I spent a good chunk of
last week working on my protest sign and panicking. I had terrible dreams. My
best friend/ex-wife can’t walk very fast and I dreamed that we got separated in
a crowd—I have recurring dreams of us getting separated and me screaming out “Amy!
Amy!” because she’s lost, then getting in trouble for screaming. So you can see
that as much as I tend to drag people for being afraid to protest, I was scared of this one.
For anyone who might have missed it, a group of white
nationalists planned a rally for Unite the Right II on in Washington, DC on Sunday the 12th,
the anniversary of last year’s tiki-torch hatefest. On the anniversary of a
white supremacist murdering Heather Heyer with his car. When I heard that
facebook was taking down some of the counter-protesters’ event pages, I sought
out a couple that hadn’t been taken down and RSVPed YES. My BFF agreed to go
with me and I made her promise not to get lost or murdered. I asked a favorite
neighbor to be my check-in person so someone could feed the cats and call my
mom if anything happened to me—since the March for Out Lives, this has been my
routine, and I’m grateful to have a neighbor who doesn’t mind!
Aside from my #sayhername series, (http://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2018/06/say-her-name-street-art-abolish-police.html)
this was probably the saddest protest art I ever painted. I had to put it in
the closet for the second half of the week to stem the rolling panic attacks it
inspired.
The other side was cheerier, and I was happy to devote
some time to my favorite new (to me) cause:
(For more info and the other unratified states, check
here: https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/states.htm)
I sproinged out of bed at 4:30 AM on the 12th,
but only so I could read my book for a while before getting ready to go. Amy
and I packed water, snacks, and sunscreen. She packed more phone batteries than
we could ever need, that’s a very comforting thing about Amy.
Next: Soothing Art and Pondering Antifa
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