Not Nothing, Again

Going to a rally, even a BIG rally, isn't everything. But it's not nothing. Got together yesterday in downtown L.A. with about 36,000 new friends and it felt good, if a little weird. I was five when Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington. I was twelve when four students were killed and nine wounded on the Kent State University campus. 

I lived in what can charitably be described as the boondocks and spent evenings watching the bad news and the protests on television. By the time I was old enough to travel to where the action had been, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had passed. And the Paris Accords and the fall of Saigon were behind us. As I became a more fully-formed adult, I regretted not having been able to participate in those fights against the war and for civil rights.

When we marched against the depraved war on Iraq, I thought, "There, I did it. I stood up for what was right now, and I would have done it then." It didn't work, but I and hundreds of thousands of others did the right thing. You have to live your life in a way you'll be proud of when it's over.

I didn't imagine that things would get much, much worse. I didn't anticipate that we'd be called to action not just to prevent our government from doing evil things, but to prevent our government from becoming an evil thing, a thing I'd read about as a teenager in my Social Studies classes while the civil rights and the war protests were happening. 

So yes, I largely missed the Big Ones in the sixties (except for the huge fights with my father), but yesterday, as I stood in Gloria Molina Grand Park with 36,000 other people ready to fight for the authentic American Dream, I understood that this was the moment. If, like me, you mostly missed the King speeches and Freedom Riding, if you missed the sit-ins and the burned draft cards, good news: THIS IS OUR TIME. 

This was the view from the cheap seats on Saturday:

 Not saying we'll win. Just that we won't win if we don't fight. And it's the proper way to live your life. Again, coming together to fight back isn't everything, but it's not nothing.