It was Saturday, March 22, early afternoon, and Sara and I were handing out her patches to protesters on Fourth Street in Berkeley. I was deep in a depression, but had managed to get myself out of bed to accompany Sara to this #TeslaTakedown. (She’d been going every week.) Despite my bleak emotional state, my spirits were being lifted by hanging out with others who were energetically opposed to the fascist takeover of our country. Protests aren’t just essential in our political situation; they’re also, in my experience, magically capable of making you feel hopeful. I’d look into the eyes of other protesters and feel, in our connection, a marvelous magnifying effect: in real time, we were giving each other courage. People were chanting, signs were being waved, it was a beautiful day, and passing cars were honking their support.
And then an unpleasant sound pierced the joy. It was a 33-year-old pro-Trump provocateur — Ricardo G. Ruiz, aka DJ Occult, aka Rick Fuze — blasting terrible, super-loud music from a speaker on a bike he was riding up and down Fourth Street.
I’d encountered this unpleasant fellow at an earlier protest. That time, not only was he cranking out that awful music but, as he cruised along on his bike, he was pushing a GoPro video recorder in protesters’ faces as he passed them. Obviously he was there to get a rise out of us — and indeed he later posted that video online, accompanied by his commentary mocking us. Creepily, the whole time he had a big smile on his face: a MAGA thug getting pleasure from upsetting lefties; you got the sense that little else in his life did give him pleasure. As he passed me, I was seething, but I didn’t know what to do: If I confronted him, would I just be giving him the angry-protester footage he wanted? Was he dangerous? Meanwhile, as I just stood there, uncomfortably weighing my options, a man in his 70s — who I later learned was named William — went right up to the MAGA instigator and told him, in no uncertain terms, to stop bothering us. The right-wing creep, gleeful at capturing this encounter on video, said some snide things in reply — but William just kept walking into him, pushing at the guy with his chest, and quietly but firmly insisting that he go elsewhere. Eventually, the police, who’d been standing nearby observing the protest, told the provocateur to leave.
But now he was back again — and an ebullient pro-democracy demonstration was once more being sullied by hateful MAGA vibes. Again, I watched him slowly ride his bike, awful music blaring, up and down the street.
What to do?
Then I saw three people — including, I believe, William — approach the fascist cyclist in the middle of the street. (I later learned that one of them, James Richardson, was, at 40, on the younger side.) Clearly, they were going to tell him to leave. But as they tried to talk to him, the guy pulled a taser from his pocket (I’d never seen one in real life before) and attempted to zap them. The taser made crackling sounds, and sparks flew from it — fortunately, with none of them hitting the protesters. At this point, something unexpected happened: One of the three, a 71-year-old woman named Susan Kegeles, enraged by this attempted attack, grabbed Ruiz by his (very long) hair and actually pulled him off his bike!
At this point some cops swooped in — and, fortunately, arrested the asshole. This all had happened so fast that, even though I was just a few feet away, I hadn’t been sure what exactly had occurred. But then I heard one of the police officers explaining to another protester that, upon being peacefully approached, the MAGA guy had tried to attack the activists with a deadly weapon. A bit later, I was passing along this information to someone else when I saw that a man was taking a video of me. I flashed back to my dad telling me, during protests against the Vietnam War, that people with cameras were likely with the FBI — but it turns out this guy (A. Mark Liiv, who also took the photo at the top of this post) was on our side. Later that week, I started hearing from people that I made an appearance late in his video, which got posted in a bunch of online spaces.
You can imagine the cheer that went up from all of us when Kegeles fought back against the MAGA goon — and again, when he was led away in handcuffs. Peace had been restored.
It was a powerful moment for me, witnessing Kegeles’s act of courage. I thought, It’s what my parents and their leftist friends would have done. It’s what you do to fascists: you resist them; you refuse to let them normalize disdain.
In the spate of coverage that followed (and from Susan herself), I learned that Kegeles was a retired UCSF professor of medicine who — working with a gay colleague who later died of AIDS — developed a program, aimed primarily at young gay men, that focused on empowerment, increasing self-acceptance, community-building, and organizing; it was implemented in over 100 organizations around the U.S. and internationally. She told a local journalist, "Everyone seems to find great inspiration thinking, if a 'little old lady' is able to stand up to power, I can do it, too."
As it happens, about a month later I was watching my beloved Rachel Maddow Show as Rachel interviewed a Harvard professor named Steven Levitsky, author of How Democracies Die, about the kerfuffle between Trump and the university. Everything Levitsky said sounded cool, but then, while making the point that powerful people and institutions have to stand up to fascism, he remarked: “We can’t just rely on little old ladies in front of Tesla dealerships — God love ’em.”
This formulation got my back up — and not just because I’m a little (well, medium-sized) old man. He was just being so offhandedly condescending towards people like Susan Kegeles. It’s true that these protests have tended to skew older: at 65 and 66, respectively, Sara and I might be said to be in the youth contingent. And in fact, that MAGA asshole Ruiz, in the video he posted, had mocked us protesters for our ancientness.
To her great credit, Rachel (I can’t call her “Maddow”: after all these years of watching her, she feels kind of like a personal friend) told Levitsky, “Those ‘little old ladies’ in front of the Tesla dealership, I’d have to say (a) I wouldn’t mess with them and (b) I feel like what they’re doing is putting the steel in the spines of the people who haven’t been willing to stand out there in the sleet.” (Prof. Levitsky, grinning sheepishly, agreed.)
We in the resistance are inundated with messages — and not just from the Trumpers — that we are powerless, ineffectual. I’ll admit that, until Sara inspired me to join her at protests, I was feeling pretty powerless myself. But when you’re with other activists, and you reinforce one another’s courage and optimism, you begin to feel how powerful we are, so long as we continue to act in solidarity. And when you witness a truly brave act, such as when Susan Kegeles refused to be intimidated by a taser-wielding MAGA jerk … well, it makes you want to keep fighting, and it makes you feel like we’re going to win.
As for that MAGA head case, I’ve been following him in our local press. Turns out he already had a long history of provocation and violence. And then, on April 13, Berkeley police responded to a domestic-violence call — only to have Ruiz/Occult/Fuze come out and threaten them with a shotgun. So they shot him instead (not fatally), and arrested him. Ruiz now faces 17 felony charges from that incident, as well as misdemeanor charges for his stun-gun escapades on March 22, when Susan Kegeles truly put the “takedown” in #TeslaTakedown.
He fucked around with some old leftists. And he found out.
Performance note: My run of work-in-progress improvs toward a new solo show titled What Is To Be Done?: Fighting Fascism and Depression — which was inspired, to a large extent, by the wonderful responses I’ve gotten to this Substack — has just been extended for a second time at The Marsh in Berkeley, through Oct. 10. Tix & info here. (This Friday’s performance is sold out.)
Sometimes you just gotta take out the trash, by any means necessary.
This is great. It inspires me to get out to more protests. Maybe it’ll help combat the sense of hopelessness.