camping chair squatters, bedazzled wheelchair drivers,
pressed suit talkers, hazard vest walkers,
guide dog followers, pomeranian purse-carriers,
tattooed engine-revvers, lycra shorts bikers,
frog suit runners, masked furry dancers,
honking car shouters, silent truck-idlers,
Chappell Roan singers, Bible verse preachers,
covid-19 maskers, water bottle sharers,
plastic bucket drummers, hoarse-voiced chanters,
giggling shoulder-sitters, sunburned stroller-sleepers,
starry flag bearers, striped flag wearers,
sweating sign-carriers, folded fan wavers,
grinning peace-signers, middle finger flippers,
picture-snapping dreamers, bag-eyed doers.
I wrote this about the No Kings protest. I wanted it to feeling intentionally observational, noy judgmental, so none of the people are really identified as being one side or the other, or portrayed as good or bad. They’re all just people. And I think that’s what strikes me most at events like this, the variety of people who can all believe in the same thing for different reasons, either for or against. I think we like to reduce the ‘sides’ to these monoliths: blue-haired Berkley liberals or red-neck coal-rolling conservatives, but that’s not the reality at all. Each person is so unique. Their life experience has shaped their beliefs, and will continue to shape their beliefs. I began life as an extremely patriotic religious conservative, somewhere along the way got disillusioned with most of the stories I’d been peddled, and became an atheist leftist. I would still consider myself patriotic. I really believe in America’s ideals—that anyone could come here and be free, have safety, have a life, a good life. That’s been the case for many people who’ve washed up on America’s shores (like my family in the late 1800’s) and many migrants who’ve crossed deserts to be here for the last two hundred years.
That’s the not the reality for everyone who comes here, even legally. And somewhere we’ve lost the plot for many of the forgotten places of middle America and for those in struggling inner-cities. America doesn’t even take care of ‘its own’ anymore. But I still believe in America. I still believe it has good bones and that this is a dream worth fighting for. America has so much abundance. There are so many big-hearted and kind people here. It’s a beautiful land, from sea to shining sea. I think we deserve better than we’re getting, from our politicians and from the corporations we pay to heal us, feed us, and house us. I don’t know what the future for America is, but I hope I can say someday that I’m proud to be an American, that I come from a peaceful, nonviolent country that takes care of its people and its land.