It was cold and windy that Friday afternoon when my family went about looking for a place to set up our tent home at Nathan Philip Square.  In fact the temperature had fallen well below zero, and Andraggon, and I finally decided to pitch our tent home near the corner of the side of the building.  It was the only place that we found that allowed us to be close enough to the front of the building, yet at the same time be able to take shelter from the strong and cold wind that was sending us, and other people nearby, shivering and running for cover. 

About thirty minutes later, we had our tent home set up, and ready for us to begin living on this government property.  We were exercising our civil rights as residents of Toronto, to stage an act of civil disobedience in order to protest a life of abuse that my family had been put through for all of our lives. 

Once our tent was pitched, we started to set up our home inside it.  We inflated our bed with the pump that came with it, lit our propane two burner stove to get some heat inside that tent, opened up our two folding chairs, rolled out our blankets, and got ready to get through that frozen night that was waiting for us.  We picked one of the worse nights of that winter to live in a tent next to a government building in the heart of downtown Toronto.  No matter what we did to try to keep warm that evening, it was just not enough.  It was probably the coldest night of the year so far, and from what we were hearing on the walk-man radios that I, and my daughter had, it was going to get even colder.  Andraggon went across the road to use the pay phone to call some of the Media to let them know that what was happening – that we were a family who had pitched a tent home on the grounds of New City Hall as an act of civil disobedient, and that we intended to stay there and stage a family protest for as long as we were able to.

When he returned about twenty minutes later, he was frozen and irritated.  The phone card that he was using had given him a really hard time: he complained about how he had to dial seven numbers then another 1-800 number before he was finally allowed to dial the ten local numbers that he was trying to reach in the first place.  And to make matters worse, he had spent about half hour browsing through dozens of stores in the area trying to find a payphone card to buy.  The one he had finally managed to get his hands on was the same one that had driven him up the wall, as he stood inside that cold telephone booth across the street from where we had pitched our tent.  That was a $10 purchase that he really regretted having to have made.  He complained about how he should have purchased the regular phone card before we had arrived on this site; and that had he been able to do so, he would have been able to just stick that card inside the phone slot and just dial his ten local digits to place his calls to the different Media he tried to reach earlier.  It was not his fault, or anyone else’s, that we ended up with this phone card that you had to dial about 25 digits before you were able to make a local call.  On our way there, we had tried to purchase the right local phone card, after the Samaritan who brought us gave my husband that $20.  He and my husband had even driven around the block downtown looking to buy such a card.  But they could not find a store that sold even one regular Bell Canada phone card.  That was not a good omen; nor was starting our protest on one of the coldest days of the year.  But that was the lot that fate had dealt us, and I knew that it was important to just go with the flow.

There was no way that my family was going to even survive one night living in that tent, and it did not take my husband, or the rest of the family, long to also wonder if we were going to be able to make it through that thirty something below winter night.  We sat inside our double layer tent, which meant that it was a bigger tent placed over another tent.  When we purchased it from that army store at the corner of Jarvis and Queen, one of the things that we liked about it was that it was a double tent.  We were not able to push the pegs that came with it into the dirt as we were supposed to do once we set it up, because we had pitched our tent on a concrete surface.  But we used different and heavy things that we had, to place them on the bottom of that tent in order to keep it secured to the pavement we had pitched it on.

After about four hours inside that cold tent, my husband and I looked at each other, and wondered how long we were going to be able to keep our family out in this brutal weather that was only going to get worse.  Yet we also knew that we were going to find a way to get through that night, as a family, even if we had to pack on more pairs of thick socks or more sweaters on top of the ones we already had padded our bodies and our children’s bodies with – under the heavy winter coats we each wore that night.  My family was facing a new crisis at the same time that we were dealing with the trauma, of having being evicted only a few hours earlier from our home of seven years.  Our plan to live in a tent home as a homeless family, on the grounds of the government of the city of Toronto, was now in jeopardy even before it got off the ground.  We had prepared long and well for anything that anyone could have done to us, to try to attack our minds or push our will to the limit – by taunts or threats or different types of bullying tactics that the police, security staff, or even the public or politicians were expected to bring against us.

The different attacks that we had survived over the years at the hands of different organizations and institutions and individuals against our minds and hearts and bodies had strengthened us to the point where each of us were now a tower of mental and emotional strength.  We were each a veteran of emotional and mental crisis and traumas, - even our nine year old son - and there was nothing that anyone could do to my rock solid family short of using a gun or some other weapon to try to take our lives.  Yet there was one element that we could not prepared for – not even in a hundred years – and that was the bony chilling force of the winds of Mother Nature in Toronto, in the middle of one of the coldest winter nights that my family had ever faced in all of our lives in Canada.  We were no match for the chilling elements of Nature, and as the minutes and the hours crawled by that freezing night, my cold family became more and more aware of that sobering and shivering fact.

Still, despite of the fact that the weather was definitely against us that evening, this was one family that was not willing to call it quits, and pack up our tent.  We had no place to go, and we were not willing to end up in another homeless shelter again.  We were going to try to hold out until the bitter end.  Neither my husband nor I were going to allow our children to remain in that cold tent if we saw that either of them were starting to develop any kind of frost bite.  Nor were we going to remain in that cold tent if we saw the same things happening to myself or to him.  We were there to take a stance, as a family against all the injustices we had been forced to endure for all those years. But we did not intend to remain out in the cold especially if we saw that any one of us were starting to freeze, or even to shiver from the force of that sub zero weather. 

We were not a family who was willing to freeze to death, in order to make a point about how the life we were living was actually killing us just as surely as this brutally cold weather was ready to do.  For myself, I was prepared to stay out in that tent, and freeze to death if I had to, and I know that my husband would be right there next to me if I took such a stance.  But I was also a mother of two beautiful and courageous and loving children, whose future I was here to make a better and brighter one for both of them.  I was also a God who knew that this was not the night for my family to remain all night in this freezing weather.  Despite the odds against us remaining in that tent throughout the night, however, my daughter and my son and my husband were still ready to try to get through that frozen night as a family.  And I also knew that we would have been able to do so.

But the decision to stay or leave that tent home was not in my hands, nor even my husband’s hand.  That decision was made for us by the law enforcement people who showed up on different occasions that afternoon, and evening, to speak to me, and my husband.  About thirty minutes after we pitched our tent home, two security guards from the building came by to find out what we were up to.  After I inform them about why we were there, and that we intended to stay there to stage our family protest, they told us that we were not allowed to set up any structure on the property, including a tent.  One of then was a woman of African Canadian descent, and another was a Caucasian male.  Both of them informed us that we were allowed to stay on the property, and even sleep there, as other homeless people were doing, but that it was against the law for us to put up any structure that we could use to sleep inside such as a tent.

I could not believe the nerve of these immoral minded people, and the inhumane logic they were giving me.  It was all right for my family to stay on that property, and we could even live there, as long as we did not try to put up any covering that we needed to use to keep us warm while we slept there.  We had the right to stay there, and freeze to death on cold nights such as this one, but we did not have the right to keep ourselves warm, and somewhat safe, while we slept on that government property.  No wonder a number of homeless people have been found frozen to death on the streets of Toronto every, year especially during nights where the weather is below zero.
When Andraggon and I worked those years as nightclub staff downtown, we came across homeless men, and sometimes women, curled up on the sidewalks, or inside the entrance of banks where the ATM machines usually are located. Most of these poor souls would be inside a blanket, but some of the time they did not even have a warm winter coat on their backs as they curled up, on top of air vents above the subway system that ran along Yonge Street, as well as along University Avenue, and spewed out warm air as the trains rush by throughout the day and until about two thirty in the morning.  These human beings were the victims of a Society that cared little about the life or the safety of people who lived, and slept, on Toronto’s street many days and nights of every year.  It was okay for these tragic victims of the Society that lived in to sleep just about anywhere they decide to lay their heads down.  But it was not okay for them to use any kind of structure to try to keep their bodies from freezing to death, while they slept on the streets of Toronto during the cold Canadian winter days and nights.  There is something very perverted and immoral about such a policy, and about such a Society.

For the next four hours my husband and I got involved in at least three discussions with some of the security staff from New City Hall.  They tried to convince us each time that we had to remove our tent home because it was against city by–laws. In return, my husband and I pointed out to them that we had no intention of removing our tent, and that we had the right as residence of this city to keep that tent up where it was.  We had drawn a line on the concrete, so to speak, and we were not prepared to budge one inch – even for these security officers for this property.  Things were tense, and at a standstill.  Something had to give, or rather someone – and that someone was not going to be me, or my husband.  About five p.m. that evening we were paid a visit from a group of officers from the local police department, the 52 divisions.  This was the first time that any Metro police officers had visited us that evening. And they made sure that they made a lasting impression. It was clear to me that these police officers had showed up to put an end to the protest, that my family had began in that tent at the side of that building about four hours earlier. There were about a dozen of them. 

On three different occasions they asked me to remove the tent from that property, on and three different occasions I made it clear to them that we would not take that tent down.  That whole exchange lasted about ten minutes.  During that time I made the point to these officers that what my family was doing, we had a moral right to do, and also a human right to do.  Andraggon made comments to support the argument I was making, but he was the calm and cooperative one in the family that night.  That was something that he had learned to do well over the years, and also something that I would often do when I saw the need to be cool and calm in situations like that.  That was also the behaviour that had kept us safe from being pounced on by the cops during the over ten months that we had lived on the streets of Toronto over twelve years before.

On this freezing cold and windy winter night, however, this God was in no mood to be cooperative or even diplomatic.  I was not afraid of these people who were armed with guns, and who had the weight of the law to back them up.  They had no right to try to force my family off that public property - no matter what legal authority the Justice System gave them to do so.  Though my family was outnumbered and surrounded by these armed and arrogant officers of the law, I was not going to have any of them think for a minute that they could use their authority and their sheer numbers to overpower and subdue me or my family.  I was not going to fight with any of them with my fist or any part of my ailing body, but I was going to use my right as an unchained being, to stand up against them using the strength of my ancient knowledge, and the power of the truth that I spoke through that mountain of higher intelligence that I owned, and no longer hesitate to share with them or with anyone else.

Those officers of the law could not keep this God from speaking her mind, or from speaking out against the wrong way of living that they were a part of.  But they did have the power to subdue me, and that’s exactly what they did that night to me, to my husband, and also to our adult daughter.  After my husband and I refused their order to remove our tent, for the third time, they placed the two of us under arrest.  My husband was the first one who was placed under arrest, after they placed his hands behind his back.  That was the first time in his life that my Andraggon had ever been placed under arrest.  He was then escorted away and placed inside a waiting cruiser.  I was the next person to be arrested, and for the fourth time in my life, I found myself with my hands locked inside this cold pair of handcuff, behind my back. I was then escorted to a waiting cruiser and placed in the back of it.

As I was driven away from that scene, I saw my daughter and my son standing together while one of those officers was speaking to her.  Later on, I discovered that she had also been placed under arrest, though she was not placed in handcuffs.  Our Mahogohney had informed those officers that she was also taking the same stance that her parents had done, about refusing to remove our tent home.  She also made it known to them that she believed in what we were fighting for; and also that she would not take her brother to a shelter for the night as some of them suggested that she did, in order to avoid being arrested and charged also.  When I found out later about the stance that my daughter had taken that night, I was really proud of her, and so was her father when he also got that information.  Our daughter had taken a huge step as an adult, and as a young activist – and we were both very proud of her.

I was worried about what those officers might do to my husband; and when they were taking him away I shared my concern with some of them.  I informed some of those officers that my husband was a peaceful and peace loving man who would not hurt anyone, and I asked them to please not hurt him.  I was not concerned about my own safety, or about my being hurt.  I had been through this crisis at least three times before, and there was nothing new that they could have done to hurt or try to humiliate me that they had not done before.  I was also concerned about my daughter, but I knew that she was such a gentle and caring soul that it was going to be hard for anyone to find any reason to want to hurt her while she was in the custody of the law.  My nine year old would not be under arrest, but I also knew that he would not be harmed while he was in the care of those officers.  And I also knew that our cat Tabitha would be well looked after, by the staff at that police division because she was such a loving and adorable feline being.

At the police station I was put through a routine that I had become all too familiar with.  I was booked on a trespassing charge, but I did not agree with the charge; and I told the officers booking me about my objection to being charge. I also asked them questions about my right as a human being to stand up for any wrong that was being done to me, and to my family.  One of these officers of the law looked at another one with the expression on his face, and spoke telepathically to his colleague about me.  I don’t make it a habit of reading other people’s thoughts because I respect each person’s rights to keep their private thoughts to themselves.  But whenever those thoughts are intended to harm me, or others around me, whether I want to or not, my mind tunes into that person’s thoughts. This police officer told his partner that: 

“This woman must be living in dreamland, or something, to speak to us about her human rights while she was being held in our custody.  Doesn’t she know that inside this station we are the law, and that we can use our authority to do anything we want to her, and no one would be able to know that we had.  Doesn’t she know where she is, and who is in control here?”

I did not reveal to this law enforcement officer what I had heard him say psychically to the other cop.  There was no reason for me to do so.  That information was only for me, and even if I had shared it with that officer who spoke those words, he would have just looked at me as being even more out of touch with reality than he already was suggesting that I was.  After the booking, I was locked up in a holding cell near the front area of the building, where the public entered the police station. It was smelly and made me sick to my stomach.  After a while, an Oriental female officer came to see me, and her job was to strip search me.  She was respectful when she stripped search me: she made me take over all my clothes, and then asked me to raise my arms, but she did not ask me to turn around and bend over and touch my toes, as I had been asked to do the other times I was stripped searched in the past. 

In fact, this decent human being did not even put her hand on me even once.  She actually tried to protect me during this humiliating process, although I was not humiliated or embarrassed in any way - for I had done nothing wrong to feel that way.  It’s no wonder I have a special bond with women from this ancient and beautiful and rich culture: this lady and her people as a whole had a sense of decency and honour and integrity about themselves, and their culture, that most other races of human beings had long forgotten or abandoned.

A short while later, I asked about my family, for the third of fourth time since I had been brought to this station.  The officer who came to see me did not answer me at first, but then she mentioned that my son was watching television and having some treats to eat while doing so.  I did not get any answer about where my daughter or my husband or our cat was being held.  But I knew that they were not being mistreated through my own source of intelligence gathering.  Still I wanted to ask, to hear what answer they would give me.  Later I was moved to another holding cell, after I had complained a number of times that the one I was being held in was making me sick to my stomach because of the strong urine and filthy smell.  I was moved to one that was a short distance away but also closer to where the police officers on duty were stationed.  This officer came by to see, and before he left, he made the comment to me that “you must be crazy,” because of the questions I was raising, and the comments I had made, about my rights as a human being to be treated with dignity and respect wherever I happened to be, or to be held.

“My mother is not crazy in any way.  If you knew the kind of person that she was, and the kind of work that she does, to help all people, you will know that she is anything but crazy.  She is intelligent and wise more than you can ever know.”

I was surprised to hear my daughter’s voice, as she spoke those moving words to the officer who had disrespected her mother.  Mahogohney was being escorted to where I was being held; and she was standing a short distance away from where I was being held, and being brought to stay in the cell that I was now in.  That was the first time that I heard my daughter speak out to another adult in her life.  She was always respectful and unwilling to let any adult know when they had done something wrong to her or to her family.  My daughter was now grown up in more ways than she had even expected to at this point in her young life.  She was now a twenty year old young lady, but she did not have the social experiences of mingling with others the way that young people who were years younger than she was, had been encouraged and allowed to gain.  She was actually a young woman who had never even date a boy much less even spoken to one, except the pen pals she wrote to all over the world.  She was a virgin not only in her lack of having any sexual contact with anyone, but also in the innocent and honest and caring manner in which she thought and lived as a human being.

I was sad to find out from my beautiful, and innocent, daughter that she was also made to strip off all her clothes in the presence of another human being – especially a police officer.  No one had ever seen her without all of her clothes since I stopped giving her showers when she was about seven years of age, once I had taught her to bathe herself properly.  Both her father and I had made sure that we respected her right to protect her body from being seen by anyone in our home, or outside it.  I was sad to hear that she was stripped of that right to not be forced to stand nude in the presence of another human being.  But my daughter was proud of the fact that she took the stance that she did to support the one that her parents had taken.  She was not happy to be forced to take of all her clothes, and stand naked in front of those female police officers, but our princess did not regret the stance she had taken which caused her to be stripped searched.  I was also relieved to hear from her that she was not placed in handcuffs when she was arrested, and brought into the station after her father and I were taken from her and our son near that tent.

I was now inside a holding cell with my 22-year-old daughter.  I was relieved to know that she and I were now together in the same cell, because that was what I had asked for a number of times.  But I was also unhappy to see that my daughter was also locked up inside a cell inside a police station because of her mother, and what I stood for. A holding cell is the last place where a mother and daughter want to spend any time together.  My daughter was strong and in good spirits but she was also feeling a little sad because of where we were and what had happened to her family.  To try to cheer her up I decided that I would do what I often did to lift my own spirit, when I was feeling down sometimes when we lived in a home before. I started to sing.  The acoustics inside that cell was good, and as I sang I started to feel better myself; and I also saw my daughter’s spirit being lifted up.  I did not remember most of the lyrics of the songs that I wanted to sing but I sang parts of the ones that I was able to recall.  They were some of the songs that I rehearsed with over the years, and they were also among the songs that others had written, that both my husband and I found inspirational and meaningful in the quality of what was said in those lyric.

I also began to sing in order to try to have my husband hear my voice, and then know that I was close by.  If he was able to hear the sound of my voice, he would know that I was calling out to him, and also letting him know that I was in good spirits.  One of the ways that people who have been locked inside cells, in the same building, have used to speak to each other was by singing in a loud voice.  Even if they were not trying to send any kind of hidden message to each other, this was a natural and powerful way for them to communicate with each other.  I was not trying to send any hidden message to my husband from inside those holding cells in that police station. I just wanted to cheer him up while cheering up my daughter and myself.  While I was singing I heard one officer commenting to another: “she can sing.”  That made me feel better about the fact that I was singing, and that those officers did not think that I was annoying them.  It was bad enough that they had to deal with people, who were cursing, or banging, on the walls or the doors of the holding cells they were locked inside.  But having someone who can’t carry a tune, belting out a song at the top of their voice off and on for hours is just too much for any human ear to have to take.

I don’t know if my husband heard my voice as I sang from the bottom of my sad heart, from inside the cell that my daughter and I were being held in.  Later, my son informed me that he had heard me singing, and my husband revealed to me that he had not only heard the sound of my voice as I sang, but that it had inspired him to start singing himself.  Andraggon explains:

“I was locked inside that cell for hours.  It was cool so I asked to keep my socks on, while my boots sat just outside that cell door.  This was the first time that I was ever arrested or ever locked up in a police station.  Though I was an activist, I had always managed to avoid getting arrested over the years.  In fact the only time I had ever been arrested in my life was when I was a fifteen year old, and I stole a bicycle lock from a Canadian Tire Store that I wanted for my bicycle.  I was never taken to a police station then, but I was given a stern warning by them while I was inside the office of the manager of that store.  The only other time I was ever arrested was while I had visited a high school to see a friend of mine, and I was taken into custody for being someone that they thought looked like a crime suspect.  I was even fingerprinted that day in that police station, and then let go about an hour later after the police decided that they had arrested the wrong person.

But this time I was proud to stand with my wife, and be arrested for protesting in a tent home on the property of a government building.  I was also proud to hear that our daughter had taken the same stance as I had.  Being locked up inside a holding cell in the basement of a police station was a strange experience for me.  I was not afraid or worried or even upset.  I knew that I had to stay there for a number of hours until they decided to release us.  I also knew that the charge that they brought against us was a minor one - a trespassing charge - that was not even a criminal one.  So while I was being held there, I was going to make sure that I made myself as comfortable as possible inside this cold cell.  There were only two items inside that cell: a toilet with no seat to sit on, and no lid to cover the smell that might come from it after it was used for depositing body waste into.  Then there was the steel bed, which was cold as it was hard.  I stretched my long frame out on that steel bed and used my heavy outer vest as a pillow, and I slept off and on for most of the time I was there. 

I knew that it was important to get as much rest as I could while I was locked up because once we were release, I would have to use a lot of energy to pull that heavy wooden cart all the way from that police station back to the ground of New City Hall.  And that was at least half hour away on foot, and would be longer with that heavy cart pulling behind me.  I was not even sure how the wheels on that cart would hold up, but after seeing how difficult it was to pull it from our last home to the medical building, which was about only one hundred yards away, I knew that I was going to have a tough time pulling that heavy cart in that cold weather for all those miles on the sidewalks of downtown Toronto.

So I intentionally tried to relax and get as much rest as I could, during the hours that I was locked inside that holding cell.  After a few hours of resting, and waking up, I heard what I thought was the sound of someone singing.  I listened as I lay on my back, and then I realized that the voice that was singing was one that was familiar to me.  It was the beautiful voice of my beautiful wife, and she sounded like she was a mile away.  But her voice was haunting and healing at the same time, and in that moment I knew that she was calling out to me to let me know that she was close by, and that she was all right.  I was moved by the wisdom of what she was doing; I was touched very deeply by the depth of the love that she was sending for me in her voice that was faint but powerful and comforting at the same time.

I was inspired and energized.  And in one motion I sat up on that steel bed, and went over to the door of my cell, and I started singing as loudly and as passionately as I could for her to also hear my voice, and know that I had heard hear, and that I was doing fine.  I sang for about an hour in that holding cell, and I sang all of the same songs that she had used to rehearse her voice over the years. I did not know if she heard me, nor was I even sure if she was able to, but I sang my heart out and I lifted my voice as high as I could as I sang to let my beautiful wife know, that she had succeeded in her effort to reach me inside these holding cells where she and my daughter and myself were being held that night. 

As I sang I was moved to tears, with the knowledge that two soul mates who love each other, were being held in custody inside the same police station, along with their two children.  We did not belong here, nor did we deserve to be here. I also wondered if other couples over time had also tried to reach out to each other through songs, while they were being held in different cells inside the same building, or others like it all over the world. I am sure that they had, and that others will also do the same in the future.  I was moved by the beauty of such a natural way for two people held in bondage to communicate with each other.  Music is truly a universal language, and that night, I was given a heart touching reminder of that timeless fact when I heard my wife singing to me, and I then replied and sang back to her.  It usually takes someone to reach the bottom of an experience, before they are able to appreciate how much their own relationship with the people they love means to them.  That evening inside that holding cell inside that police station, I felt more loved and more bonded to my beautiful soul mate than I had felt in years.  It was an experience that I will always remember, and one which I will always take comfort from each time I think about it.”

Finally, after over seven hours of being locked up inside the holding cells of this police station, my family was released at 1.30 a.m. in the morning.  However, my husband and I had to agree to certain conditions before we were released from their custody.  We had to agree that we would not return to Nathan Phillip Square Nathan Philip Square and put up a tenth again.  They did not want us to go back there and protest in the manner that we had done before they arrested us. On three different occasions, I was told by an officer that unless I agreed to sign this form, that they would take my nine year old son into custody and give him to Children’s Aid Society.  I found later on from my husband and my daughter that they had also been spoken to in this threatening manner by other officers, and that was the main reason that they also agreed to those conditions before we were released.

From 1.30 a.m. to about six a.m. in the morning my entire family sat in the lobby of this police station, waiting for it to turn morning for us to leave that building.  During those four and half hours while we sat there my family was subjected to a lot of verbal abuse.  We were missing one family member.  Our feline family member was not with us. She had been placed in the custody of The Humane Society, and we were told that we had to go there to get her back.  They had lied to us.  Those officers had told us that they were going to keep our cat in that police station while we were locked up, but they decided to send her to that animal shelter, after they decided than we were going to be staying there longer that they were able to look after our cat.  There excuse was that they did not have the facilities to take care of her for more than an hour or two.  And that they did not know how long we were going to be held in custody for.

While we sat in that lobby my family became the target of attention, and also mistreatment, by a few of the officers who were on duty there.  Police officers are not supposed to use profanities while they are at work, especially at the front desk in the police station.  It was an act of disrespect to other workers and also to the general public. Yet that morning, one of those officers on duty used the “f” word at least four times in a conversation that he was having with one of his fellow officers.  Then there was a female officer who was telling a story about some woman who was sleeping around with some man, but she was using a very raw and vulgar language to do so – the kind that men often used when they get together to boast about their sexual conquest with other women. 

There was no reason for her to have spoken in such disgusting manner, about something such as one person sleeping with another.  There were other comments that were made while we sat there in that lobby.  Some of them were made about us, some of them were meant for us to hear what they thought about my family.  While we waited, my husband took off my shoes, and massaged my feet, something which he had made a habit of doing over the years.  Some of those officers laughed and commented among themselves about how lucky I was to have a husband who would massage my feet, and about how they wished that they had a spouse who would do that for them.  When I turned around and did the same thing to my husband’s feet, you could hear a pin drop, as those same officers showed their disbelief - that I also did the same for my husband.  By the time that we were finally ready to leave the lobby of that police station, those same officers who had ridiculed and mistreated my family had developed a new respect and admiration for us.

At six o clock in the morning, my small family headed out into the cold morning air of the last day of the first week of February. We headed towards the same destination where we were when we were arrested.  We were going back to the ground of New City Hall.  This time, though, we were not going to pitch a tent.  This time we were going to live there, or try to, someplace on that ground, just like any other homeless person, or family, was allowed by law to do – as long as they did not put up any structure such as a tent.  I don’t know how long we were going to be able to survive outside in that cold winter weather, but we had a protest to continue; and we were not going to end it by taking cover in any emergency shelter for homeless families.  Not if we could help it.
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