It all happened so fast. It seemed like the people at
the front, with the big “NOVEMBER IS COMING” and “WE BELIEVE SURVIVORS” banners
in Women’s March font had been ready for centuries—I guess in many ways they
have. Maybe it’s my Chilling Adventures of
Sabrina binge, but I’ve been thinking a lot about inherited pain and
struggle, of power passed down between generations of women (ALL kinds of
women: trans, non-binary, femme, cis, etc.) all witchy, all trained. We had their
power with us that day, and it made everything easier for a while.
On a more earthly note, the training and organizing
that has proliferated since the founding of Black Lives Matter, since Tarana
Burke first tweeted #metoo, since the 2017 global Women’s Marches, and since
Emma González called bullshit on gun violence has us SO READY to fight, SO READY
to stand up against evil. We will only get better, more grounded, more
interwoven, more soundly knit. We have built and are building something
beautiful, every day.
The people (mostly women, mostly women of color, trans,
non-binary, butch and femme and cis and so on) crossed the police barricades
and made it up the Capitol steps so fast. They unfurled their banners and
chanted “Join us! Join us!” so we did. I grabbed Amy’s hand and led her through
a break in the barricade, streamed onto the Capitol steps with so, so many
others. There we were. On the steps. Facing the crowd. I faced the “E.R.A. NOW”
side of my sign toward the crowd and felt very classic and Seventies.
The noise was dazzling, shattering, reverberating off the
marble of all of those white supremacist heteropatriarchal buildings:
“We believe survivors!”
“We believe survivors!”
“We believe survivors.”
I looked out into the assembled crowd and misted over
from the magnitude of the moment. After a few more minutes, Amy said “Okay, now
it’s time to decide: Do you want to get arrested?”
I saw what she meant: dozens of black-clad police started
lining up at the corner of the steps.
I had no question of what I wanted to do. My first
student on Monday would be a little boy, a first grader who asks me WAY more
questions than I should answer about why we don’t sing “I Believe I Can Fly”
anymore and about every single other thing. At that moment, he was the highest
priority in my heart, pulling me back down safely into the crowd.
There, we had the chance to witness our steps-occupying
compatriots’ bravery. As we chanted to the police “Who do you serve? Who do you
protect?” Layers of protesters left the steps, while many others stayed to get
arrested.
The first two people to get arrested were a beautiful,
middle-aged, full-figured goddess of an African American woman and the white
clergyman she knelt beside, clasping hands at the front of the steps. Cheers
erupted for them. As much as I wanted to side-eye the white dude, the symbolism
was hard to resist.
Most of the arrested people wore brave, beatific
expressions, some with a hint of “Are we really doing this?” in their eyes. There
were people of all genders, many with a sort of wholesome, Unitarian-schoolteacher
look about them, shiny-eyed and hopeful. A gorgeous femme trans women of color
returned to the crowd, exasperated that they wouldn’t arrest her.
“Maybe it’s because I’m a candidate, I don’t know” she
said.
Of COURSE she’s running for something. Magical fucking
times!
One of the last people to get arrested was a blonde
woman of about twenty. She had perfect red lipstick on and subtly punk rock eyeliner,
and she was clearly having a panic attack. I saw the fear flicker into her
eyes, so out of place and yet exactly right in this moment of plucky
determination.
As the policeman put the zip-tie handcuffs onto the
young woman, cuffing her at the front of her body, I could see her start to
hyperventilate, could see her start to fight back perfectly reasonable tears. I
could see her wishing she could just FREAK. THE FUCK. OUT. I started to freak
out for her, sobbed from my safe place and wished I could run to help her. Her
fellow arrested young women gathered around her to help, breathing with her and
helping her to breathe. This young woman’s bravery, her vulnerability, her
trapped fear, will stay with me forever, will help me fight.
So much of survivorship is about feeling trapped,
immobile, voiceless. If you’ve never lived in a body that faces those
conditions, it’s hard to understand the risk that that young woman, ALL those
women, all those PEOPLE took. They faced the fears that I’m not always strong enough
to face, and they did it for me. For you. For our fellow survivors. For
America.
I promise that this sacrifice will never go unhonored
or unnoticed. I promise to honor that panicking young woman and her brave
compatriots every chance I get. I promise to always face my fears, to raise my
voice, to stand as bravely as I can for women of every category. I hope you can
make that promise too.
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