neighboring Baltimore still seem too shocking and cruel to even fathom. My need for medical attention was monitored — a Constitutional right never fulfilled for Sandra Bland, who ended up hanging in her jail cell in Texas three days after a traffic stop. The recognition of my humanity during this process did not extend so far as to accommodate my comfort and safety as a fat person — but it wasn’t recognized at all for Philando Castile, who was shot in his car while calmly complying with officer instructions.
My white privilege, which deeply impacted how I was treated during my arrest, did not protect me from the fatmisia that is built into police systems. For those entering the criminal justice system without white privilege, the danger they face is dramatically compounded. I tremble for the fat BIPoC who experience the trauma of threatened asphyxiation, and who are not treated nearly so gently or compassionately as I was. Considering that we know that there is a large intersection between fatness, lower socioeconomic class, and interaction with the criminal justice system, it amazes and disgusts me that so many people would face these unnecessary dangers during arrest.
Police departments nationwide need to make simple changes to arrest protocol and infrastructure in order to protect the lives of the fat people that they take into custody.
No matter what this fatphobic culture has to say about fatness, we deserve to breathe. When our bodies are not considered and accommodated, we suffer unduly.
In the name of our safety, human dignity, and Constitutional rights, these systemic changes must be made.
[i] O'Halloran, R.L., & Frank, J.G. (2000) 'Asphyxial Death During Prone Restraint Revisited: A Report of 21 Cases.' The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. 21(1) 39–52.
[ii] Parkes, J., Thake, D., Price, M. (2011) ‘Effect Of Seated Restraint And Body Size On Lung Function.’ Medicine Science And The Law. 51(3) 177-81