Marching Against Fear

I knew the same evening that the Washington Women’s March was announced that I would be going, not to Washington but in LA.  I was done pulling the covers over my head following Trump’s disingenuous victory.  I needed to focus on how to be active and not depressed for the next few (please God make them very few) years. 
 

I kept flashing back to Nazi Germany and all those Jews and others who said nothing this bad could ever happen here because ‘we are a civilized, educated country’.  Jewish fathers told their trusting wives and children that the world was watching and no one would let the kind of atrocities that were being whispered about in the tunnels of life happen in their beloved Germany.  During my teenage years and into my adulthood I wondered if I would have been one of those trusting Jews. 

At twelve, incapable of understanding such atrocities, I devoured The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich.  

I have carried it around in my heart these past 6 decades.  Now that Trump is President, I know, on the deepest level that a lot of bad can happen.  I, unlike Trump, have studied history. 

As I thought about going to the LA Women’s March, my mind wandered through dark alleys.  There could be a mass shooting.  A stampede.  A Ku Klux Klan countermarch.  Arrests.  Mayhem.  Even death.   But I deliberately countered it with other thoughts.  So what?  Even if good people were crushed to death, I wanted to be among them.  I wanted to be willing to die for this cause, to make my voice heard, to take a stand like those resisters—Christians, Atheists and Jews—did during WWII.  Otherwise I would be one of those silent ones.  One of those cowards.  One of the train drivers who drove the children to the ovens. 

Unprotestingly.  Silent.  Or the doctors, also silent during Dr. Mengele’s atrocities.  I have despised them all these decades even while understanding the fear that prevented them from speaking up.  Will I speak up in 2017?

Here’s the thing:  I am claustrophobic.  I avoid crowds.  Once, years ago, I went on a demonstration to support Dukakis in LA.  It felt pretty good until the doors in the hangar slammed shut.  Suddenly I was trapped with thousands and thousands of people.  While everyone was listening to his speech, I was trying not to pass out.  Trying not to scream and pound on the hanger doors.  Trying not to tear my hair out in huge chunks.  I stayed then, and Dukakis lost.  But now, even if my protest doesn’t move the needle, my fear of a Trump Presidency must trump everything.  I need to be able to say that I was one of the ones who stood up and was counted.  Please, let it be etched on my tombstone.

When my friend S. said she would be organizing a female posse/pussy from her home in North Hollywood to go on the Women’s March, I jumped on it.  S. is tremendously capable and organized.  She is not subject to panic attacks, or at least I don’t think she is.  I would feel safe with her.  So, instead of going from my home, much closer to the march, I drove backwards to North Hollywood, parked on S’s street and met up with 6 women, most of whom I did not know.  To say S. was organized is a beautiful understatement.  There were muffins and bagels and tangerines and apples and water and coffee and printed directions to Pershing Square and City Hall, and two wonderful men who provided shuttle service to the train station and back again. 
 
See, here’s the thing about Los Angelinos.  Public transportation is still a mystery.  It exists, but most of us don’t know how, where or when.  For example, who knew there was such a thing as a TAP card?  But S. knew and e-mailed us directions on how to purchase them way before the March so we wouldn’t have to wait in lines.  Who knew that my local Ralphs sold them for two dollars?  Such a bargain!  All seven of S’s posse/pussies arrived at S’s house with fully loaded TAP cards.

My visions of the actual march were crowds upon crowds upon crowds trampling one another across downtown LA.  But I had not factored in getting to downtown.  North Hollywood Station was so crowded that the lines snaked around for blocks.  Once on the platform, there was no room to breathe.  No room to move.  No room to flee. 

Even though North Hollywood was the point of origin, the trains that stopped at the station were already fully loaded with passengers squashed up to the glass doors.  They had somehow figured out a way to stay on the train even though North Hollywood was the point of origin. Everyone waiting on the station was calm and good humored though, which I kept repeating to myself as we stood one foot from falling onto the tracks.  Two trains later, we were on.  I have no idea how.  Somehow, there we were, the seven of us in a fully packed train.  Standing, clutching, but still breathing.  Some people, from the packed platform full of happy, anxious, soon-to-be marchers, tried to squeeze on at each station as soon as the doors opened.  The more aggressive amongst us, already in, shouted ‘no more room, no more room.’  Little kids in the train were freaking out, overwhelmed by giant bodies crushing them. 

We managed to get a young woman to give up her seat to 2 kids and a parent, although I couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t thought of it by herself.  As we approached Pershing Square, some twenty minutes later, I was stunned into suffocating silence, waiting for worse to come as we clawed our way above ground. 

But everything after that, i.e. the actual march, was not too bad, even though there were a reported 750,000 people coming and coming.  I got used to being there and started to like it.  It was HUGE.  Truly huge.  No alt-facts here. 

We skirted the outer rim of the crowd, all of us having read the post from another friend that one could avoid being stampeded that way.  There were moments of panic, like when someone yelled ‘watch out –abandoned back pack’ and I had visions of it exploding as we wended our slow way to City Hall. 

But nothing bad happened.  The porta-potties worked.  Everyone was polite.  There was more breathing room in downtown LA than on the trains, and it felt great to be standing amongst so many like-minded people. The signs people held were inventive and funny.  It was invigorating to be out of our cars, walking the streets of downtown, just like NY or San Francisco.  It made many of us realize how, when we get out of our cars, take public transportation, and unite for a common cause, we are a real city!

So, now what?  Time has passed.  A short time into Trump’s Administration, things seem to be getting crazier.  Conspiracy theories and paranoia abound.  Trump and his white alt-team seem to be deliberately creating chaos so that they can push through their extreme agenda with a punch drunk opposition who don’t know which way to turn.
 

I feel he’s not smart enough for such forethought, but then there are the Koch Brothers and Bannon and all the rest of his extreme dark cabinet.  Can we win the long haul?  My black husband, feels pretty dark about all this and wonders if he will be forced back to being a Negro again, something he thought he’d left behind 6 decades ago.  Is that how far the Trumpers will take us back? 

The students on the community college campus where I work are freaked out.  Many of them are refugees and recent immigrants.  They are the people who love this country with the devotion of survivors.  They believe in our freedom and democracy.  They believe that here, everyone has an equal chance to thrive.  They believe that the government will provide a safety net. Whenever there is a Pledge of Allegiance, their hands are clasped against their hearts with a zeal not seen in most Americans.  The Hispanic waiters at our favorite restaurant, legal and hard-working and bright and devoted to making a better life for themselves and their families, even they are talking about going back to Mexico.  Maybe that is the trump card.  Make things so intolerable here that most will leave.  Already, despite Trump’s pretend grown-up news conference, the ICE men are arresting mothers and fathers and children whose worst crime is a parking ticket or a public protest.  They are attempting to deport them without due process.  I pray my monthly donation to the ACLU will make a difference.

And they are scared—legal and illegal immigrants.  Good Americans.  Young and old.  They see Trump’s face scrunched in red-white hatred.  They read his nasty tweets.  They are alarmed at how he is alienating all of our friends.  (Who alienates the Aussies?) They remember where they came from.  The dictator who did whatever he wanted.  Who targeted people for their religious beliefs, like President Hassan Rouhano towards the Bahia in Iran? 

“ Since President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration, at least 212 Baha’is have been arrested, thousands have been blocked from access to higher education, and there have been at least 590 incidents of economic oppression, ranging from intimidation and threats against Baha’i-owned businesses to their closure by authorities. More than 20,000 pieces of anti-Baha’i propaganda have been disseminated in the Iranian media during President Rouhani's administration.” Current situation | Bahá’í International Community
https://www.bic.org/focus-areas/situation-iranian-bahais/current-situation#PBgytcu9msb98qm2.03

And what is so threatening about the Bahai religion?  “The fundamental principle . . . is that Religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a continuous and progressive process, that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony, that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their teachings are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, that they differ only in the non-essential aspects of their doctrines and that their missions represent successive stages in the spiritual evolution of human society.”
From the Bahá’í Writings

One student, a young talented photographer who speaks excellent English, told me that although she was top in academic standing in Iran, during her first semester of college in Iran she was called into the President’s office and told that she was no longer welcome because she was Bahai.  She was forced out simply because of her religion.  So, when she came to America as a refugee and enrolled in a community college here, she expected things to be better. Now, she is not so sure.  Under the Trump edict, she would not even have been allowed to come here in the first place. 

Put a human face on Trump's targets.  That’s what the incredible resistance group I recently joined says.  It’s easy to target all Muslims (Read: Jews. Read: Blacks.) But when you personalize who they are, it is, hopefully, a different story to those who have hearts and are not narcissistic billionaires. Wait a minute.  Isn’t that the entire White House team?

Somehow or other this group invited me to join.  Courageous Resistance.  I was optimistic.  I felt I could do something.  I could be on the front lines.  But here’s the thing:  it revolves around hashtag this and hashtag that.  Getting on calls across the state, some of which I am having trouble accessing because of computer issues and work.  Not to mention being an introvert and hating to interact with strangers.  But, this is how one saves America from the narcissist, right?  The Narcissistic Right.  Although I read that a psychiatrist is denying that Trump is mentally ill—just a bad person.  Putting a mentally ill label on him is not fair to the mentally ill.  I like that theory.  Mentally ill are not necessarily rude or crass or ugly.  But he is.  So what does that make him?  Rude and crass and ugly. 

Is it deliberate chaos?  Are the Dark Money Koch Brothers behind it?  How carefully is it being orchestrated?  I am not a conspiracy person kind of gal.  But in this case, I think Trump has a kind of evil genius in diverting us from the real issues.  After the firing of Michael Flynn, Trump held a press conference in which his behavior was erratic, rude and crazy.  And every minute it changes.  First it was Hilary.  Now he is blaming Obama in his frantic, erratic and paranoid tweets.  Tomorrow it will be something else.  But what if he were just trying to divert us from the real issues that have to do with his tie in to the Russians and when and what he knew?  And even more damaging facts.?

His followers love that he is trying to destroy the government.  Wait until their towns have a crisis.  Or when their healthcare no longer exists.  Or when there is no social security. Or they can no longer breathe the air without a mask.  Or when they can’t trust their food from the store.  Or when their prescription drug prices are so high that they die before they can pay for them.  Let us hope there is time for them to realize the extent of that loss. 

Trump is an actor.  Not a great actor but a practiced one.  He can sound however it serves him to sound.  But the essence of who he is—Ugly!  My husband always says that America doesn’t do ugly people.  I pray he is right.  Because you can’t get much uglier.