I went to the Cincinnati sister march to the Women’s March
on Washington today. My wife went with me. So did a purported 14000 other
people. Then someone asked me why I was there.
This question threw me, so I had to think on it. What
follows is the best answer I could come up with.
I wasn’t there because I thought it would turn back time. I
wasn’t there because I thought marching and shouting would really and truly
change anything. I’m not stupid enough to expect miracles.
I was there because those who found themselves in possession
of an absurd amount of power were calling the election a popular mandate to
undo so much of the progress we, as a nation and as a people, had made over the
past decade. I was there because the talking heads were so vociferous that this
was what the “real” people of America wanted, when the whiny strains of the
east coast elite were removed from consideration.
I was there because I knew it wasn’t just me that was scared
of what the future would remove. That there were many other voices out there, trembling
at home in the dark. I knew that those in power could only delude themselves to
their divinity of right if they could call us few. I knew there were others
that believed the lies and thought themselves alone, besieged.
I was there because all of those people needed to see the
hidden truth. They needed to see us together. As much as we needed to see each
other. They needed to hear our voices and feel the earth rumbling from our
collective feet.
I was there because this wasn’t about me. It never is and
never will be. Every single one of us is too intricately tied to each other,
too bound up in unified existence. No spiritual or shit-science bull here, just
the very real fact that all of us are stuck on the same chunk of earth and don’t
get to pretend that we are islands.
I was there for us.
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