“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
I'm working today. I always work weekends. Retail. Done it for decades. Don't remember the last time I was off on a Saturday. So no protest march for me today. Sorry. Can't be helped, or rather it probably could be -- just for today -- if I'd had the foresight to ask for the day off. I did not. Only heard about today's national action yesterday. Not really connected as I once was with this sort of thing. Can't call in sick anymore unless I'm genuinely sick because one do actually get sick more at sixty-one and I don't have much sick-time available just now. Used what I had for that last trip to urgent care, for which I just received my second bill in as many weeks; this one for $1099.41. Two thousand dollar deductible still not met for this new year. Among other things, my insurance provider is about to change again -- and I'm pretty sure my available paid sick-time is going down to three days a year. Three. If I'd known about today I could have submitted a vacation request (though that's supposed to be done two weeks in advance.) Not that my vacation is what it was. I've only just begun to build it back up again since I used it all when I was in Pennsylvania helping with home hospice care for the late, beloved mother earlier this year.
So, yeah, no mass protest on a Saturday for me. My heart.
Here's another quote while I'm at it, this from Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine: “How pitiful is an intelligence used only to make excuses to quieten the conscience.”
Ouch. That's hard to hear and I'm the one quoting it. But then I am also the one who led off with all that personal information to explain why I can't go today.
I have a friend who has posted photos from the protests at the facility where she lives -- hilariously she insists on calling it "the home," in a throw-back to those sad institutions from our rural youths. I've seen the menus where she lives now. Nice. I could eat there. Proud of her and her fellow "inmates" for getting out on the street and making good trouble.
Another friend lives in a community so isolated from anything like civilization I'd expect the attendant at the gas-station to warn "outsiders" not to be there after dark. My friend is protesting with other hearty souls today, whatever the Spring weather that still looks remarkably like Winter there. Proud to know her.
Nowadays I work at the bookstore with a pretty small crew. Another sign of the times. All of them but me are intelligent, politically engaged, resourceful and very vocal young women. Admirable humans to a person. Some of them had to come to work today too. Less options, some of them, even than I had. They work or they don't make rent, some of them. I would not presume to speak for them. I would take this moment to remind all my friends and all the marvelous strangers protesting today that we are with you, and would actually be with you if we could.
Myself, I married into the middle class roughly forty years ago. Without the beloved husband, and even after more than two decades at my present employment, I don't know that I would ever be able to so much as think of taking a Saturday off to go to another protest. Maybe I'd still be more committed to the struggle. I can't honestly say. (I have been. I hasten to add that not to excuse my absence today but just to attest that I am not an asshole. I may be somewhat diminished by time and changing circumstances, but I'm still not that guy. I've been. I would be right now if I thought I could.)
Some of the people who are being most effected by what is happening in this country right now won't be there today. Some have to work and can't get the day off. Some are quite rightly concerned about ICE agents and deportations. Some won't have the means, or the access to transportation, or the mobility to participate in a march and rally. There are people very much at risk to whom the idea of protesting would not occur.
No shade. I'm not trying to make anybody there feel bad for showing up or not, or that I'm not, or that there are many who would be that can't. Nothing but gratitude for all present. Again, thank you.
I don't get to speak for anybody else who isn't out there today. In offering my thanks to everyone who did show up today, for whatever that is worth, I also want to remind everyone marching that more follow than you can see.
Years ago when I went to my very first candle-light march for those we were losing every day to the plague, I was particularly struck by a couple of unexpected things. First, that neither the solemnity of the occasion nor our seriousness of purpose prevented us from quietly laughing, smiling, whispering, embracing our friends, probably in some cases even cruising. We were there to mark and remember the dead, not to imitate their regrettable silence but to protest the very injustice of it. So even when for once we were not loud, there was still the hum of life all around us; words, breath, cries, above and in a kind of rhythm with those thousands of marching feet. That is what made our silence, when it came, so powerful. "Media vita in morte sumus," indeed, but what I think I learned that night was that even in the midst of death, of mourning, of loss, we were in life.
Remember, it is no exaggeration to say that the people we were protesting then? They wanted us dead. At best they were indifferent to our deaths. Staying alive was not only necessary to our protests, staying alive itself constituted a protest. It still does.
The other thing I learned a little later, and this was a very hard lesson indeed, was that we are often called to witness for those who cannot. When I marched on Washington, DC, or across the Golden Gate Bridge, or for choice, or in support of the Farmworkers Union, whenever and wherever I was able to show up in my admittedly rather spotty efforts at activism, I was there not just for myself. I was there for my friends, for the ill, for the dead. That was usually about all I was actually good for. I was never an organizer, never a committee member, or a regular volunteer. I was just there. I represent my losses. I held a place for my betters, occupied some small corner of their absence.
So do that for me too today if you can. Not dead yet. Still fighting. Still defying these fascist sons of bitches. Thanks to all out on the streets today from one who couldn't make it out there today. I am with you. Untold millions follow behind. Our strength is in our numbers, our ancestors, the memories of all who came before and fought as you fight today for the dignity of us all.
I offer my thanks, and again, my thanks. And again. Again. Again.
