by Ron Riekki
Protest #1, base of Pentacrest, Iowa City, IO, July 10, 2026 (approximate number of protestors: 1)
Protest #1, base of Pentacrest, Iowa City, IO, July 10, 2026 (approximate number of protestors: 1)
"And it was striking, how much less alone that could make you feel, because of course to be peopled at all was a high-order gift, but to find people beyond your people was nothing short of miraculous.”
—Claire Lombardo
“No.” “We’re a bunch of weirdos”—
the response I get when asking if
the group of huddled people are
veterans. There’s another group,
also not veterans. And I realize,
no one showed up for the protest.
It’s hard to interview nobody.
It’s hard to get a quote about
the value of protesting when
the total number of protestors
is 0. Iowa has become I0wa.
In front of me is a wonderful
park, as if it was made solely
for protesting. It has a base-
ball field feel, but with no base-
balls. There’s even a sign that
says, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT
TO express yourself ON CAMPUS
and there’s this beautiful campus
and this absence of expression.
The sign is placed on the ground,
like home plate. I imagine this
field filled with the ghosts of
protestors. There’s The Ghost of
Protestors Past, and of Protestors
Future. I’d left a U Iowa lecture
about writing hybrid fiction/non-
fiction, Emily White talking about
her love of The Armies of the Night,
heteronormative male Norman Mailer
recounting the March on the Pentagon
in 1967… This is History as a Poem,
The Poem as History… In honor of
Mailer’s “Ultimately a hero is a man
who would argue with the gods.”
Although it’s 2026 and Mailer’s
“Ultimately a hero is a man” is dead.
I’d argue with the god of Mailer…
I rush back to the lecture, missing
the pissing break, to only catch
the tail end, but, luck, there’s a vet
in the audience, an infamous one—
Jimbo Gillchrist, an active activist
writer who, when I start asking him
about the value of protests quickly
points out the fairly obvious, stating,
“I’m white.” He says this inside of
a building with a prominent BLACK
LIVES MATTER sign tucked, very
appropriately, on the far left side
of the building, problematically no
black lives in the sole class I’m taking
this summer at U Iowa, a fiction class,
the kind instructor talking of her Chicago
homelessness social work background,
class conscious, the room more than
three-quarters women, but race an issue
where we discuss the namelessness and
facelessness of the indigenous characters
in one of the stories and no one has any
problem with it, which I’m not expecting
in 2026 woke culture, but woke culture
tends to be whatever is represented in
the room and what is absent is absent.
Jimbo’s a combat vet who introduced
himself to the class quickly pointing out
his PTSD. In the lecture, I’m surprised
he sits up front, not a cliché of being in
the back of the room, in a corner, hyper-
vigilant. His breath, a Jim Jarmusch mix of
coffee and cigarettes. His beard, a mix of
casual and casualties-of-war where he
wants to distance himself from Army
cadet hairlessness. I ask him about
the hopelessness of protests where no
one shows, but first ask him how many
were at today’s protest. He guesstimates
“6,000.” I tell him 0. Only the last
digit of 6,000. He tells me he doesn’t
have time for an interview, needs to
see a friend, but then he gives me
the interview, talks about how hard
it is to assemble humans. He tells me
that, from experience, if you get 6,000
people to attend a protest, only about
“5” will actually stay on to do consistent
work on a daily/weekly basis of what
it takes to do true community change.
I ask him the hard questions—a Black
Lives Matter’s DeRay McKesson inter-
view I saw where he talked about violence
against blacks increasing—not decreasing—
after protests, and Radley Balko’s book
Rise of the Warrior Cop, how protests
Fund the Police (not De-), how post-protest,
police put together policies to promote
more violence, more police, more pepper
spray, more weaponry, more SWAT teams,
more cops with AR-15s, CQBRs, M4A1s,
Colt Commandos, Sig Sauers, Hecklers,
names like diseases, how these collections
of letters kill better than previous weapons,
getting better at death. Zach Cregger-level horror.
Not comedy. I discuss indigenous protestors, if, after
arrested, they become even more disempowered,
if you’re poor and vulnerable prior to the protest,
but then poor and vulnerable and you’ve just been
incarcerated, if you’re now even more poor and
more vulnerable. I ask him if it’s better to be
involved in actually changing the system, rather
than the performativity of protest. Wearing
a purple T-shirt with bold white letters of
PEACE, Jimbo tells me protests give us
expression, give us solidarity, give us a “node”
for community change. I think of lymph nodes,
fighting for the immune system, fighting
infections, diseases of plutocracy. But I keep
bringing up the loop, how Republicans take
something like fat-shaming and fast-food
companies further the message to increase
unhealthy eating, not ¢aring about the harm$.
How Republicans profit off mass shootings,
where gun sales increase afterwards. How
Republicans profit off of cancel culture, where
liberals are hardest hit by it, how Al Franken
is no longer a senator but Trump’s re-elected,
and how protests just expand police militarization.
“I’ll have to think about it,” Jimbo says.
I ask if there’s anything he wants to say
to New Verse News readers. He does.
He says, “I want to tell people, like, tap into your
local community and find ways you can to get
involved,” that “there’s all these ways to get
involved that aren’t protests.” He talks of
medic training, housing assistance, community
aid centers. I’m surprised how logical he is,
was expecting more of an emotional response.
Online, I viewed his arrest at a protest the week-
end after George Floyd’s death. Jimbo says he’s
processed what happened, his arrest. I’ve seen
him taking routine smoke breaks, alone, little
self-harm rituals. He’s a combat vet, a person
who risked his life in the George Floyd protests,
a grounded interviewee for the National Catholic
Reporter, speaking about how “none of us had
grasped that what we were doing was obviously
unjust,” referring to the war, his face shot alone,
a disembodied voice interviewing him. I have
a strong visual of Jimbo smoking by himself outside,
as if it represents combat veterans as a whole,
alone, outside, fresh air, yet breathing in smoke,
taking in a stimulant to relax, how jolts of
adrenaline feel normal, this male who comes
to class, his shirt ripped, my wondering if he
knows… I go to the library to write this history,
but it’s closing—both history and the library—
them turning the lights off in a slow sequence,
but I keep writing, trying, wanting to describe
the Pentacrest. Such an odd name. Conjuring
up Rage Against the Machine’s “five-sided
Fistagon,” the pentagram, pent-up frustration,
Penthouse and penthouses, repenting, the state
pen, the need to take pen to paper, the Pentagon.
I stumble on the Pentacrest webcam online, view it,
studying the buildings. How would I describe it?
An online description of its “diagonal axes,”
its “nineteenth-century brick,” touches of Italian
Renaissance, aims at “prestige.” And there,
in the corner, on the screen, I see a man, waving
a flag, like he’s on a desert island, a plea of SOS.
I rush there. It’s hours after the posted start time.
I see all of the protestors. All one, yes, one, of them.
He marches, slowly, in the heat, humidity,
where I’m sweating just from the short walk over.
He carries two flags, a miniature Palestinian
flag, and a massive white Veteransforpeace
flag, that he’s not waving, but, rather, the wind is,
for him. He has no energy, walks like a senior,
not a U of Iowa senior, but a citizen, and he is
a citizen, proudly protesting, but I’m not sure what.
I ask him. He’s not enthusiastic to talk, quickly
hands me a pamphlet, a petite piece of paper
the size of my palm, a Statement of Purpose
that he is here “1. To increase public aware-
ness of the causes and costs of war.” So I ask
him to increase public awareness by sharing
his story with me, wondering if he’s a vet.
He asks why I’d want to know that. I tell him
that he’s carrying a flag that says both ‘Veterans’
and ‘peace,’ so I figured I’d ask him about both.
He accepts this answer. He’s a Vietnam vet,
there, 1966-1967, a “radio op,” says, “What
we did in Vietnam,” says, “things that transpired
were horrific and insane.” I ask what happened,
but he doesn’t want to tell me. He was drafted
at 19. In the 1980s, diagnosed through the V.A.
with “10%” disability for “PTSD and some
physical” symptoms. I ask him what those are,
which angers him. He tells me he’ll “end this
right now” if I don’t start asking him the right
questions. He wants to know why I’d want to
know if he’s a vet, if I’m an “investigative
reporter,” that others “come around asking
questions.” He tells me he’s “tired of this
whole thing.” I wonder if he means this
interview, but he means “what’s happening
in the world.” He tells me he marches from
“a half hour to an hour,” going back and forth,
this prestigious building paired with this man
who looks so tired, a Santa Claus without joy,
a Vietnam vet Saint Nick, this feeling that
Christmas has been cancelled this century.
He tells me his disability rating was upped
to “60%,” later, after going back to the V.A.
“multiple times.” I ask about his PTSD;
this triggers him. Asking about his PTSD
triggers his PTSD. In the last year for
New Verse News I went, frequently, into
gang territory in Detroit, Flint, and, oddly,
I’m actually the most on-guard with this vet,
a feeling he could explode at any second,
but this knowledge that the danger with veterans
is largely exaggerated in the media. I see the Vietnam
vet in him, but I also see the Santa Claus. I keep
talking. He wants to know if I’m conservative,
if I’m “ABC, NBC,” warns of “all the networks bought
out by billionaires, right-wingers.” I laugh,
telling him New Verse News would not exactly be
labeled right wing, not even close, rather on the far
other side of the pendulum. He relaxes a bit.
I ask his name. At this, he’s done. For some
reason, this angers him the most. I tell him
it can just be his first name. Or a nickname.
But he’s done. He tells me the interview is “over.”
He stands under “Devonian limestone” building,
“Beaux-Arts architecture.” The elite and impolite,
the ruling and the unruly. I go to the other side
of the street, distant, watching him, walking,
back and forth, so slowly, families with sons
and daughters walking by, orientation week,
like they don’t even see him, and he pauses,
stands there, alone, so incredibly alone, this
strange sadness I didn’t expect, again, having
gone to multiple mass shooting sites and, yet,
yes, this moment, where—am I the saddest
yet? The lack of energy to his motions. This
sheer repetitiveness. And, then, for a moment,
a student, I believe, dressed all in black, such
contrast, talks to this man, walks with him,
across the circular opening area in front of
the Pentacrest, a car blocking my view,
where I actually hope he’ll stay and talk
to this nameless vet, a vet who refuses
to be named, and the car moves, and I see
he’s left, that this man is alone, his white
flag, his white skin, ghost-like, the flag
waving, like the signal for surrender, this
feel as if he himself is a surrendering ghost.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.
