#49 - I'm So Glad You're Here

Yesterday I went to Washington Square Park and marched with thousands of other people through the streets of New York.

It felt incredible. Being around people who were also grieving who were also afraid but who were also there and showing up was the only thing that could have made me feel even the slightest bit better on the day that Roe was overturned.

There were so many people there, and so many signs, and so much emotion, and it really reaffirmed for me that healing can only happen in communities. We are social beings, we do not heal on our own. The work can happen solo, but the healing is granted and perpetuated by communities, and we’re going to need strong and defiant communities that stand together to form real quick.

There were too many of us to fit inside the park, but there were speakers, and I’m not sure which speaker said it because it was very hard to hear and impossible to see, but one of them said something that pissed me off. She shamed people in the crowd who were coming to this event as their first rally and protest, especially those who found out about it on social media.

And like, it broke my fucking heart. It really did. We were in Washington Square Park, a.k.a. NYU’s playground, and there were so many young people there yesterday and I’m sure it was so many of their first rallies and I’m just so fucking glad they did come and show up?? Every rally is someone’s first rally!! I can’t imagine that I would have ever gone back if one of the first messages I had received was that I should have shown up sooner, or better. (And stop creating purity points for people to aspire to, does finding out about the rally in a less ~online form make a ‘better’ attendee??)

I am grateful to those who showed up. I am grateful that I live in a city where I got to feel overwhelmed by support and love and care and share my grief. I am so lucky to have access to spaces in which we can feel righteous and reaffirmed.

And I just think that shame won’t get us anywhere. We have to exorcise shame-based rhetoric in activist spaces. We have to get over the need to be first, loudest, best. We have to resist the attention economy when it comes to coalition building. (And I get the very human urge to roll your eyes at people for just learning about a topic that has been very important for a long time, but you gotta do that in private. In the group chat. Because when those newbies come together and join the group, we do actually have to positively reward them for showing up. People like to be seen and appreciated it’s why the attention economy is so strong in the first place!! I will literally bake ally cookies if it means more people will be allies! I don’t care if their motives aren’t the same as mine, I care that they’re there and that we have the same end goal! )

Please show up even if it’s your first time. Please don’t hold any shame over woulda/coulda/shoulda’s of the past. Yeah, sure the best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago, but I wasn’t alive then and I just got this seed, so the good news is that the second best time to plant is actually right now and we’ll get to watch it become a beautiful sappling together isn’t that incredible?? I do want the people who fought & secured these rights fifty years ago at the rally, just as much as I want someone there who used to be anti-choice. We’re on the same side now, and that’s what matters. It matters what we do today and if we’re going to hold the sins of the past over people’s heads we cannot expect them to show up at all. (And then we’ve lost collective power that they offer, and we’ll trap people in the sunk cost phalletic double down that humans so often do.)

Show up! In any and all forms that you possibly can. If you can donate, do! If you can march, get going! If you can talk to friends/family/coworkers about your beliefs and demand urgent action to protect the rights we’ve had stripped away from us, have those conversations often and loudly and unashamedly! Write things, sign petitions, get in Brett Kavanaughs stupid fucking little scarlet face and make his life miserable. The people who have reduced women to second-class citizens do not deserve a moment of peace. There is not a restaurant, grocery store, or judicial chamber that they should walk into without being haunted for their bullshit decision. (Also, the court has no way of enforcing it’s laws, that’s why the governors had to call State Troopers in to enforce Brown v. Board, just sayin’.)

And take care of yourself. Really, I mean that. Come to the rallies and know that it’s okay to head out if you get overwhelmed, or tired, or dizzy. Drink a lot of water, go with a buddy, make sure you eat, keep breathing, don’t get pushy, read up on what to bring/not bring, don’t take pictures that include people’s faces, turn off face ID on your phone, do not talk to cops, don’t sign petitions while at the rally, make friends and greet the people around you, chant along and don’t hesitate to amplify chants and start them yourself!

I recently read that it’s soothing to be outside and hear birds chirp because the birds don’t chirp if there’s danger, so when we heard them chirping our bodies are subconciously calmed because we know there isn’t an immediate threat. So this week I took a lot of little laps around the block when I got overwhelmed and didn’t wear headphones so I could hear the birds, and I did some deep breathing exercises when I felt my anxiety spike, and I did Yoga With Adriene videos both in the morning and before bed, and I’m trying to live intentionally because this is my life, these are our lives, and we have rights and we will fight for them and I won’t stop talking about this and I won’t stop fighting for women’s rights and bodily autonomy for all. Feminism is radical and it’s time to get radical again, and keeping everyone grounded and mentally ready and prepared is an important part of organizing. Take care of yourself so that you can better take care of others.

There’s more to say, there’s more to come, my thoughts are still scattered but I just wanted to get it out there that however we can show up, we must. Everyone is welcome to join the movement, and we should connect it to the global movements for women’s rights, and workers revolutions, and free healthcare for all, and basic human dignity being restored through universal basic income. We’ve gotta start taking mutual aid seriously, and listening to community organizers, and commit to deep canvassing during conversations, and meet people where they are and bring them along with us. We’re not free until all of us are free.

The only way to get through this is together. We are stronger than them, there are more of us than them. The Supreme Court is illegitimate, this is an illegitimate decision, I will aid and abet abortion, and we are not going back. This is bigger than we know, this is more insidious than I want to admit because the slide towards facist autocracy is terrifying but we cannot solve it by looking away. We must face it together, and the people will prevail.

I’ll leave off with one of the more cathartic chants from yesterday’s march:

Fuck the church, fuck the state, you can’t make us procreate.