Member-only story
What the #Resistance Taught Me
Yes, it could feel performative. But protest during the Trump years provided me with the civic training to undo the damage.
Four years ago, I packed a small bag and prepared to captain a charter bus from my home in Ohio to Washington, D.C., for the Women’s March. I don’t knit and didn’t have one of the pink hats that so many women were wearing that day. I felt the hats acknowledged sexual assault but also somehow made light of it in a way I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. I wasn’t one among the many who made their worried hands busy, knot by knot, trying to symbolize the affront to women’s bodies that Trump’s callous words and actions epitomized.
Along with my portable phone charger I packed vague notions of righteousness. Our country is better than this, I thought. She should have been president. I also shoved in small, personal fears and zipped them away. With my small voice, I’d have to shout over a busload of mobilized women, giving directions about where to meet, how to get to the march, and how they could get back on the bus home. The pull of that very small duty compelled me to stand up that day, be heard over the din, and manage a pocket of the impending chaos.
We spilled into streets jammed with people, all of us craning to see speakers like Gloria Steinem. A few feet away, a mother muttered “okay, okay,” as she scooped up her panicking kid who was smashed by the sea of legs. The crowd swallowed their gap.
As we marched, shouting “YES YES, FREE PRESS,” I had only a loose sense of the threat Donald Trump’s aspersions posed to reporters. I felt the power in my throat, calling out against what seemed to be a philosophical affront to truth, and a growing distrust of those who spend their days sorting fact from falsehood.
I certainly did not understand that in just a few years’ time our country would be divided over what constitutes reality. I did not fathom that our narratives would become so fragmented by social…
