YOUR DAILY DYSTOPIA | 2017.01.22

SPECIAL POST WOMEN’S MARCH EDITION

I was struck by the sheer number of people at the Women’s March. The Resistance, if we call it that, is going to be led primarily by women. Here they are, leading the rest of us. There were so many people. The police in Washington D.C. kept talking about how many more people there were today.

But the folks in Washington D.C. weren’t the only ones speaking out. The bravest ones to me were the ones in small towns in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, upstate New York, deep in places where they could be threatened for speaking up, and speaking out.

Philosophically, I’m done with the idea of reaching out the Tea Party people and Nazis and their sympathizers who, at best, want to turn a blind eye to suffering and assault, and, at worst, actually want to do the hurting themselves. I saw a few of these guys, today. They seemed hopeful that someone would start a fist fight with them, something they could post on social media, maybe get a GoFundMe campaign out of it. They aren’t interested in peace with these folks. I’d rather win, and then let them reach out after we win.

There are people, alone, surrounded, by people who may want to murder them. As I’m writing this, right now, in a backwoods somewhere is a boy who was born a girl, a girl who was born a boy, a person born the wrong color for their area, a person who wants to love someone of the same sex, and should they be found? They could be murdered, they could be sent to a camp to be ‘converted,’ or worse. That’s happening now. That’s not waiting for Trump and the worst elements of fascism to strike. That’s right now.

Yet, in the face of all of that, in the face of women in real danger for speaking their minds in those small places, so many did it anyway.

That’s been on my mind for weeks, now. I’m glad I went. I got to meet some of those people this weekend. I heard the same thing from the people from the small places, like me. We have to teach the city people these lessons that we already know. That sometimes it’s not about winning an argument or changing someone’s mind, especially since, truly, sometimes it’s impossible. Sometimes it’s about having enough power to keep the people who want to hurt you, your friends, people unlike you, from having the power to do it.

I think we can do it. But only if we keep marching, in our mind’s eye.