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Being part Indigenous (Chippewa in my case), I will explain this by analogy to something some of the Dog Soldiers used to do. Some warriors would carry a "Dog Rope" with a spike on one end and the other end tied to themselves. At a key moment in the battle, they would drive the stake, committing themselves to fight within the circle defined by the rope until the enemy was driven off, they themselves were killed-or another warrior pulled up the stake. This was not limited to the Cheyenne and was used by many other tribes but is best known for its associaton with the Dog Soldiers.

In the escalating events of the previous Fall, we had effectively dog-roped ourselves to the Plaza. It had become such a powerful symbol-and had been subject to so many attacks, that some folks decided it must be held at any price, even at risk to our lives. We stayed, the Proud Boys got their beat-downs and left.

We got lucky too: Had the PB gotten word of what was going on at the Plaza, a few dozen of them could have bloc'ed up and overwhelmed us. With more organization, hundreds of them could have sealed us in, made any retreat impossible due to cops blocking all the South side escape routes. Then they could have killed us while the cops looked on in approval. We knew this was a risk-but we deployed anyway.