Cecily McMillan sips an iced coffee on a patio along the bustling Highland Avenue restaurant row looking like she’s set for a Cosmo photo shoot, which, in fact, she soon will do.
Sunglasses, silk flower in her hair, floral blouse, short shorts, long eyelashes, glossy red toe nails – the 25-year-old Atlantan blends in with the stylish young professionals who frequent the scene.
So when she blithely announces “I am a criminal. I am a felon,” the man sitting behind her turns to steal a quick glance.
She talks about her stint in the notorious Rikers Island, about sharing a dorm with 50 women, about her jail buddies Ida, Buddah and Fat Baby, and how her eyes were opened to systematic degradation during a 58-day stay that ended this month.
McMillan was convicted May 5 of purposely elbowing a New York police officer in the face in 2012 as he grabbed her from behind to usher her out of a park at an Occupy Wall Street rally. She was then slammed to the pavement and is shown in a video shuddering for several minutes.
More than 30 cops lined the courtroom when she was convicted, and she was immediately handcuffed and led off to jail as supporters yelled “Shame! Shame!”
McMillan calls herself a student of non-violence and insists the elbow was an instinctual reaction when the cop grabbed her breast. The prosecutor, however, argued she concocted the whole thing “to become the face of Occupy Wall Street.”
The hazel-eyed McMillan has become The Face. The conviction and incarceration catapulted her to celebrity. Supporters complain she has spent far more time in jail than any of the Wall Street suits who caused the financial meltdown in the first place.
The fact that much of the financial skulduggery occurred in the same jurisdiction where she was sentenced has not been lost on her. “It shows the strong arm of corporate power,” she said.
Last September, she decided to “to go all the way” and head to trial after being offered a deal to plead to a felony. “I said that if I was going to do it, it needed to be made into a movement-building initiative to expose the facade we live under.”
Besides, she told Mother Jones magazine, “What kind of activist would I be if I wouldn’t go to jail?”
Prosecutors accused her of playing the system, of using the four-week trial to grandstand, which she denies. The cop seemingly couldn’t remember which of his eyes was elbowed, and the defense complained that testimony about the officer mistreating at least one other protester didn’t come into evidence.
But the improbable mix of her violent arrest, her wholesome appearance, southern sensibilities and defiant nature propelled her to movement stardom.
She has harnessed the media. She is writing a piece for The New York Times, was profiled by The New Yorker, New York magazine and Huffington Post, was taunted by The New York Post, had dispatches from jail published by Jezebel and awaits the Cosmo feature.
She even got a jail visit from the members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot who been jailed in their homeland for dissent – and, of course, their name.
“It’s all so surreal,” McMillan said of the whirlwind. “I wasn’t under attack, Occupy was under attack. Dissent was under attack.”
She said she was treated with kindness by fellow prisoners, who nicknamed her “Activista.” She calls them “family.”
The time inside was “jarring,” she said, “It was an eye opener as to how these women survive the life they’ve been dealt.”
After getting released, she held a press conference outside the jail to present a list of prisoner grievances, most focusing on medical and mental health care. The experience of living with addicted, battered and schizophrenic women, of watching them puke blood and be ignored, struck home.
“I had more resources and privilege propping me up,” she said. “I’m not brave. I’m lucky. I’m a normal 25-year-old girl doing what my parents and grandparents taught me, to stand up for what’s right and tell the truth.”
McMillan’s family moved from Texas to metro Atlanta, where she attended Decatur High. She says she learned a lot from her grandfather, Harlon Joye, a longtime Atlanta activist and a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and WRFG, the city’s quintessential anti-corporate radio station.
“I learned from him what it means to be a true American citizen,” she said, adding that she’ll never be as cool as him.
At Decatur High, she led a student walkout junior year to protest the war in Iraq. The bug bit. It was, she says, the first time she “I first felt the power of a movement. I was always pretty anti-authoritarian. But now I felt like a citizen. I had a voice."
Also, she was “a stubborn, fierce hellion of a kid. At 16, I decided I could raise myself better than my parents. ” She moved in with L. Nyrobi Moss, who calls herself the “house mother” at 7 Stages theater.
From there, McMillan attended Grady High in Atlanta, boarding a school bus where all the other students were black, attending A.P. classes with white students and then returning home on the same bus, where she was called “White Bread.”
High school was a time of track, cheerleading, National Honor Society and debate. In prepping for her trial, she told her lawyer she coached witnesses during her mock trial days. Leave that off your resume while testifying, he advised.
She was in town last week for a few days to visit family and to attend a fund-raiser at her grandfather’s home. The money will be used for continuing legal battles. She is appealing the conviction because a felony will keep her from being a teacher or pursuing other potential careers.
She wants to move back to Atlanta as soon as she can get her probation transferred from New York.
“I am ready to come home,” she said. “Atlanta has always been my soul.”
But she must return to New York for a court hearing this week concerning a 2013 arrest for “Obstruction of government administration,” she said. “I’m facing a year in jail,” she said.
A year?
“Remember, I’m a felon,” she said.
Another battle for Activista.
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