Paths Crossed: No Kings
On taking to the streets with our anger and heartbreak.
As I was writing this today, New York City’s comptroller/mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, was arrested by ICE at an immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan for trying to protect a migrant from being taken. Lander was shouting a common refrain—these agents had no judicial warrant or authority to arrest this man.
I am so angry that I have tears in my eyes.
I am far from alone in being unable to adequately express the dissonance of everyday life right now, the heartbreak and disgust—alongside the heartening and the good, or the voice of my little niece as she sings “What a Wonderful World” across FaceTime in the cutest garble of 22-month-old speak.
I am not unique in asking, Who in the fuuuck are we right now in this country? Importantly, I know many of my BIPOC friends feel no surprise here, those who have seen it, known it, and experienced it long before it was given a megaphone and a permission slip. I understand that it’s a tale as old as time, and that my indignation and feelings of powerlessness are an empty well when it comes to doing the work.
An estimated 5 million people took to the streets this past Saturday. I was one of them. As I exited the subway in Midtown to walk toward the New York Public Library, an elderly woman asked me if she was headed in the right direction. We were both joining the droves who would march twenty blocks south to Madison Square Park. I asked her why she was marching, an obvious but particular question, and she said:
"I'm a Catholic. What is happening is a violation of my faith. Attacking the poor and the vulnerable. Jesus said 'Love thy stranger' for god's sake.”
“Amen to that,” I replied, her New Yorky Jewish sister, as she tripped over one of those delineator poles that edge the city streets. I was so glad I was there to catch her. But it begged the question I turned and asked many of the older generation alongside me with their canes and walkers—Did you still think you'd have to be out here doing this shit? What was your first protest? (Not hard to guess: Vietnam and Civil Rights marches).
Another woman said she was recently talking to her daughter about when the rage might bubble over—as change sometimes necessitates—adding that the issue is that she wouldn’t be able to run as fast as during the sixties.
One man said he’d originally made the giant “We the People” banner he held when the Patriot Act was on the table. He then said he was glad I knew about this incendiary Act. Cue my usual and enjoyable shock-value task of telling him I was forty-five and not in my twenties.
Other answers to the business of the day were short and sweet: “I hate Trump.”
Me? I simply note the feeling of strength that comes in community. Also, I need to buy a permanent marker. Scroll to the end to see my sign finding its kindred spirt during the weekend rain. Even the weather was protesting.
