As We Take to the Streets
In a day of juxtapositions and contradictions, we gather. In protest, from one end of our land to the other. But with equal and opposing force in but one location, our nation’s capital. In celebration.
The United States, in the eyes of many, having succumbed to its worst impulses. But others are just as resolute in the belief we have now regained our equilibrium, our strength.
We take to the streets, each with our own vision. For those like me, we struggle to battle the headwinds. I have been to many a march, many a protest. Each bringing into focus our particular grievance. Yet I find myself wondering whether it is ever enough. Do those who I wish to engage with ever listen, ever give themselves to questioning what they have wrought? And can there be any more deaf to our words than Mr. Trump who resides in a universe of his own origination, his own imagination? How does what I do, what we do, tomorrow make him question, make him reconsider the choices he has made? The dire consequences that follow inevitably from his grotesque manipulations and distortions. The answer, I fear, is far too self evident in the question.
No kings we tell him. No kings, as he brings the military before him in a show that has no corollary in our democracy, no place in our democracy, but is frighteningly reminiscent of what we have witnessed in other lands, in places ruled with iron fists. Where pomp and circumstance have meaning well beyond the confines of the moment.
Tomorrow I will be with many I have seen on other similar days. We will stoke the flames of protest, gather strength from each other's presence. We will damn those who have brought us to this place, to this time. We will question, as we do each day, how we ever got here. And how, how, how, can we now bend the arc of this nation in the direction of justice and reason.
Opposing forces will take to the streets tomorrow. Each draped in the unequivocal understanding that they are the true face, the one undeniable voice of America. God help us all if that voice does not belong to those who stand with me, stand beside me.