Personal essays
On showing up at small local events
Change of Seasons
The leaves are starting to turn colors and fall to the ground.
I’ve always loved this time of year. The air is crisp, there’s a particular kind of smell, and it’s the one time of year I can find concord grapes in the stores.
Here in Ohio, summer can be too hot and winter can be too cold, but fall and spring are just right.
Last week I was doom-scrolling through a dating app and an answer caught my eye.
The prompt was, “Describe your perfect date.”
The woman answered, “April 14. The temperature is perfect, the trees are budding, the flowers are appearing and sometimes there’s a nice spring rain.”
The rest of her profile told me she wasn’t right for me, but that answer made me smile.
To go or not to go
Other decisions take me longer.
I’d gone back and forth on whether to attend the October 18 No Kings protests or not.
There was a big part of me that wondered, “what’s the point?”
What would these marches accomplish?
Many friends have complained that the marches are not bigger and more focused on action.
I was traveling and missed the last protest and thought I’d like to be a part of this one. On the other hand, I was ok with not going.
I checked the website and my local one was listed as above capacity and wasn’t accepting RSVPs.
There was one in downtown Cleveland and several on the east side. A friend of mine was going to join in the weekly protests outside of the local Tesla dealership.
The organizers of No Kings will often say that if you have to travel far to get to your nearest protest, then you should organize your own.
I decided to go to my local one.
I’m so glad I did.
Showing up
It was a busy Saturday. I’d signed up to get my flu and COVID shots around noon and had yoga at 2. But in between, I headed over to my local No Kings protest.
I didn’t have a sign and it didn’t matter.
I’m not good at guessing crowd sizes but I’d say there were a couple of hundred people standing at the side of the road, some with signs, some not.
Again, I don’t know how many were there. It wasn’t huge but it also wasn’t small. I later found out my neighbor was there too and we hadn’t seen each other.
I immediately got my answer to the question “What’s the point”.
All of these people saw that they weren’t alone.
I can’t speak for other locations, but at my location the only crime I saw committed was that now and then someone would cross the road outside of a crosswalk.
Some people came dressed up, many had signs, all felt better for being there.
Cars honked in support as they passed by. The crowd was energized by the support and raised their signs and waved a friendly thanks to the drivers as they passed.
A woman next to me pointed to a woman in a wheel chair who was holding a sign. “She’s 97,” the woman told me.
Another woman leaned in close and said, “actually, she’s 96. She won’t be 97 til next month.”
That was the biggest confrontation I saw.
It was a beautiful day of people seeing others like them.
The crowd was mostly filled with people my age and above, but there were plenty of young people and even kids.
For not against
I flashed back to my youth and the marches against the government’s involvement in the Viet Nam war.
Then, just as now, the government tried to paint the protesters as communists who hate their country.
Then, just as now, the protesters were Americans who love their country and want it to be better.
My watch tapped me gently reminding me it was time for Yoga.
On the way to class I listened to a podcast which complained that instead of these “little local protests” we should have one big protest in Washington.
They went on to say that instead of No Kings, the protest should have been a “Release the Epstein Files” protest. You know, something concrete.
I think they’re wrong on both counts.
These little local protests remind us that our neighbors are not all supporting this regime with authoritarian tendencies. It can sometimes feel that we’re all alone but people from Alabama to North Dakota, from Florida to Washington State saw people just like them who were out to protest.
It wasn’t some distant event in the nation’s capital that could be dismissed and ignored. It was something they either participated in or drove by.
As for the Epstein files - sure that’s all bad - but I’m more worried about ICE raids, and attacks on Science and Democracy.
I’m happy for all of the things that come under the No Kings banner.
I’m sure it will change, but this week, I think my perfect date was October 18.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 291. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe