“General strike” is damn hard to pull off.
I skipped the first call. I forgot about the walkout.
So I decided to go for it January 30. Most of my students would be on a field trip, and I am completely caught up at work, so the only real cost to me was the day off.
So I called in, or rather, typed in.
Oh, seventeen-year-old Liz, who wanted a battle so badly, now your battle is here. But you bring a lot more wisdom to it.
I woke with a gigantic extra fuzz cat on me, biting my nose very, very gently, which meant, “Mom, the can. Get the can, Mom.” Sharper biting means, “MOM STOP NOW I WILL MAIM YOU.”
I paused to do a 30 minute yoga nidra, and to have my app tell me, “That’s 1 day! Think you can do 2?”
Don’t tickle my perfectionism, app. Even if I meditated every day, I would still suffer. Amirite, Buddha? High five.
I got up, saw my home was a mess, and used my now-classic five minute cleanup to turn the kitchen into a reasonable place.
I began The Bundling Process TM: two layers long underwear, tank top, t shirt, sweater. I chose a sign I’d previously used for a pro-choice rally (Trust Women) and took ye olde white duct tape to cover it up for a new sign.
I went with: “Justice and Due Process/We Protect Our Neighbors,” which seemed to cover a lot of bases. As usual, I was lacking a lot of E’s and S’s, so I got to work trimming 8’s into S’s and adding bars to F’s to make them E’s.
With three colors of letters jumbled up from different purchases, I ended up with J-u-s-t in black, and i-c-e in red, which wasn’t the vibe I wanted, so I got a sharpie to make the red letters black. I recalled that the letters are known to fall off. And that I was out of packing tape. So I plugged in the hot glue and hot glued my letters. Nice.
For good measure, I hot glued a bit of red ribbon, the last of a spool I used for a lot of Mardi Gras activity.
I love ribbon.
On to further Bundling TM: which socks? Can I cram a warmie patch in my boot? (I did.) Mittens. I saw my sock monkey hat. Recently Facebook reminded me that I wore my sock monkey hat in NYC and someone called it “so Brooklyn,” which was great because the hat had been purchased in Branson, Missouri, one of the least Brooklyn-ish places in the United States.
It’s good to look silly at these protests, because if people get rude, they look like the assholes.
I went with a beret plus sock monkey hat.
Of course, overalls.
Is all this going to be about what I wore? No.
I find it hard to eat when I’m hyped up (positively or negatively), so I took granola bars, applesauce, water, and a hot cup of cider.
Why do I have so much EQUIPMENT wherever I go? It’s just my way. Going to a Mardi Gras party, I have booze, tambourine, various levels of warmies, props, possibly our banner, oy.
I drove downtown.
How may protests have I been to in the last decade? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are three people who know. Twenty? Thirty?
I parked and spent a frustrating amount of time teaching my phone to use my debit card in the parking app.
Onward.
I like to survey the scene first. Behind the line of protesters, the snow was maybe half an inch. I padded along, ending up in the middle, where there was a hole.
My dear friend Julie O’Conner taught me to protest. One rule is: spread out. Look like as many people as you are! So I look for a hole, or stand on the end.
I found a hole, stood there for a bit. Looked up at people in the federal courthouse. We were along the back side of the courthouse. Apparently Josh Hawley, our shameless senator, actually has his office on the west side, but we had an open area to gather on the north. A couple of people gazed down from the full-length windows. Was federal court in session today? someone wondered.
I decided to hang out at the far end, tromped along, and found a hole.
Find a hole! Fill it!
(That’s what she said.)
(I’m sorry.)
The warmie patches I had stuck in my boots were having zero effect. I sipped my hot cider.
“So Hawley has his office in the federal courthouse?” I asked the guy next to me.
“I guess so,” the man said. He was white and white-haired.
We chatted further: he was a retired Methodist minister. He went to church right around the corner from my house. The same church where friends volunteer every week, getting clothes to people who need them.
I told him about taking my students on a field trip to the federal courthouse, and how fun it was. Maybe that sounded weird. It’s a lovely building, I said, and they have these huge sculptures called “tools of justice” in the lobby. And, I said, one of my students once got to ask a federal judge, “Why do we spend so much money on prisons, and so little money on schools?”
I almost died of joy at that moment.
I told him about where I teach, and he told me about growing up in Iowa, in a small town that was 100% white. “I’ve had a lot to learn,” he said.
“Me, too,” I said, explaining that my high school had exactly one black kid.
Josh Hawley, you may recall, is the gentleman who went out to see the crowd gathered near the Capitol, raising his fist in support of the mob that was about to attempt a coup.
And an hour later, he was, famously, scrambling away from the mob he’d helped riled up. Some would say he ran like a cartoon character, but that is just the way we joke because it’s so unbelievable and horrible and scary.
My toes hurt. I wiggled them and stomped my feet.
As people drove by, 9/10 were honking and thumbs-up for support.
One car had a kid in it who gave us a big thumbs down. Which was depressing. But hey, as a kid, I thought I was for Reagan. People grow.
“Hawley’s office is actually on that side,” a lady said.
I learned she was one of the cohort of Kansas Citians who regularly visit our senators’ and representatives’ offices, lobbying for an agenda I share: the Constitution, the rule of law, etc. I know another one of their group, and I am so admiring and thankful. There are multiple roles in a social justice movement: extremists, who push hard and make headlines; people who build and maintain connection with people in power in order to influence them; people who organize so that others may be heard; regular folks who show up at protests and contact politicians. I feel fondness for all these groups.
“I think we have ten more minutes here, then we go to the next location,” the lady said. “Some other people gathered at 12th and Oak, so we can walk there.”
I decided I needed to balance my mourning and rest with my activism, and that my hour at this protest was enough for today. I walked to my car.
It was treacherous, with puddles of ice and islands of snow remaining from our last storm. As I walked, a car pulled out of a parking lot, and then backed up, awkwardly.
Had I thought about being arrested, or attacked, or hurt? Yeah.
I didn’t think about it that hard. Ninety-nine percent of protests (in my experience) are boring as hell. Protesting is mostly standing in one place. I try to breathe. Get meditative, when I’m not chanting.
Former New Yorker that I am, they played “Solidarity Forever,” and I was the only one who sang along. I heart NY.
I wrote my phone numbers on my arm. Just in case. I wore my glasses. Just in case.
I can be cautious. It doesn’t hurt anything.
Like many of us, I wonder, what would I do if the shit really hit the fan, at a protest, or somewhere else?
What I do know is that when cops came into my ESL room years ago– long before this shit started going down– I stood vigilant, and looked hard at all my kids and sent them all my calm and love and told them it was okay.
I mean, plenty of my kids had been through shit one million times worse. I was the one who was freaked out. Not them.
They felt safe at school.
The dogs were sniffing for drugs, not human beings.
I have urges to protect, as most people do. And as small as the odd are I would ever be in any danger, after my yoga nidra (good stuff), it was reinforced in my mind: you’ll know what to do.
My therapist hit on that “wise mind” concept a lot. It’s a good one.
My wise mind thought, yes, stay away from work. And yes, go to a protest. And yes, get coffee at the Vietnamese place, which isn’t really breaking the strike because they are immigrant-run and immigrant-loving and need the money.
Let us all know what to do. Let us all allow ourselves moments to breathe and settle, so that we may bring peace with us, especially when pushing for what is right.
Going On 