While watching many protests turn violent over the weekend, it took me back to my own experience getting caught up in a “mob” scene. Now, before I go any further, I want to emphasize that what I experienced isn’t even CLOSE to what has been happening across the Country over the past few days. My experience was on a much smaller scale, and resolved fairly quickly. I only share this story as my personal point of reference to what it felt like being caught up in that type of situation.
It was at a large music festival in Western Michigan during the Summer of 1997. Everyone was having a good time, enjoying the bands on multiple stages, basically your typical music festival experience. The point where it turned atypical was when a person came on the main stage to announce that the lead singer for the headlining band that day had come down sick, and the band wasn’t going to be performing. A friend and I were smack-dab in the middle of the crowd when that announcement happened and the mood went from fun, to booing, to total chaos in a matter of minutes. After a few minutes of booing, you could see a mass of humanity starting in motion. People starting tearing down merchandise tents, stage structures, throwing anything they could get their hands on, and then a massive rolling fight broke out. And when that started, the panic in the rest of the crowd set in, and people tried to flee from the violence en mass. I’m talking thousands of people either caught up in the fighting itself, or trying to run away from it. That’s where I got completely steam-rolled by the crowd. It was so surreal, and I still remember it vividly. I could not get up. Every time I tried I was stepped on, rolled over, and every effort I made to get up just ended in me back on the ground in a sea of stampeding humanity.
My guardian angel that day was my friend McConnell that was at the festival with me. McConnell, “Large” to his friends, is an ox of a man (hence the nickname.) I remember looking up, seeing him shoulder block his way though the crowd, grab me, and throw me over his shoulder like a literal sack of potatoes. He ran us out of there to a spot where I could get my feet under me, and we could get out of harm’s way. The lasting memory I have of that experience is how quickly it happened. By the time most of us realized what was going on, the crowd was on us. There was no time what-so-ever to react and get out of the way. As I said at the beginning of this, I don’t pretend that my experience is comparable to the civil unrest that has taken place in so many cities across the Country over the past few days, those are on a much larger scale than what I experienced. It’s just my personal experience with being involved in a crowd that turned violent quickly.
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