The Sound They Didn’t Warn Us About
OKC | No Kings | 10 · 18 · 25
Written by Rebecca M. Bell
We arrived downtown just as the sky began to break open—wind needling through banners, thunder bruising the horizon. At first I thought the sound was another storm rolling in, maybe an ambulance cutting through the grid. But as we got closer, it became clear: the noise wasn’t coming from the sky. It was coming from inside the parking garage.
It wasn’t a tornado siren. I’ve lived here my whole life—I know that sound by heart, the long steady howl that sends you underground. This one was sharper, alien, mechanical. It wailed, then paused, then came again. And perched at the top of the structure, framed against the clouds, were police officers watching the crowd. Cameras out.
The protest—No Kings OKC—was peaceful. Families. Students. Veterans with their signs wrapped in plastic sleeves against the rain.
And all the while, the siren.
It rose and fell like a warning that never explained itself. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe a malfunction. Or maybe it was what it felt like—an attempt to rattle us, to remind us who holds the switches. The sound scraped at the edges of calm, but the crowd didn’t flinch. We sang louder. We held the line.
There’s a strange kind of power in refusing to be moved by fear.
If that noise was meant to scatter us, it failed.
We stayed through the storm because we understood the metaphor:
if we can’t stand in the rain, we’ll never stand for the republic.
The bell rings louder than their siren. 🔔
—Rebecca M. Bell
www.rmbellwrites.com
Filed under:
Surveillance Notes · Civil Disobedience · Sound as Control · Protest Log
