Salt Lake City’s Women’s March, held on the first day of the Legislative session, was reported to be one of (if not) the largest demonstration ever held at the Capitol in the state’s history.
We were just sitting around playing blocks and practicing how to sit upright. Elenor and I, I hate to brag, are way better at it than Harvey, but he’s getting pretty good. Only a face plant or two a day. Anyway, it was snowing out but really bright, and the natural light soaked our living room.
I had shoveled the driveway (which I always do with my favorite Cuban radio station on Pandora piping into my headphones because the best way to stay warm is to do 75 percent shoveling and 25 percent dancing) and we went grocery shopping. Laundry was tumbling in the dryer and El was making a roast. For the most part, it was a pretty routine Saturday – maybe even mundane.
Except that in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall, and in Park City and New York, and Los Angeles and Dublin and Paris and all over the world people were taking to the streets. It was like watching a tennis match with my eyes bouncing between my smiling son and the news of the marches taking place worldwide.
My friends near and far bundled up, many in pink cat-eared hats, and braved Parley’s canyon or the D.C. metro with their witty and poignant signs. As of my writing this, the latest estimates are that 2.9 million people marched that day across the United States. I’ve read references to it as the largest single-day protest in American history.
That’s something.
But, protest. Hm.
Yeah, I guess this massive uprising was born out of resistance, but I wouldn’t expect to see that much hope, drive and optimism coming from people solely digging in their heels. So, semantically speaking, we can call it a protest or call it the resistance, but fundamentally I feel like what I’m seeing is a movement. A revolution. A fight for something more than against.
The same was true of last Monday’s march here in Salt Lake City on the first day of Utah’s Legislative session when thousands upon thousands of us literally, as my wife pointed out to my sister and me, walked uphill in the snow. We marched for inclusion, for fairness, for representation and for freedom. We marched for women, for people of color, for people who are differently-abled, for the religious, the non-religious, the planet, and for autonomy and safety.
Over and over someone in the soggy but energetic crowd would yell, “Show me what democracy looks like!” And we would holler back, “THIS is what democracy looks like!”
And it is! Surely, part of democracy is made up of those who are solely positioned to resist; they’re the defense, and they are critical. But, I have this beautiful visual in my head of tyranny at one end of a tug-of-war, with the rest of us on the other end – some of us facing the opposition with our heels deeply dug, and most of us charging full steam in the opposite direction toward justice. We might be doing it differently, but we’re doing it together.
What strikes me is that Americans en-masse are finding our commonalities instead of fixating on our differences. Certainty not every one of the estimated 2.9 million marchers believe in the same things or agree on how we should move forward, but it seems like we share a common desire to find agreement and to take care of one another. And that is glorious (and pleasantly pinker than I ever imagined).
I‘m overwhelmed by humanity and our resilience, our collective power and the deep compassion we find when we see beyond our fears – when we see each other.
I share my deepest gratitude to the millions who through resistance and revolution are courageously swimming upstream to ensure that everyone – including families like mine – can live freely and safely (and even mundanely).