Free Ms. Got Rocks by Jacqueline Colt Page B

shit.”
    Rocky yelled to her, “My sentiments exactly, can you see what is happening?”
    “Yes, those guys are shoving the women back from the gate. This situation is getting nastier, it is getting out of hand,” the TV news lead commented.
    “Where are the cops, my editor called them a little while ago?” Rocky asked the back of the TV news star’s head as the slender blonde pushed her way in front of Rocky.
    Rocky moved into the slipstream of the slender blonde and followed her flying elbows to the front of the media pack.
    “Terry, I’m right at the front and those guys are carrying sticks, club things, like cop nightsticks. The whole crowd is being shoved back from the gate. Terry, stay on the line, I’m going to hold the phone up so you can hear what they are yelling at the women.”
    Rocky held her little yellow cell phone in the air, and within moments the phone was smashed from her hand and landed on the asphalt parking lot, then someone in the milling crowd stepped on it. The mass of people was now trying to move away from men in the front.
    The yelling was less organized and more frantic than chanting. She could barely see the men advancing toward the group of women who were directly in front of her.
    The men had the wooden batons held in front of them and were pushing the crowd back.   Rocky raised her camera over her head and again put it into auto shoot for several seconds.
    “The most appropriate word for the crowd movement would be swirling,” Rocky shouted to Terry. The women in the front of the group are being pushed back into the second bunch. The second group is dividing and each side is moving back. The whole crowd is swirling and very confused around me.” Rocky continued reporting and photographing the scene.
    Suddenly the first rank of women was only five feet in front of Rocky. She could, at last see the faces of the men attempting to dissolve the group of women.
    The overweight man in the middle of the line had a face fire red with anger. Rocky wondered for an instant if he was going to collapse right there. She brought her camera down to her face level and took one frame of the furious face of the man. When she clicked that one off, the man gave a yell to the rest of the group.
    “Now!” he yelled.
    He raised his nightstick and brought it down on the shoulder of the woman directly in front of Rocky. Rocky caught a perfect shot of that happening. At that point, the man saw Rocky and the camera. Shoving aside the very obviously injured woman in front of him, he was striding over his victim and the short distance toward Rocky.
    “Bitch, give me that camera” he demanded of Rocky.
    “I’m with the Auburn News,” Rocky was waving her press pass ID directly in front of his eyes.
    “I don’t give a fuck if you are Queen of the May, I want that camera. Either give it to me now or I’ll take it from you. Come on bitch, you won’t like it if I have to take it away from you,” he yelled at Rocky, spitting on her in the process.
    The TV cameraman was slowly backing away from Rocky to get a better angle on the shot. The camera operator was wondering why Rocky was standing there, she was rooted to that spot as the women ranks were now either even with her or behind her.
    Out of the corner of her eye Rocky could see several of the men using the batons at their waist level; the target was the forearms and elbows of the women.
    She turned to get a photo of the beatings happening in that direction. For a moment, Rocky thought she recognized one of the men. There are not many men with that shining black collar length hair. Rocky was not even sure who it was registering in her brain, there was so much confusion around her.
    The large man in front of her was now yelling in her left ear. He was so close to her it would not be any reach for him to touch her. Something warned her now would be a good time to move away from the front line of women.
    As Rocky stepped backward on the periphery of the