The Picket

Since May, I've been attending a weekly picket outside a local Chevron gas station.1 Chevron is a priority target for the Boycott Divest and Sanction movement because it is the main extractor of Israel's gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean and profits from an illegal pipeline running through the Gaza strip. For two hours each Saturday afternoon, we (anywhere from 4 to 12 people) occupy a specific world, that of the street (specifically the "stroad"). In daily life, it is a world experienced in transit, ideally from the window of a private automobile. Standing in place for even two hours reveals it as a deeply inhospitable world: it's loud, hot, and smelly. The invisible boundary of private property has real significance (the cops get called whenever we transgress it). The traffic light cycle creates a hypnotic rhythm, lulls of quiet followed by a din of revving engines, supportive beeps, and the occasional shouted slur. Above all, it is exposed; to the sun, wind, and rain, and the…