After the conversation
with the pro-Franken family, I needed to get away. On the way to finding a spot
on the Capitol lawn, we ran into an art project. We were asked to write our
thoughts on a popsicle stick (There was some kind of pun involved there, I
forget.) to be glued onto a “believe” poster. I wrote “Fuck Al Franken too.” on
mine and the young woman whose poster it was frowned at my contribution before
placing it on a pile of also-not-fucking-cheerful-enough rape thoughts.
Even
protest art seemed to have betrayed me. It truly felt like there was nowhere to
turn, like I would never be a part of anything ever again. This is a normal thing
to feel during a panic attack but this was a NATIONAL panic attack, a GLOBAL
one, fueled and pushed (I can only see this in retrospect) by all of my
enslaved and exploited ancestors and precursors, by ALL of the women (especially the women of
color) and girls and femmes and trans people and non-binary folks, all of the
non-white non-men who had fought for freedom against colonialism before me. When
I’m screaming, I’m screaming for all of us.
I can
see now there were generations, millennia, of pain and fear coming out of me in
racked, animal sobs. I honestly didn’t are who saw. I hoped they saw. I hoped
that the people around me could hear me but I ‘knew” in the way that a panicky
rape survivor knows that no one could hear me, no one could ever hear me again.
No matter how disruptive, how livid, how determined, no one in the world would
ever be able to hear me.
Amy’s
policy, whenever scared at a protest, is to find a friendly tree, so we did. We
sat on the grass and I tried to breathe. I was still starving so she gave me
her sandwich. I wondered what she would have to eat and I nagged her about it
for the rest of the day.
I sat
in the grass and scream-cried. I asked her if that women from China had really
said “me too” to me and Amy said yes, she had. I shriek/bellowed “WHY?” Like a
poorly written movie character. WHY does she have to go through this too? WHY do
they hate us so much?
I
felt so dissociated and lost that it seemed like we were done with the protest.
(Spoiler alert: We were not.) I wondered if we should start making our way to
the Hope Diamond, my favorite post-protest reward. Instead, I kept crying,
brokenhearted, feral, bereft.
At a
certain point, though, I realized that my crying might be disrupting the MAGA
hat couple, who were engaging in performatively “reasonable” conversations with
protester after protester. (I try not to hate those who take the Sarah Silverman,
let’s-empathize-with-racists tact, but I kind of do hate them. Talk to somebody
better!) When the spite started to re-emerge in my heart, I began to feel something
like okay.
Amy
and I decided to go back to the protest for fifteen minutes and then call it mischief
managed, but then we saw that the whole demonstration was on the move. It was
magnificent to see: Mostly women (cis and trans), mostly people of color, mostly
clad in black, fists held high. They were marching together for the Capitol
steps.
As
Amy and I joined the march, I had an inkling that this was going to be one of
the most powerful things I would ever see. I was not wrong.
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