Soapbox

This Moment in History

At this one moment in time…

There's a "Trumpocalypse" that is clearly happening in America right now. Remember when it was "Morning in America"? Not any more. We're about to encounter that 'darkest hour" and it's a long time til dawn. The times that try mens- and women's- souls.

Friday, January 20th… a day that will definitely live in infamy, the unthinkable happened and Donald J. Trump, the Orange Julius, the Cheeto Jesus, the Tiny Trumpkin, Comrade Trumpovsky, the Groper-in-Chief, the sociopathic 70-year-old toddler, the Tangerine Tornado, the Fall of Western Civilization, Putin's Puppet… was crowned. Er- "Inaugurated".
Despite everything:
~the fact that Hillary Clinton got almost 3 million more votes,
~that 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies agreed that Russia attacked America and influenced our election in order to elect Trump… and he called them all stupid and defended Putin,
~that he has the lowest popularity rating of any incoming president (he just says the polls lie),
~that he literally skips Intelligence briefings in order to meet with celebrities because "I'm really smart",
~that he has refused to divest from his business interests which means he was in violation of the Emoluents clause of the Constitution (and thereby impeachable) the second he took office,
~that his idiot sons were caught trying to SELL access to him at a New Years party,
~that every single cabinet nominee of his has proven to be either dangerously incompetent (Rick Perry didn't know what the Sec'y of Energy is supposed to do!) massively corrupt, such a blatant racist that he was once refused a judgeship, a religious zealot who thinks only Christians really have rights, utterly contemptuous of the Constitution, in personal communication with the hostile foreign power (Putin) who attacked us multiple times the day he story broke or has already made statements that ammount to threatening a war with China… or some combination of these,
~that he set out to purge every federal employee working on climate change, or who believes in climate change,
~that he purged the ambassadorial ranks not just making new appointments (of course) but summarily demanding ALL top staff come home his first day in office despite there being no replacement for them yet,
~despite the fact that literally every DAY he says something that is known to be a lie, shown to be a lie and just says "I"m not a liar, you are" like a 3rd grade kid, and that the U.S. Congress has both the power AND the evidence to simply set aside his election and demand a do-over or to impeach him the moment he took office… he was Inaugurated.

Yeah. 

Right after the election, once the numb horror wore off, someone came up with the idea of a Resistance March, specifically (but not exclusively) for women, as a way to tell the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief that we are not going to just stand there and allow him to turn us back into sex objects and second-class citizens.
WMW (Women's March on Washington) was scheduled for the day after  the Inauguration and boy did it catch on fast. Kind of like a prairie wildfire.
 

My sister Barb had the idea that the sisters should go. She heard that someone had arranged for a chartered bus from Athens and got tickets for herself, Julie and me. As the day approached, we heard that a second bus was needed, and that many, many communities across the nation were doing the same thing. It became clear that this thing was gonna be BIG.

Why are you being so divisive? Why can't you give him a chance? we were chastized.
WE are divisive? The man literally called everyone who didn't vote for him a loser and enemy!  He attacked civil rights icon Rep John Lewis, a man who marched with MLK and was beaten as a Freedom Rider fighting for civil rights as being "all talk" and told black people that they all live in slums. He trusts the dictator who attacked our country and attacks the men and women who defend it. He used up his chance the moment he took the oath of office when he was in violation of the Constitution.

Look I posted on my political page, my oath as a citizen requires me to uphold and protect the Constitution. To respect the presidency. Not the president. In fact it is my duty as a citizen to speak out, to tell ALL my elected officials what I want them to do and to try to, within the framework of the Constitution, stop them if they are violating the constitution. If I were to, as you demand, 'go along' with the man whose stated policy goals violate the Bill of Rights, I would be guilty of treason too!

So no. I'm not going to go along with White Supremacists and dictators who don't daily attack the press and demand that scientists literally not include proven facts in their reports because they don't fit his world view. Ain't gonna happen.This isn't just a guy I don't like, whose policies I disagree with. This is a guy who is deliberately damaging democracy for his own financial and self-aggrandizing gain.

So. The day arrived. I packed up the banner I had made from a homemade sheet, loaded the Women's March info app and the NPS map app on my phone (those would prove useless!) and headed out.

I drove to Athens, hung out with my sister Julie for a while to kill time. We got silly, wating for it to be midnight. The theme for the event was pink hats, which were being called "Pussy hats" for the famous statement/confession of Donald Trump where he bragged that he loves to just walk up and 'grab women by the pussy".

Now I have been comfortable with that word myself, but I've gotten a different take on it now. To me, when someone attacks and belittles you and turns you into a second-class citizen because of something as basic as who you are- you should CLAIM that word. Kind of like the way the LGBT community took back the word "Queer".

 

At midnight we loaded up (I took off the pink hat) and drove to where we were meeting the buses. Out of the foggy dark came woman after woman, clutching small bags and pillows, many wearing a pink hat. How many people are going just from Athens? I wondered.
I got on, claimed a seat and realized that I left the muffins I had baked in the car.
"Darn it. Is it worth walking all the way back to get them?" I mused aloud.
"Oh come on- how much will you want muffins in the morning?" the woman behind me asked, so off I went to retrieve them.
Everyone was cheerful and excited as we got ready to roll. I showed them my banner and said "Hey, we are putting the names of people who can't be with us in DC and causes that we are specifically concerned about on the back. Does anyone have someone they would like to have "march with us" today? A fair number did: friends, children and grandchildren.

 

And that was it. A head count was made and the buses headed out into the dark night with a bunch of semi-crazy, committed women crammed into the too-small seats.

It was after 1 AM so, excited as we were most settled down to sleep pretty quickly. I couldn't sleep, no matter what I tried. The seats were not uncomfortable but were small and there was no leg room, so muscles felt cramped. I listened to music on my iPod, which usually puts me to sleep pretty fast but failed me this time. So I sat and thought.
I thought about buses… dozens, hundreds- if reports were true more than a thousand buses from many directions, all full of (mostly) women, cargo holds full of signs and banners, all converging on the same place with the same goal, to be part of the same moment in time.

One of the reasons I wanted to go was because of that moment. I have often looked at photos of events like Dr. Martin Luther King's big rally in Washington and thought, of the people in the crowd- what is it like to look back on history and know that, at that moment in time, you were where you were should be? 
As opposed to people in old photos who are protesting desegregation, trying to block little children from going to a white school. While they may never have come to think that their views were wrong, they have definitely been judged so by history.
And I knew that, at this moment in history, at this vital crossroad where the history our great- grandchildren will read about (assuming Trump doesn't send the planet back to the stone age with his nuclear arms race) is being written… I need to be in the right place, on the right side. 

We stopped twice to stretch and pee- and I would like to make a quick shout-out to the guys using the rest stop in Maryland at 4 AM. Our two buses rolled up and 80+ women got out and started to line up for the bathroom- and one of us looked over at the men's room and shrugged… and pretty soon we were using that bathroom too. There were only 2 or 3 men who used the bathroom while we were there (through more buses came in as we were leaving) but they just stood in the corner at the urinals and didn't look at us, and we walked past quietly and didn't look at them, and it was all cool.
Thanks for sharing graciously, guys.

As we entered the DC metro area and the sun came up (sort of) we all set about checking the packs we would carry and getting a quick breakfast of whatever we brought. (Those muffins would have been better with a nice hot cup of coffee, but oh well)
So around 8 AM we rolled up to RFK stadium, where the bulk of the buses were permitted to park. Despite a dry forecast it had been raining lightly for the last 2 hours but while overcast, it wasn't raining any longer by the time we arrived. We drove past fields of buses, rows and rows of buses- and we were early. The lot wasn't nearly full yet. Pretty darn cool.

 We paused for a photo with our banner in front of the bus ("Fun Bus"! Oh boy) and joined the mass migration past the stadium toward the metro stop at the Armory.

Of course before we got there we had to pass the line of tables of folks selling their wares. I got a shirt, because you don't travel all night to do an historic march and not come home with the t-shirt. I didn't get this shirt- haven't embraced the pussy thing that much. But I thought the shirt looked really good on the guy selling it.

As we headed down the long escalator into the depths, our small group was singing. 
     Oh we're marching in Washington and we shall not be moved.
     Marching in Washington and we shall not be moved.
     For like a tree standing by the water- we shall not be moved!
As we got deeper into the opening the sound began to reverberate and grow… and more people joined in singing. We shall not be- we shall not be moved…

The subway was crowded but no worse than New York at rush hour, Julie reminded us. A woman on the car we were riding looked at all the be-signed and be-hatted women and said "I wish I could march with y'all but I have to go to work"
"Hey" I said "we are writing the names of friends and family who cant be with us on our banner. Want us to write you down too?
And that's why on the back of the banner it now says Subway Ciera and all DC workers.
We emerged back onto the street in a tide of pink and signs and noise. We just went with the flow, toward the noise, until… we couldn't go forward any more.

Holy cow. We entered an intersection of some street or another, trying to move toward where the  event organizers had said the march would start, but the people were packed in SO tightly that literally everyone was touching someone else. We kept looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, trying to get to where we could at least see one of the many big screens set up broadcastig video of the speakers, because while we could hear their voices we were behind the speakers and couldn't understand a word. But no one could move.
And yet people would come along, saying "excuse me…" and try to get past. And you would be like "Ok but I literally cannot step back one step to let you through" and they would just mash up against you to get by because what other choice was there?

At this point Barb's friend Anne said she was overwhelmed by the crowd (uh, yeah!) and bailed. We didn;t see or hear from her again for hours, but she was an adult so we figured she could take care of herself.

Alternately holding hands or holding onto the banner in a line like preschoolers holding on to a rope we finally oozed our way out of this incredible heaving mash of people and toward a side street.

It was in the middle of this that a woman I was moving toward said, nodding at my hat, "That is NOT Athens Ohio!"
"Yeah actually" I said.
"Are you kidding me? I'm from Athens Ohio!" she laughed, then gestured to the "Land of Enchantment" banner she was wearing and said "And now I'm from New Mexico."
Small world.

One police officer told us to go one way- farther up another traffic director would tell us something else. Everywhere there were people, talking and laughing and having no better clue than we had. So we took pictures and chatted with strangers we met and kept walking through the heart of our capitol. Every person we talked to was friendly- all the officials were very polite and even smiling, many saying "Thank you for coming" despite all the chaos we were bringing to their city. Well, I suppose they are used to it.

Navigating the really tight places was stressful and we now had no cell service to check maps or get updates from the march ogranizers but other than that- we didn't sweat it. The crowds were enormous. We figured that at some point everyone would start moving in the same direction and we would go along with them.

And the people-watching was amazing!

So many different signs and styles of pink hats. There were old ladies with rolling walkers and people with babies in carry packs and everyone in between.

And look who showed up to say hello! 

This woman just wasn't having it, and let the world know for… well, the entire time we were near her. I admire her stamina.

 

After a while we came to another intersection where there was still space to breathe AND we could see the broadcast from the stage… wherever it was. But out of the crowds we realized that rather than warm up, it was getting colder. Standing around, our muscles started to tighten up and our feet began to hurt. We moved off to the side, sat on the curb and wrapped in the banner for extra warmth while we listened.

About 20 minutes before the time that the event had said the marching would stop, we moved into the crowd. The mood was getting more excited. NOW something is going to happen! we thought.

And yet speaker after speaker after speaker talked. The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and other murdered children. Okay… Angela Davis! Fine, but… By this point, people were saying the same things over and over. We felt like everyone who had anything to do with the event was demanding the microphone, oblivious to the tired, cold, restless and pee-deprived (my kingdom for a port-a-potty!) masses in the streets. They were talking about important things but come on!! Please consider your audience, folks!

From time to time someone would start to whip people up and talk about the importance of moving forward, and the crowd would start to shout "Yes! now can we please actually move forward??" or words to that effect.

30 minutes after announced kick-off and we were still standing there… backs aching, fingers chilled. We tried stamping our feet to get circulation but they were too sore. And the crowd was getting annoyed.

From time to time a chant would sweep over the group- March! March! March! MARCH!!

But we never did. Finally after about an hour rumors started circulating- the march itself was called off because there were so many people in the street that there was noway to march. People were already standing in the streets the march was supposed to go to. But snice no one had any cell service we weren't sure if these stories were true.

Our hearts were still willing, our spirits were strong but our middle-aged backs were not happy. When a large tide of people began slowly moving out from our area, we flowed with it. At least we were going somewhere! we eventually moved with it all the way to the Washington Monument.  The only thing that stopped us at one point was when Madonna started snging. We all stopped and turned back toward the screens and everyone danced.

But then, even though we figured we were moving away from where the action was supposed to be, we kept going. We hoped for room to pull out paper maps from our packs (my lovely parck service app was useless without cell service) and despite keeping our fluid intake to a bare minimum it was after 3 and we needed to find a bathroom.

We finally joined a line for 2 (TWO! hundreds of thousands of people in town and they put 2 toilets out?) that only took 15 minutes of waiting to get into. They were full- I mean totally full when we got there but we held our noses and did our thing. (Later we learned that there were at least a hundred more port-a-potties on the mall which were  locked so marchers could't use them. It takes a special kind of douchebag to lock up half the toilets on a day when half a million women come to town. that's our president, folks.)

At this point we also got cell service again and did some quick check-ins with loved ones in Ohio. And yes- reports were saying the march was overwhelmed by sheer numbers and wouldn't happen. Oh well.

After some mis-direction we finally got ourselves pointed in the direction of the nearest metro statio that wasn't shut down (Really? Who shuts down metro stations right where a rally is?) and started off. At this point we got a call saying that the march was happening- just going somewhere else. It was going to the White house! No- it was on the mall! We were right there by the mall, and we could hear great surges of roaring crowds but there was no march in view from where we stood.

We walked until we reached the promised metro station and encountered a line to get IN that stretched back for half a block. A line that wasn't going anywhere.

We knew we had a long walk ahead of us to get back to RFK stadium and the buses. And we didn't know for sure where to go to find this alleged march, despite being able to hear it. And we were cold!
So we made the call. We stood in line for a vendor and bought the world's most expensive (yet at that point best tasting) hot dogs and set off for the capitol and our path back. At least walking warmed us up.
We followed independence Avenue and finally came to where the speakers and their stage had been. It was in the process of being dismantled by now, and the street was littered with trash and discarded signs.

To be fair- the trash recepticles were all full by 10 AM. People tried to pile trash carefully on top of the cans, then on the top of whatever walls, power boxes or whatever they could find. But after a while there really was nowhere to put the trash! Still- I felt bad. (We packed our trash back to the stadium with us)

We were part of a thick stream of people moving up hill and away from the "action" whatever it was and wherever it was going. The march had been supposed to go to the capitol but when we got there we found no sign that it had been there. We crossed to Capitol south- and entered a really lovely neighborhood!
Every building had different old architecture, so each beautifully maintained residence had its own charm.
"wow…. this is expensive real estate" Julie remarked. 
"Oh yeah- this is where senators keep their mistresses" I mused.
Almost every small yard also had a sign, white letters on black background, with a quote from Dr King on it. Really, it was one of the most charming and desireable neighborhoods I have ever walked through.

Ok, trudged through. It was a long walk- but except for our sore feet, not unpleasant. As the dark winter afternoon turned to darker winter evening we finally moved into cheaper real estate and knew we were getting near the stadium. Finally we passed the armory metro station we had gone in that morning, and it was disgorging huge clots of people.
"Those are probably the people who were waiting in line at Smithonian station when we were there" Barb said, and no one disagreed. Arond the stadium and we saw the huge field of twinkling lights that was acres of buses, now warm and open. We quickened our pace. While we knew our bus was in section 7-E, we had no clue how many others were there so we weren;t sure how hard it would be- but our "Fun bus" was only 2 rows back.

Home at last!

Neither Anne nor Mary Beth (who had also bailed out shortly after the march was supposed to start but didn;t) were there, but we boarded and started triage. Boots: off. Ibuprofen: swallowed. Food? Slightly stale muffins. Nuts. Chocolate. Yum- dinner! Julie had brough clementines for the two of us.

And then the bus captain came down the aisles with a box of snacks provided by Athens people who could't march but wanted to support us. Cashews, flat bread, homemade cheese… and wine. Boxes of wine and plastic cups.

Oh what a happy crowd we became. After all- we had marched on Washington, damnit! Whether we had gotten to do the official marching part (I'm not sure anyone on our bus did) or not, we were part of something important! And if everyone on the bus would have paid $10 for a cup of hot coffe at that point- we had dark chocolate and wine.

We also had cell service (and chargers on the bus seats) so it was time to take stock of the day. We shared stories we found online about all the sister marches across the country- record crowds  in LA, Chicago, Atlanta. (Even little Chillicothe Ohio had a crowd almost 5x what was expected!)
"They think it was the largest march ever in America!"
"Donald Trump is claiming that his inauguration crowd was bigger"
"Lying bastard!"

This picture from Reuters shows the crowd size s from the two days. And remember- a lot of the women never made it to the Mall because we weren't originally allowed to go there.
Donald Trump- Narcissist-in-Chief.

7 PM arrived and all the sheep were accounted for, so our buses backed out of their space and joined the herd of boxy buffalo heading away. We all chatted for a bit, but it was warm and dark on the bus and we were all exhausted so we settled in to sleep. I dropped off pretty fast and only woke as the bus slowed for a rest stop. 

When we started rolling again I looked out the window for a while and thought about that 'one moment in time' thing. I had definitely been there when history was made. The question is- will it be an historical side-note, or the beginning of a mass resistance that slows and eventually strangles the despotic, un-democratic, unconstitutional desires of the giant empty soulless anti-matter in a suit now occupying the Oval Office?
Unless this march is the beginning of something, it will be the former. 

Now I am home, pictures have been shared, laundry done and the banner is folded away in a closet- perhaps to be used at another march on another day. Final numbers show that more than 1 of every 100 people in America participated in a march somewhere that day! (Suck on THAT number, Mr Trump. Pictures don't lie.) So now we have to see- will the enthusiasm for resistance remain? Or will the propaganda forces succeed in 'normalizing' the destruction of civil rights in America?

Whatever happens, however long and bloody the road before us, I know that I can look back and say that, at that moment in history I know I was exactly where I needed to be, and on the right side of history.