Troublemakers – Persimmon Tree

Posted on December 11, 2016January 8, 2023 by admin · 18 Comments

Troublemakers Making Trouble

Dear Readers,

The startling outcome of the presidential election has thrown much of our world into confusion. We here at Persimmon Tree want to make the magazine part of the fight for sanity and safety in the country and in the world. There is too much at stake to stick with business as usual.

To that end, we plan to include our thoughts and responses in forthcoming issues and we invite all of you to do the same. We are creating a section for short pieces (about 500 words) similar to the ones below by the members of our team; we will also consider longer pieces for the other sections. Beginning with the Spring issue, we will include your contributions; we are also thinking about posting (with your permission) some suggestions on our Facebook page. Of course, the magazine’s mission has always been to encourage and support women writers and artists over sixty; that mission still stands. But we can also be a forum for resisting chaos.

Sue Leonard, Editor: The evening of December 1, on the Manhattan 6 train, three men shouted, “You don’t belong here!” and “Donald Trump!” at an 18-year-old Muslim woman and tried to pull off her hijab. An 18-year-old. In Manhattan.**

I am an old hand at protesting. I lined up to march, with a million people, from the United Nations to Central Park for disarmament. I marched in Washington D.C. to keep abortion safe and legal and I brought my students. We sang “Bread and Roses” as did Judy Collins. I supported and then ran the Pledge of Resistance, hoping to prevent an American invasion of Nicaragua during the Sandinista years. I committed civil disobedience many times for many causes. But I have never felt the despair or anger I am feeling about the goals and members of the government taking power in January. So many groups are vulnerable because of their overt misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and contempt for science.

So far I have sent checks to organizations that are already moving into action. I have signed every petition that has come my way. And I have agonized about what else to do. The week after the election I did some research, looking up every website anyone suggested. I responded strongly to Planned Parenthood, but found, not surprisingly, that right now, they have many, many volunteers; I will return there if Roe v. Wade gets any shakier. Black Lives Matter also pulled at me. But the cause that resonated most strongly was the plight of immigrants; I was especially attracted to those groups that advocate for children on the verge of being deported; I plan to volunteer there.

I will say NO in any way I can. I will correct anyone who uses the term “alt-right” when they mean White Supremacists. Finally, if, indeed, the new administration registers Muslims, I will register, however one does that.

As the wonderful Grace Paley said, “the only recognizable feature of hope is action.”

**On December 15, the New York Times reported the story was fabricated by the young woman. Although there have been many hate attacks this year, this was not one of them.

Wendy Barker, Poetry Editor: Like so many of my friends, I woke up on November 9 feeling as if someone had died. As if I suddenly lived in another country, one whose values and actions were not only repellent but downright dangerous for me, my family, my friends, my communities, and the world. The world! With climate change at crisis point, to suddenly have in power a man (man?!) with no principles, a serious narcissist, sexual predator, cheat, scammer, misogynist, racist, Islamophobe, anti-Semite, and xenophobe who has unleashed such hatred and viciousness has brought me to despair. For days I was bent in deep depression. My students were stunned and depressed. I told them, “We must keep on keeping on. We must. Your voices are more important than ever. You must keep writing and we all must keep on keeping on.” In class, I quoted Yeats’ “The Second Coming” and Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility.”

And then, on Saturday, November 12, my depression turned to fury. And energy. I wrote the director of our wonderful independent arts organization in San Antonio, Gemini Ink, and suggested that we organize a gigantic protest gathering of regional writers around the time of the inauguration. She and her staff got right on it, and now we have over a hundred people committed to participating on January 15. Turns out that, thanks to PEN America, communities all over the U.S. are organizing such events on January 15, MLK’s birthday.

We will not be silent. I will give all the money I can possibly manage to causes I believe in. I will do everything I can to feel that the little bit I can do, the little I can give, will make a difference. If in my twenties I was too busy teaching, trying to keep fourteen-year-olds in West Berkeley from overdosing down by the train tracks, now, in my seventies, I can become an activist.

On my refrigerator, on my desk, and in my purse, I keep this statement from the Talmud (and I’m not even Jewish, though my husband is): “Do not be daunted by the world’s grief. … You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.”

Linda Boldt, Editorial Board: In this year of the unexpected which now looks forward to the unpredictable, I’m finding it hard to get my bearings. In the public arena, I have long been questioning authority, fighting the good fight. I’ve been called a troublemaker but I’ve also been called a change agent. Where to put that kind of energy and involvement now?

I’ve been making trouble for about five decades: objecting to student government rules in high school, male and female dorm rules in college, the war in Vietnam through the ’60s and ’70s.

During my 30-year teaching career, I became a change agent for progressive education reform, which often involved being a troublemaker. I championed cooperative learning, child centered education, teaching as drawing out, not putting in.

When my son came out to me in the ’80s – he in his teens – I naturally became involved in groups for parents of LGBTQ children, and groups that worked with LGBTQ students.

At the school where I taught for most of my career, I agitated to see women, people of color, and gays included in the curriculum, from lower school classes about families to high school literature and history classes. For 12 years Sue Leonard and I organized monthly meetings of faculty/staff where we talked about the stuff that’s hard to talk about: race, class, gender identity.

We have a new president who likes to be unpredictable, so it isn’t possible to anticipate what a Trump administration will be. Is more going to be required of me if my neighbors are threatened by new laws, harsher conditions, random hate crimes? Which private institutions, religious or charitable groups are going to be most called on if some of our darker worries are realized? How can I then help them?

For now, I am holding my breath and paying close attention, to see where I might be most needed to continue to fight the good fight.

Kitty Cunningham, Editorial Board: I am not a troublemaker. I am nearly 82 years old and all my life I have avoided trouble. Born in the ’30s, raised during the ’40s and World War II, married in the ’50s, motherhood in the ’60s – I have defied convention but never made trouble, even as a teenager. I applaud my colleagues who have marched and protested but I can’t do it. Now my legs won’t do it either so I am confronted with dealing with the unbelievable horrors of Trump and Co. by signing and contributing money where I can. I am a firm believer that the arts can save people, but when the arts mean nothing to the politicos that makes me angry.

Marcia Freedman, Fundraising: I am 78 years old. In my past – from my thirties and forties, up though my fifties and sixties – I was known as a firebrand, a radical, out on the streets as well as in the parliament. But now, in my seventies, though I am still a political animal, my life is quiet, more oriented toward family and friends, more close in.

And then, a bit more than a year ago, Donald Trump began to win Republican primaries. I was overcome with a deep sense of dread that the man was a despot and he would be our next President. But I did not get out on the streets for Bernie Sanders, whom I supported, or Hillary Clinton whom I could support. I clicked to add my name to on-line petitions, donated on occasion the modest amounts I could afford, and followed the news ravenously. That was the extent of my activism. Truthfully, I did not recognize myself.

And now, Donald Trump has won the election, and I believe that he is a dangerous man and what he purports to represent and the people he is putting in positions of power are a serious threat to our democracy, which, after all is said and done, depends on the consent of the governed. The governed have now given their consent to an erratic, canny individual used to wielding power autocratically irrespective of any ethic other than his bottom line, deeply obsessed with “winning,” and craving the adoration of crowds. And now, by the look of things at publication date, he is surrounding himself with racists, fascists, and incompetents. It is truly, from my perspective, a frightening time. It is the first time in my life that I have felt that political activism was not just a choice, though an impassioned one, but a moral imperative.

So what am I going to do? Surely clicking and donating my occasional $35 is woefully inadequate to what I see as at worst the first serious threat to the foundations of our democracy in history, and at least a four-year orgy of roll-backs of everything I have fought for all of my life. What is this old, neglected body, which cannot walk two blocks without stopping to rest, capable of? I am in awe of those old women who continue to put their bodies on the line, but I cannot imagine being one of them. So what do I imagine I am physically capable of and energetically able to do that has a chance of disrupting the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic zeitgeist that has overtaken our body politic?

I don’t have the answer to that yet, but I do have one lesson I’ve carried forward throughout my activist life. Organize. Start with those close in and move out from there. Know one another’s stories. Get close. When the shit hits the fan, be ready to respond as a caring unit. In the meantime, in all the small and large ways of possible resistance, do it. Do not be lazy. Do not avoid confrontation. Resistance is a full-time job. This is what I have been telling myself these past few weeks, reminding myself of what I already know.

It is time to come out of retirement.

Gena Raps, Music Editor: Growing up as a prodigy pianist at Juilliard, I was the child who was supposed to be perfect. And I worked hard to be perfect. Trouble-making years came after I met up with the impediments to making a career.

As a Juilliard graduate in the ’60s I thought the world my oyster. I didn’t know oysters were reserved for men. I was rudely awakened when my distinguished mentor explained that he had recommended my colleague to play with one of the top violinists in Carnegie Hall because the top fiddler wouldn’t go on stage with a woman. My colleague is now one of the top pianists playing regularly in our top concert halls.

Dedicated to the cause, my trio (of three women) played at international concerts of music by women, and went on tour. I aligned myself with UNIFEM (U.N. Development Fund for Women) and organized a concert tour of the Philippines for my New York students, representing the Fund and its call for women’s rights.

As a mature American and a New Yorker, painfully concerned about immigration, health care, and the environment, I protested Trump’s election at Trump Tower on November 10, 2016.

As a Jewish woman, I have been blessed to be part of the original Seder Sisters celebrating Passover in new and radical ways, started by E.M. Broner in 1975 and continuing to this day. In the early ’80s one Seder began “I’m Gloria Steinem and I’m a troublemaker.” As we went around the circle other women, such as Bella Abzug and her two daughters, Michelle Landsberg, and Letty Pogrebin, echoed the claim, raising our voices to the heavens, a circle of proud troublemakers.

As a pianist, I’ve brought to publication forgotten and unknown women composers and have performed and recorded their music.

None of this seems enough in the face of our new political reality. But it’s a good start. Join me!

Laura Laytham Zaki, Webmistress: Being asked to contribute this little bit to Persimmon Tree is both a serious honor and a double-edged sword. I am not yet a woman over sixty. I’ve been with Persimmon Tree since its inception but I’m only forty-one. I’m somewhere between Gen-X and Gen-Y, but sometimes feel like a premature millennial. I have two kids under the age of ten. Perhaps they are the biggest and best reason for me to resist.

When my eight-year-old son walked in the morning after the election and asked me who won, I couldn’t answer him. I just broke down and cried. He knew what that meant. There was fear in his eyes. My heart was broken. I wasn’t prepared to tell him that our country just voted an outspoken, misogynist, racist bigot to be our commander in chief.

I believe every one and every day can make a difference. I went vegetarian just before I turned 18. That was over 23 years ago. I’m raising my kids vegetarian too. You can’t eat a meal with me or go a day as my friend on Facebook without seeing or hearing my conviction in action.

The biggest and best thing I can do to resist is to raise my children to be better adults than the ones who voted for this next president. They need to learn to differentiate between fact and fiction. They need to understand that voting shouldn’t be just about what’s good for you. They need to speak, live, act, and vote with compassion and conviction.

Anyway, I named my son Lennon for a reason. Let’s just hope it works.

My daughter’s name is Jude. Like her namesake song says, now is the time for us to “take a sad song and make it better.”

Elizabeth Zimmer, Editorial Board: I’ve noticed, in the past few years, that Facebook has become my favorite “magazine,” a compendium of material edited by my “friends” (of which there are entirely too many) for the delectation of their friends, enabled by the Internet to be in our hands within hours of a thought dawning, a quote borrowed, a scene materializing, a showdown witnessed. But in recent months, and especially in the fraught weeks since the presidential election, it has become much more than that.

I have students who claim to get all their news from Facebook. I’m old enough to still be wedded to paper; newspapers and glossy weeklies and monthlies accumulate in all corners of my one-bedroom flat, but it’s clear that that the current activist strategy of choice is the Facebook post. The online site functions as a vast cooperative, a town square or watering hole where everyone with a spare moment drops in to find out what’s happening and how they can be part of the action.

This online community has several advantages over the “meat” universe. It’s always available, as against the gated environments of those who turn off their phones when they’re sleeping, or who simply send all their calls to voicemail. It generally provides a photo of the people you’re sharing thoughts with, and types out their names; as a result, next time you actually encounter these folks in the flesh, you might be able to greet them civilly. Because you’re not in the room with them, it doesn’t matter if they smoke. (Well, it does matter, and it’s still stupid, but at least you don’t have to breathe their exhaust.)

While my email overflows with commercial announcements, Facebook is still primarily personal, and political. We tell each other where the next play, poetry reading, or mass demonstration is forming; we form carpools to get to marches; we celebrate and sympathize and support. Especially as we age, and if we live alone, it provides a crucial lifeline that can be accessed economically. As the horrors of the impending administration become increasingly visible, it provides a place to organize, to fact-check, to find solidarity and companionship as we sort out strategies for keeping the United States a democratic haven for people of all persuasions. I may not be out marching anymore, but I’m certainly paying attention. I read Persimmon Tree for pleasure, but I interact with Facebook as though it were the bulletin board in my college student union, all those many decades ago.

Jean Zorn, Editorial Board: Like many of my friends, I’ve been an activist since my twenties. At Berkeley in 1964, we were part of one of the country’s first college anti-war rallies. We and about 3000 others, cheering Phil Ochs every time he came back for another encore of “Love Me, I’m a Liberal.”

Even before that, there’d been the civil rights marches and demonstrations and sit-ins in Oakland and San Francisco. And the Free Speech Movement – thousands of us in Sproul Hall Plaza, being sung into an administration building sit-in by Joan Baez. We couldn’t afford to go east for Mississippi Summer in 1964, so instead we worked for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the migrant camps of California’s Central Valley.

After that, there was the anti-war movement and labor organizing in Madison, and Papua New Guinea’s peaceful fight for independence and control over its own resources. And then a lifetime of public service as lawyers and teachers.

We weren’t heroic; we were just a few among many. We are, still, a few among many who, like us, thought all we had to do was speak the truth and the country would wake up to its mistakes and correct them.

For a while, we thought the changes that had been made – the Voting Rights Act; Titles VII and IX; Roe v. Wade; the discrediting of adventures like Vietnam – were permanent, that no one could go back to the bad old ways. But then there were the Nixon ’70s. Surely, we thought, nothing can be as bad as this. And then we discovered the Reagan ’80s could be even worse. And, then, those rollback, rightwing eras were followed – no longer to our surprise – by even worse: the Baby Bush years. Pushbacks in Roe v. Wade, hollowing-out of the Voting Rights Act, nasty little wars destroying the Middle East, bigotry extending to yet more groups.

So here we are, just a few weeks short of a Donald Trump inauguration. Is it worse? Or does it just feel worse because he was ungovernable enough to say the racist, misogynist things that other people just think? Or because 62 million people heard what he said and voted for him anyway? Or because his immediate predecessor was so much his opposite – not just in race, but in grace and intelligence and thoughtfulness and caring. Or perhaps because the Democratic candidate was a woman, giving us so much hope that we were truly in a new era? Or is it because we are so much older now, and, as my friend Bill Rowen, who was also young when we were, wrote on Facebook this week:

I can’t begin to describe my feelings when I consider that I could live out the rest of my life under a Trump presidency. That is such a disastrous thought that I can barely contemplate it. … Although I do believe that the US and the world will recover from him, I don’t know if [we] will be around to see that happen.

So, yes, it is worse. And, it’s up to us to make sure Bill’s prophecy does not come true. So I am going to do what Bill is asking us to do; I’m going to join as many other people as I can to do something about Trump as fast as we can.

Nan Gefen, Publisher: Like most people I know, I am angry about the far-right takeover of the U.S. and afraid of what lies ahead. We’re witnessing the cooption of our country, and it is affecting me and those around me on every level. A friend recently told me she witnessed people arguing loudly at two separate tables in Chez Panisse, Berkeley’s upscale restaurant. A glass of water was thrown at one table, and someone stomped away angrily from the other. Such behavior is a sign of the times.

Since the elections, I’ve been besieged by email calls to action: Fight Trump on climate change! Protect abortion rights! Speak out against racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and injustice! I send money to more than the usual number of organizations, sign and circulate petitions, support demonstrations, and send news of protests to my list. This level of activism is my bottom line, what I’ve been doing regularly for decades, but it seems completely inadequate at this time when so much is at stake.

I won’t feel satisfied with my response to this crisis until I select one issue to fight and give myself over to it. Otherwise I am pulled in every direction, feeling guilty that I’m not doing more against police brutality or the power of Wall Street when I sign a petition for voting rights. I need to find my place, gather my resources, and commit myself to working hard. This does not mean ignoring all the other issues, but I am more effective if I concentrate my energy.

I’ve been here before. When I was concerned about the plight of Palestinians in the late 1980s, I cofounded Tikkun magazine and worked hard to make it succeed as a voice for Palestinian rights, and when I became aware in 2006 of the lack of publishing opportunities for women over 60, I created Persimmon Tree. I did these things because I believed it was my responsibility to do what I could about these issues.

As I think about my place now and in the years ahead, I am aware that my spirit is as strong as it ever has been but my body is less able. I’m not going to start another national magazine or go on the Million Women March in Washington D.C., as much as I wish I could. I will have to find my place at a different level, not as the head of a new project but as a member or supporter, contributing my skills as best I can. But I’ll be there in my own way, part of a community of people fighting to fend off the fascism that threatens to destroy our democracy. And for me, that’s what is important.

Posted on March 9, 2017January 8, 2023 by admin · 3 Comments

Troublemakers: Short Form

Nothing but Our Ruth

by Sandra Enos

There are times in the lives of women when we need to take desperate measures. This is such a time. Seeing Congress refusing to name a new Supreme Court Justice after the death of Antonin Scalia, I felt my rage in my chest. So in lieu of increasing my medication, I am taking direct action. Taking the advice of empowerment gurus, I am turning my anger into constructive action and appealing to the readers of Persimmon Tree for help.

I fear that Notorious RGB, sister Ruth Bader Ginsberg, may fall ill and have to abandon her seat on the court. Her courage and commitments to women, the poor, and the weak have characterized her career. My fear is that her replacement will happily erase basic protections in civil rights, criminal justice, and equal access to opportunity. I – we – can’t let this happen.

My strategy is a simple one: We need to begin training a series of RGB body doubles who could readily slip into Ginsberg’s chair at the court.

Key points about becoming a body double for RGB:

At 5’1” and 105 lbs., she is short and diminutive. (I fit the bill here and in a few years, thanks to the failure of bone-building drugs, I should be even shorter than my current 5’3’ stature.)
RGB is a New Yorker. (I have a Rhode Island accent, which gives me a good start. I can make this happen but if Meryl Streep who has transformed herself into many convincing characters can lend a hand here, we could win an Emmy for this. [Meryl, if you are reading this, please email me.])
Legal training and mastery. She knows a lot. (I can say many legal words.)
Hard knocks and feminist chops. In law school, she was criticized for taking a law school slot from a qualified man, graduated at the top of her class and upon graduation worked for a salary substantially less than that of her male colleagues. Sound familiar?
Hair and makeup.
Feminine touches to her robe. Ginsberg wears a white collar on her robe. (I can have one of those made by the ladies at the subsidized housing for the elderly in my town. I could have sworn I saw one of those at their holiday craft fair and I think the ladies would love to be involved.)

The idea here is to have a mob of RGB doubles – sort of like the Justice League – all ready to fill in at any time so none of us gets too tired. If you would like to join the ranks, please email me with a photo, a fully completed application, and your essay about why you would make a great Justice Ginsberg. You will then be invited to join the launch of our Nothing but Our Ruth Training Camp, scheduled for May 2017. There is no time to waste.

Dear Editor

Immediately after the election I went to the White House website and there was a page for President Elect Trump, where people could write him with ideas about how we could “Make America Great.” I wrote that not only is America already “great,” but that the only way I could see making it even greater would be “if you were not President.”

Yesterday, January 24, I returned to the White House website and wrote this to Trump. You will notice that I have referred to him neither as “President Trump” nor as “Mr. President.”

Mr. Trump,

You are ruining this country. In just four days, you have shown that you have no heart and no soul. I have never had to write a president before, and I am 65 years old, but I feel compelled to do so at this time.

I am seriously concerned about the future of America and I fear we are headed for a fascist state. Believe me, I do not say this lightly. I feel powerless and I know many other people who do.

I don’t believe that you care at all about Americans or about the United States. I am ashamed to say you are the President. You are not my President and never will be.

Debbie L. Miller

Brooklyn, NY

The Day After the Election

by Carol A. Amato

My neighbor Fern
is outside early
lifting rocks
with effort since most are
heavy.
She’s not young but ever
focused and determined.

I watch her from
my closed window
imagining I can hear
the crunch of dead leaves
under her feet and feel
the tentative warmth
of the lemon November sun
on my back

distracted for a moment
from my still brim high
anger too full of itself
to plummet yet to despair.

I’m thinking
she may be building a wall
around her beloved irises
to surprise them in the spring
safe as each purple bearded Queen
will be from the gnawing jaws
of the rabbit who for no other
reason than flower-power-lust
and bestiality
has always taunted them to try
to escape
across the garden border
then fells each one at the ankle.

I turn away when the dog
barks to go out.

Persimmon Tree’s Kitty Cunningham Marches with Husband and Friends

Why I Marched

by Patricia A. Pomerleau

I marched in uniform during our war against Korea because I was ignorant.

I marched in opposition to our war against Vietnam because I had become enlightened.

I marched with the first lesbians to infiltrate the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade in 1972
…… because it was TIME.

I marched with other women, children, and men on the twenty-first of January 2017 because at 86 I still believe there is a future.

Why I Marched on January 21st, 2017

by Sophia Kouidou-Giles

I emigrated to the USA in my late teens and settled in a kind, generous, and compassionate country. It is where I received my education and raised my family. It is the land in which my grandchildren will lead their lives. I have a stake in keeping it moving forward.

Some days, although I am just one, I see a world of many joining, a world that shifts and changes and moves on a course. We are carried in a stream of life formed of differing forces and opinions. Brooks turn into streams, and rivers into lakes and oceans. And I mostly float like a leaf moving comfortably along, but sometimes I float into a rock that disturbs the flow.

In recent days, my world has been shaken with the dawning of Donald Trump. The most watched man on the planet is turning the tide of progress in America during my lifetime. I see the dark forces of reversals and backpedaling on much that has been accomplished in this country. This generous and progressive land is in danger. In a short time, I am seeing land mines multiply. The current list includes plans to build a wall to guard the border, reduce access to health care and abortion services, limit LGBT rights and gag information-sharing about climate change, and scientific progress, keep Muslims away, and put minorities in their place.

Every day the list gets longer. Next week Trump plans to turn the tide in the balance of the Supreme Court. He would like to hand out muzzles and blindfolds for us to wear. “Alternative facts” are manufactured daily (inauguration day attendance, election fraud, etc.) for public consumption. It is not what I want my government to give resources to and base decisions on.

I need to reclaim my world, and regain hope for future progress. I need to know I am not alone.

That is why I marched on January 21st. And I saw evidence that Lysistrata, the millennia-old account of women’s power on the world stage, is waking up. We are putting our president on notice. Beware, Donald, minister of spewing dark propaganda: your days are numbered. The river will flow and wash away the damage of your days.

Small Acts of Civil Disobedience

by Myrna Loy Ashby

The truth of Dawn Ramm’s raw post on Persimmon Tree, “When I woke up that morning to hear the final results of the election I felt as if a very close friend had died,” validated my own gnawing fears. I wanted to find her, to look her in the eye and say – I know, I know. Thank you for writing this post. That’s exactly how I felt that godawful night when the world fell off its predictable path.

Quata Hatcote’s exhortation to “speak to your children and grandchildren – in a loud voice – years from now they will remember you and your powerful words,” reminded me to refocus on my own writing that I had allowed to be highjacked by the deluge of 2016 post-election chaos.

Along with millions of others, I watched our President deepen his delusional spiral in the East Room of our White House. During the seventy-seven minutes that he spoke to the world, the part of me I’ve learned to trust, rose up and pushed back.

BDT (Before Donald Trump) I was working on a novel about mother-daughter wars that, like DNA, are passed down from generation to generation. The main storyline is based on vignettes from my family of origin and forty-one years of practice as a family psychotherapist.

This drive to write, BDT, showed up each morning like a friendly, firm wake-up call. Now, creating characters and scenes to populate the “shining city upon the hill” carries new meaning. The call is still friendly, but firm upgraded to urgent during Trump’s painful, revealing speech.

My resistance to Donald Trump is a chilling, helpful reminder of one of my college professors when I was a single, financially strapped mom with two small children. It was near Christmas when that small man, wearing a black suit I remember down to the dander on his lapel, bent over my desk and whispered, “You’ll never make it. You’ll never graduate.”

Terrified he might be correct, I didn’t say a word then, but through the years, each time I was tempted to drop out of school and go back to meaningless work, I remembered the sound of his grating voice and my silent vow to “show him.”

More than forty years and two degrees later, I bear witness to a truth that, despite delusional spews from the White House’s East Room, it’s possible to defy those in power with small acts of civil disobedience that defy the odds.

Autobiography

by Pat Carr

I was five when I saw the iconic photo in Life Magazine of the bloodied, sobbing Chinese baby on the railroad tracks during Japan’s invasion of Manchuria;

I was seven when I saw a photo of six Nazi soldiers aiming their rifles at a Jewish boy in knee pants;

I was nine when I saw the first busload of Japanese-Americans arrive at the Heart Mountain relocation camp next door to our Wyoming oil town;

I was thirteen when I saw the aerial shot of bombed Hiroshima;

I was twenty when I laid my palm on the rusting iron of a Dachau oven so cold it could have been red hot;

I was twenty-three when I saw a photograph of tortured, murdered Emmett Till wrapped in barbed wire;

I was twenty-six when I heard that three of my students had died over the weekend trying to induce illegal abortions by drinking mercuric acid, which eats through iron pipe.

I was thirty-one when I saw the photo in Bogota’s El Tiempo of a teen victim of la Violencia with her throat neatly sliced;

I was forty-two when I saw the black-and-white photo of the little Vietnamese girl covered with napalm, running toward the camera, her mouth open in a scream I couldn’t hear;

I was sixty-two when I saw swimming pools in the backyards of Israeli settlements before I noted the faucet in the square of the Palestinian village where the villagers got their water;

I was seventy-seven when I saw on the local news three white policemen firing bullet after bullet into the torso of a young black man;

I was eighty-four when I saw the Technicolor snapshot of the silent, bloodied Syrian toddler staring at the photographer, waiting for a medic.

Posted on March 9, 2017January 8, 2023 by admin · 1 Comment

Troublemakers: Long Form

I Just Hope We Don’t See Any Protesters

by Ann Vander Stoep

The Other Washington accommodated a lot of visitors as it shifted into Inauguration gear. Restaurant servers, Metro employees, and police officers displayed exquisite kindness towards ranters, oglers, and ignoramuses of every stripe. My sister, two daughters, eldest granddaughter and I decided to travel from Washington State to Washington, D. C. for the 45^th Inauguration and the National Women’s March the following day. Upon boarding the plane at SEATAC the first thing that became clear was that, except for two octogenarians, one in a pink hat with cat ears seated in 26C and one in a red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat seated in Seat 14F, it wasn’t possible to differentiate the people who were on a pilgrimage to the Inauguration from the people who were on a pilgrimage to the March.

On the morning of January 19^th, my sis and I climb aboard the Best Western METRO shuttle and sit at the back with a middle-aged man and woman. “Where ya’all come from?” “The State of Washington, how about you?” “Arkansas … Bentonville. We’re Wal-Mart people.” “My daughter lived in Arkansas for six years … I love the music. You folks in D.C. for the inauguration?” “Yep.” “You ever attended an Inauguration before?” “No. this is our first.” “Well, you’ll laugh at us,” I venture, “We bought plane tickets six months ago so we could bring my daughters and granddaughter to witness the inauguration of our first woman president.” They chuckled appreciatively. “Sort of like when you buy Super Bowl tickets and your team doesn’t go.”

The 19^th is our only free day in D.C. so we set off for the Museum of American History. On display are Julia Child’s kitchen; all the Inaugural ball gowns worn by first ladies from flapper Lou Hoover to storybook Michelle Obama; even the Howdy Doody puppet that haunted my childhood dreams. We walk across the Mall behind a group of boys and men. I ask one of the men whether they are a Cub Scout troop. “Yes we are.” “Where you all from?” “We’re from the state of Alabama. We petitioned Senator Jeff Sessions for our boys to lead the pledge of allegiance at an Inaugural concert this afternoon.” “How exciting! Is this your first Inauguration?” “Yep.” “Your first time to D.C.?” “Yep,” His voice drops as he says in earnest. “I just hope we don’t see any protestors.” Pause. “Well, to tell the truth, you’re talking to one right now. My sister and I came to D.C. for the Women’s March … We promise to be good.” “Well then, we will, too.” “It’s a deal.”

On the 20^th and 21^st affiliations are indisputable. Dining tables in our Best Western breakfast room are surrounded by clusters of men wearing red caps or women in pink hats. Inauguration Day is damp. My sister and granddaughter opt for a day at the National Zoo. My daughters and I get ourselves onto the shuttle by 7:30 am. The Mood Meter is reading different than the day before … somewhere in the blue area with a sprinkling of red. I had anticipated yellow (happiness and self-confidence), but instead there is a lot of anxious tittering “….growl, growl…damned Hillary….growl, growl….At least we’ll be rid of Obama….” I ask if there is anyone else on the bus from the great State of Washington. One fellow passenger has lived in Olympia. “…growl, growl…damned blue state.” At the METRO station, a Southern California woman in a full-length mink coat and rubber flip-flops takes a while to disembark the van owing to an injured foot. We mention that we had originally booked a hotel room to witness the Inauguration of the first woman President. She has no interest. I’m not getting this general injured mood. I want to shout, “Hey guys, you WON!”

The METROs are running like an old Detroit assembly line, lots of trains labelled “Special.” It seems an unnecessary expense, since there are few people, no lines and plenty of seats. The three of us emerge from underground onto a downtown Washington street wet with rain. The line to the first gate we encounter is a half block long and a street’s thickness wide. We plant ourselves behind a man my age in a self-propelled wheel chair, wearing his red hat and a jacket with, “VIETNAM VETERAN” embroidered in bright colors on the back. We get to visiting. Gene hails from Cincinnati. “Yes,” he’d served his country in Vietnam. Watched his best buddy get shot in half by the Viet Cong. Suffered many injuries himself and was awarded many medals. Had he ever been to an Inauguration before? “No … this is my first.”

It is a mildly cordial crowd. An occasional, “Not My President” echoed by “Trump, Trump, Trump …” We herd ourselves inch by inch towards the lines that stand at the entrance to the first search point. There are just a few funnels into the tent full of secret service, police, TSA, et al. After one verbal volley, Gene asserts, “I fought for their right to do this.” We express appreciation. My impression of this crowd of 250 people is that only a sprinkling of Inauguration protesters is amongst us. An hour of waiting later, when the “Trump, trump, trump” becomes more provocative, the tiny fire beneath the popcorn of volleys bursts into flame. Protesters are in the majority. Equanimity vanishes. Gene exclaims to my daughter, “I musta killed about 200 Viet Cong. What would it matter if I shot a couple more of these jokers?” A band of authority figures closes down the entrance. We retreat back to the street where we’d emerged from the subway and find another entrance. Police and National Guard and secret service people line the street. The theater continues beside, not within, our contained group of Inauguration goers.

A young man holding a handmade sign with the simple message, “MUSLIM, GAY, and UNAFRAID,” stands boldly beside the metal fence. A teenage boy, looking for all the world like a member of Youth for Hitler, climbs upon a light pole three feet above the crowd and with unremitting enmity, screams, “Trump, trump, trump …” over and over and over again. A big, red-faced street bully wearing loose-fitting shabby jeans lopes towards the fearless gay Muslim and begins to spew the foulest, vilest epithets he can muster. The young man speaks clearly and articulately about what it means to him to be an American. He gives his interpretation of Christ’s message of hospitality. The crowd and police look on, wide-eyed. As the bully draws closer I point to him and scream at the top of my lungs. “You’re making us look bad!” Deep breath. “You’re making us look bad!” Deep breath. “Stop talking. You’re making us look bad!” The bully looks up perplexed as if the thought is sinking in that, instead of being a crowd pleaser, he is bumming out the Trump supporters he is trying to impress. The police step in and with a bit of flailing and a few crude gestures towards my daughters, he swallows his bitter pill and leaves the premises.

We are approaching the tent where abandoned water bottles, backpacks, and whole fruit are strewn. A dozen officials search bags, cameras, and phones, and pat down persons. We quickly slurp our lone (weaponized) orange, transform our backpacks into purse-like objects, and strip off our outer garments. We make it through. At this point, in 2009, we would have been on the Mall. In 2017 this is the first of five more gated, cattle-fenced areas erected to buffer the Inauguration ceremony from street noise. Before we reach the Mall, packs, phones, cameras, and jackets come off one more time. It is 12:04. On the monitor, Melania is sporting a light blue suit. A priest from St. Patrick’s Cathedral is kicking off with the invocation. We stand on big white jointed rubber pads that were laid to protect the Mall grass from non-existent masses.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir teams up with the Marine Band to perform a rousing “America the Beautiful.” A Southern Baptist preacher takes note of the rain that he claims, “must be a sign from God” since it “started just as Donald Trump stepped out.” A bit disingenuous for the several thousand of us who have been standing in the rain since 8 am. He waxes eloquent about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. A conservative rabbi prays for the deliverance of Israel. The new president tries valiantly to rouse the crowd. He pronounces in a very excited tone that, for the first time in U.S. history, power will reside in the hands of the People. With gaping distances between People on the Mall, it doesn’t feel that rousing. Applause is barely audible.

Truth be told, it was very hard to bear witness to the speech. As a threesome, we turned our backs to the Capitol Steps. To ground herself my younger daughter knelt down and touched the earth … well, the rubber mat. I, too, bent low and placed my fingers on a tiny patch of grass peeking through one of the mat joints. No one was close enough to judge us rude. So we did as the Spirit moved us. Speech concluded, we resumed standing. My daughter announced with conviction, “Well. That marked the end of the patriarchy.” Cool.

I recall from the 2009 Inauguration that awkward time after the speeches, prayers, and oaths when helicopters land on the Mall. The outgoing President boards the first one, and it chop- chop-chop-chops over the crowd and disappears. The second lands; the incoming President boards, and, chop-chop-chop, off “he” goes. To me, the helicopter part is really creepy, militaristic, scary. Before the arrival of the helicopters, I take off in earnest to interview Inauguration attendees. I strike out for a family of four. Parents are young, father tall and trim, mother flanked by 11- and 7-year old daughters. “Hi, my name is Ann. I am from Washington State, and I am interviewing people here at the Inauguration so I can write an article for my hometown newspaper.” I take a breath. “I wondered if I could interview your family.” The father looks kindly and confidently at his eldest daughter. “What do you say, girls. Shall we do it?” Nods. The family is game. “Where ya’all from?” “Our home is in Nebraska, but we’re Air Force stationed here in D.C.” “OK … well, my first question is ‘Which of President Trump’s promises are you most excited about?’ There is a pregnant pause. Everyone looks at the elder daughter who quietly draws back her wool dress coat to reveal a button pinned to her jumper, I STILL SUPPORT HER. I am caught a bit off guard. “So what do you think is the worst thing going on in America right now?” Again they turn to their eldest. “Discrimination,” she asserts boldly then bursts into tears. I am reminded of my 9-year-old granddaughter on the day after the election. “You feel very strongly about that,” I offer. She sobs audibly. Mother puts an arm around her heaving shoulder. Why didn’t I think to pack Kleenex? “She’s okay,” says her father, lovingly. “She thinks about this a lot.” “Maybe you’ll run for president someday.” I thank the family and take my leave.

I wander across the rubber mats until I find a rowdy multi-family group. Two adult women, three sons between them, one in military uniform, one late high school age, and a pubescent 14-year-old. “Hi, I’m Ann. I’m conducting a survey so I can write an article for my hometown newspaper.” “Where you from, Ann?” “Washington State. I grew up in Lewis County.” “Oh, yah, I’ve heard of that,” says the 14-y-o. His mother eyes him skeptically. “How about you?” “We live in Maryland.” “OK … my first question is, ‘Which of our new President’s ideas are you most excited about?’” “Oh, definitely that he is going to cut taxes for middle class families,” announces the soldier. Heads nod in agreement. “And we agree with his stance on firearms,” contributes a mother. “What is the worst thing going on in America right now?” The soldier resumes the role of multi-family spokesperson. He starts a riff about the Federal Reserve, mortgage loans, banks, currency. As far as I can follow the gist is that banks are never having to actually come up with the money they loan to people. “I’m not sure I follow, but it does sound bad.” “He talks about this a lot,” his mother interjects. Her son shifts gears, “Also, as a country, the United States can’t disrespect Israel. We already left Vietnam before we were finished, and we shouldn’t do that again to our best ally.” I keep the ball rolling. . . “What is the greatest thing that has happened in America in your lifetime?” Without batting an eye, the young teen exclaims, “Starting the Iraq War.” A stunned pause. Jaws drop. “WHAT?” his mother yells. Brother gives him a shove and calls him a “moron.” Everyone groans. Mother offers, “Maybe you mean killing Bin Laden,” and continues, “And in my lifetime there was landing on the Moon. And when the Iron Curtain came down.”

“I know,” the indomitable teen recoups his nerve, “BREXIT!” I glance across the Mall at my little Nebraska family. Mother’s arm still wrapped around daughter’s shoulder, her shoulders still heaving.

With their sons’ opining, the two women are not getting much floor time. They move me into closed women’s-circle formation. “I’m Amy. I’m a social worker for DHHS. I have to say that I felt great hope eight years ago when Obama was elected. I thought he had lots of good ideas. But he wasted his chance. He pretty much sat there and did nothing.” Her friend chimes in, “Yah, and I like Melania better than Michelle. She’ll be a really nice addition to the White House. I don’t exactly dislike Michelle, but, I don’t know, there was just something about her I couldn’t relate to. I think Melania will be very kind to people.” My teeth are bearing down on my tongue so as nearly to draw blood. As if on cue, the outgoing President’s helicopter chops overhead. “Can we pause a second here?” the group petitions. “Sure,” I respond. Each of the five makes a gesture … a thumb on the nose. A “good riddance.” “Finally, it’s over.” My heart is breaking. The soldier exclaims, “Have fun spending all that MONEY, Barack!” Are they referring to the big salary that President Trump won’t need? Or Wall Street speeches?

Amy has an idea. “I know, Ann, what if I ask you the questions? I’m interested in what you would say.” I hand Amy my clipboard with a fresh interview sheet. She reads, “Alright … which of President Trump’s campaign promises are YOU most excited about?” I’m thinking fast on my feet. “Hmmm… I would say that the thing I am most excited about is that he is giving voice to people who feel they have been overlooked.” “What is the greatest accomplishment in the US in your lifetime?” I channel my dear, departed teacher-husband and his teacher-father. “Introducing special education programs so that all children, those who are in wheel chairs, those who are really anxious or disruptive, blind, deaf, hard of hearing, developmentally disabled … all children in our country can have access to public education.” There is a pause. Both women nod. “Yes, that’s important … but don’t get me started on the public schools.” I have struck a raw nerve. “That one over there, in kindergarten they told me he was autistic. By second grade I had to send him to a private Catholic school. And we’re Jewish. The school counselor said my other son, the one in the Army, had ADHD.” “Mine, too,” says her friend. “He was on Adderall and that other drug. Yah, for both of us public schools were a true nightmare.” Now the second helicopter is hovering, and everyone smiles and waves. The soldier salutes. We three hug. Amy writes down her email address and asks me to send her the article. “Nice to meet you, Ann. And … I have to say ….you are really quite adorable.” I grin, “Aw shucks.” As I begin to walk away, they call out, “One more thing, Ann. This is really important. Don’t read newspapers or watch the news on TV. Very misleading. If you want trustworthy news, always go online.”

I take a deep breath. Maybe it is time to interview a person who is standing alone. How about that short man in a wool camel coat with crooked teeth? “Hi, my name is Ann..” He is a friendly sort. “I’m Gary.” I launch into my spiel. “The best thing about Trump … well … there are actually three best things about Trump. The first is that he is going to get people who have lost hope fired up and working again. That will ignite the economy.” I try to keep oxycodone addiction from entering my mind. “And another thing … He comes to Washington free from all the favors most politicians owe to those who have gotten them elected. Trump doesn’t owe anyone a cent.” I try to keep his building crews from entering my mind. “And finally, he’s rich … he’s worth billions. He is the perfect poster child for the American dream. And that will really inspire people to be like him.” I try to imagine 99 percent of Americans as billionaires. “That would be cool,” I say. “And how about you,” Gary queries,” did you vote for Trump?” “No.” “Were you a Hillary fan or a Bernie fan?” “All the above,” I reply. “My daughters were Hillary fans,” Gary offers, “if she’d won, they both would have been here today.”

I take my leave of Gary and return to my daughters who are still standing huddled close together in the middle of an empty field of white rubber. “How’d it go?” they ask. “Good,” I say. Just then a 40-year-old man approaches us. “I’ve been watching you,” he smiles shyly. We grin back sheepishly, anticipating some expression of disapproval for our Inauguration speech behavior. “I just came to say that you three have the most beautiful eyes.” “What a kind thing to say. What brings you to the Inauguration?” my elder daughter asks, relieved. “I’m a music teacher, and I’m here with my high school band. They are marching in the parade this afternoon.” “That’s cool. We’ve come from Washington State.” “Me, too,” he exclaims, “I’m from Tacoma. Are you going to the March tomorrow?” We nod. “I’m going to try to get my band there.” Old home week.

Photographer: Roxie Jane Hunt is a writer, a professional hair stylist and a DIY hair blogger at Howtohairgirl. Roxie Jane and Ann are daughter and mother.

A Personal Response to the Pivotal Events of January 2017

by Melody Mansfield

You might be like me: Ever since November 8, I’ve approached the morning news with hesitant steps, eyes half-averted, one hand thrust before me as a shield against what horrors might await me. I squint at the headlines, afraid to commit too fully to new evidence that our president-elect is, indeed, fully as ignorant, unethical, dishonest, graceless, hypocritical, narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, and unspeakably dangerous as we feared he might be. And that’s before we read about the Russians.

Am I being too harsh?

I hope so. Like many of you, I hope our leader turns out to be a sane and balanced human being who has just been hiding behind the politically expedient guise of a foul-mouthed hate-monger. Or, if not that, then I hope against hope for the best case scenario – that he may still become distracted from his campaign promises by some new shiny piece of bling, and in this way, save us.

But we can’t count on that. We can’t count on anything – that much was made painfully clear by the results of the election.

Except ourselves. We can count on that. Because we still have us – an older, wiser, more terrified us, perhaps, but still us nonetheless. And we proved that on January 21.

January 21: The day we came out – millions of us, across the country, across the globe – and marched together, sang together, cried together. The day when, collectively, we made our case that even if the election had been propelled by hate, we were not going to allow our lives to be propelled by hate.

We were there for one another – to protect each other’s rights – even the rights of those whose ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, or economic demographics did not match our own. We showed up for our children, for our grandchildren, and for everyone else’s children and grandchildren.

We came carrying placards and chanting slogans – some of which were purely vindictive, yes, but most of which were clever and heartfelt and true. We came to champion specific and important causes, like the preservation of the environment, women’s rights, the arts, LGBT advancements, immigration protections, and healthcare for all, but we also came to spread a broader message: “Make America Think Again,” “Hope Can’t Be Built on Hate,” and the now justifiably ubiquitous “Love Trumps Hate.”

And that’s when something clicked for me. There, on the streets of Los Angeles, sardined into that jostling mass of humanity, slowly inching forward into a common future, I finally found a way out of the despair that had poisoned every one of my days since November 8. We were it. WE, ourselves, were the way out.

Because we were the way in.

And we didn’t have to change ourselves either. We didn’t have to fight hate with hate, or stoop lower, or scream louder. We simply had to be there, together, united in our efforts. Speaking calmly, marching peacefully, modeling the kind of leadership we sought.

And our reach, I saw then, had to extend beyond the borders of our most progressive cities and into the world of middle-American families, so desperate to be heard that they were willing to believe the lies of anyone who pretended to be listening.

This, I suspect, is where Hillary took the wrong turn. Instead of reaching out to the people who were feeling ignored and disenfranchised (and who also, we have to assume, want what’s best for their children), she called them “deplorables.” Even Meryl Streep, for whom I have the deepest respect, shut out the very people who needed to hear her when she (in her “gazillion dollar gown,” as one frustrated citizen put it) spoke of how Hollywood had been “villainized.”

We have to listen better. The “other” is always so easy to condemn and so hard to understand. But anger (rage! fury!) is so often (as we all understand on a visceral level) the unfortunate and wholly destructive byproduct of pain.

It is this pain that needs to be addressed.

And the pain is not going to be addressed by a bully. It is not going to be addressed by an individual who knows only how to deny and deflect blame, never to confront, head-on, the very real issues at stake.

So we need to do it ourselves. Without smashing windows or wielding guns or wounding others with our words. We need to “go high,” as Michelle Obama advised us. And we need to go large. And we need to keep going. We can’t stop. Not for a minute. Because in this shifting and undependable world, all we have is us.

And there are lots of us. We can take comfort in this. We are everywhere. All over the world, as we saw demonstrated on January 21. We are not alone.

This election is our much-needed wake up call. We will rise to it. Even if we have been trained to be “good girls,” trained to be quiet, trained to be fearful of losing the regard of others by saying what we think. We will say what we think. We will rise to the call. We will wake up. And we will take action. We will speak, act, listen, in ways that are not mean, or miserly, or self-serving, but in ways that will continue to make us proud to be ourselves, and proud to be Americans. We will continue on our path – whether impeded by the current administration or not – toward love, understanding, forgiveness, and tolerance. And if turning the other cheek gets us slapped around, so be it.

Because we are all we have. And because our children are watching.

Harbor of Grace

by Cynthia Carbone

Peering at the night through the rain-smeared windows of the airport bus makes me feel the way I used to feel in the 1970s when I was a girl in my twenties sitting on Greyhound buses, lost and confused, maybe a fledgling feminist but not familiar with the term, a passenger in my own life. This time, I’m on a mission, heading for the Women’s March in Washington, with a rather indirect itinerary: Los Angeles to Charlotte to Albany. From Albany, I’ll drive with my old friend Barbara to Maryland, where friends of hers will host us.

When I first arrive, the weather in Albany is what I recall as vintage upstate New York: a muted palette of gray, brown, and white. Chilly. A woman pulls up in a car in front of a house nearby and steps outside to check her mailbox. She smiles. “Enjoying the nice, mild weather?” It’s all relative, I suppose.

Meanwhile, back home, the rain has finally stopped and there are rainbows arched above green hills. My husband texts me: Sacate Creek is flowing! The campground at El Capitan has washed away in mud. The ocean is the color of chocolate milk and waterfalls have surprised old sandstone contours. The world is many worlds, constantly changing, and reality itself seems fluid and unbound.

But there is a structure of truth and principle, and there are foundations we build upon and cherish, and that’s why I’m marching on Saturday. I’m marching because I care about human rights, and fairness, and dignity, and possibility, and the fate of our poor beleaguered planet. I’m marching because the person about to assume office, and who in fact lost the popular vote by millions, is dangerously unfit to serve. I want him to see that he does not have our support, and I want to help promote and partake of the solidarity and determination that I know we’re going to need to sustain us through the hard times ahead.

“A march? It’s as pointless as a temper tantrum,” I heard someone say mockingly. But I believe, as essayist Rebecca Solnit has written, that symbolic and cultural acts have real power. I am hoping the march will energize us, render visible our national and global community, reinforce the sense of possibility, speak our truths, tell our stories, and mark a beginning rather than defeat and resignation. We march to push back against the affronts being perpetrated upon us and to help launch the resistance.

The next day, we set out for D.C. in Barbara’s car: Barb (at the wheel), her friend (and soon my friend too) Ronda, and me. There’s a percussion of raindrops and windshield wipers, the murmur of conversation, a soundtrack of songs from Hamilton, Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Browne, including one in particular by Jackson (and Carlos Varela) called “Walls and Doors”:

Ever since the world’s existed
There’s one thing that is certain
There are those who build walls
And those who open doors

Barb and I became friends in 1976, not long after my desperado Greyhound bus days. I was belatedly wrapping up a degree at the state university, and she was a newly minted social worker, and we both lived in an old brownstone at the edge of downtown Albany. We would visit each other at the end of the day, de-briefing, listening to records (often Jackson Browne), and coaching one another through what I still refer to as the days of whine and roaches. (You could actually hear those roaches in the night, a sort of tapping-crunching sound, and if you turned on a light, you could see them scurrying across the floor.) We became dear to one another, but life took us in different directions, and forty years happened with no contact between us. We reconnected only recently, and we instantly clicked. It was as though she had just walked back in from across the hallway with a new album for us to hear.

Thank God for friendship, especially among women. I don’t know how I would navigate life without such friends. And oh, how women talk! Our car becomes a sanctuary of stories and warmth and camaraderie, a harbor of grace, it seems. Ronda sets out a bag of nuts, a container of celery sticks and carrots, green grapes, energy bars. We tend to one another. Even in this transition zone, a demonstration has begun, and it sets the tone for what we are about to witness: mutual support, kindness, and resilience.

The inauguration ceremony is taking place as we drive, and we don’t know if we can bear to listen. Ronda, an insightful psychologist, counsels against denial. “If we don’t listen at all, that’s just intentional ignorance,” she says, and we decide to tune in now and then. What we hear sounds militant, ominous, chilling … a dark vision of carnage and fear, a false and eerie patriotism, a rally to total allegiance.

Ronda’s mother, now in her nineties, is a Holocaust survivor who spent two years hidden in a small underground space . . . “the grave” is what she calls it. The family lived in what is now Ukraine, and as the horrors mounted, Ronda’s grandmother sat by the window, planning. One midnight, she bundled up her three children – Ronda’s mother, at ten, was the oldest – and walked to the house of a man she vaguely knew who did “illegal things,” to ask him for his help. They were led to a hole in the dirt beneath a pigsty, with a covering too low to stand up beneath it. It was swarming with vermin and lice. Pig urine rained on their heads.

Ronda’s mother has barely spoken of it, except in fragments of poems in old journals, not in English. Decades later, Ronda went back to the Ukraine with her, and they stopped at the house the family had been forced to abandon. A Ukrainian woman came to the door, and with trepidation let them in. Ronda’s mother recognized the furniture, the parquet floor, and the very window beside which Ronda’s grandmother had sat and stared and schemed. The Ukrainian woman cried. She was only a child then. Her parents had taken her to a ditch where they lined up the Jews, shot them, then hastily covered them with dirt. “The ground was heaving,” she said. The townspeople watched.

“How did everyone allow this?” asks Ronda. “What happens matters. And this is why I’m marching tomorrow.”

In Maryland, where the Susquehanna River meets the Chesapeake Bay, we pass a city called Havre de Grace, and the name assumes a serendipitous significance, as do so many aspects of this journey. I admit that I had some anxiety and skepticism when I first contemplated the trip, but my conviction is growing with every mile.

Barb checks in with her mother, another nonagenarian. “Why are you going to Washington?” her mother says. “I’m looking at the TV, and there’s a big commotion there.“

“Mom, it’s a protest,” Barb explains, to no avail. Commotion is worrisome. Distance is daunting. Daughters are precious. A mother worries.

“A march is when bodies speak by walking,“ writes Rebecca Solnit in Hope in the Dark, “[It’s] when private citizens become that mystery the public, when traversing boulevards of cities becomes a way to travel toward political goals.”

Of what use is the moon if you don’t have the night?
Of what use is a windmill with no Quixote left who’ll fight?

We will not have stood by in silence.

We arrive in Silver Spring as darkness falls, and find our way to the house of our hosts, Jeff and Bonnie, who are easygoing and welcoming and seem immediately familiar to me, even though I have never met them. Maybe it’s our Brooklyn roots, shared sensibilities, a similar perspective on what’s happening. We reminisce about pizza and knishes, the sawdust on the floors of butcher shops and produce markets, lining up at school to have sugar cubes with a drop of Salk vaccine placed upon our tongues. We discuss the old neighborhoods, the public schools we went to, the work and dreams of our fathers, the things we learned to value.

There can be freedom only when nobody owns it…

Ronda’s 21-year-old son Jared, a college student in the area, comes by to visit and bring us his firsthand observations of D.C. on this Inauguration Day. It was crazy, he tells us, but not in a celebratory way. Sitting at the table with a group of slightly fraying sixty-somethings, Jared asks if our participation in tomorrow’s march feels as significant to us as protests of the past. Absolutely. Unequivocally. Even more so. Yes. We all agree on this. The threat is real and profound. The need to resist is crucial, compelling. It’s an historic moment.

I think Jared is proud of his mom. In a nod to Joni Mitchell, he calls the three of us women “Ladies of the Canyon.” I picture the California canyon of my home, then feel the comforting old embrace of East Coast-ness, and for a moment, everything comes full circle.

As soon as we board the Metro the next morning, we can feel that something is happening, and we are part of it. There are groups of friends carrying posters, parents with little girls in pink hats, men and women, boomers and millennials, and certainly those in between. Everyone is pouring into the city, filling up the trains, and the mood is friendly but not festive. We recognize each other.

We disembark at Union Station, and our numbers keep multiplying . . . pink hats ascending escalators, patiently lining up for a pre-march restroom stop, streaming out onto the streets. A policeman at the station tells us that the men’s room is open to women today. He’s good-natured and friendly and admits that this is the happy day. Yesterday? Not so much. More like the twilight zone.

Outside, the air is fresh and the sky a broad white slate of cloud and fog. The pre-march rally has begun, but we are far from it, and we will only see it later in replay at Jeff and Bonnie’s house. Right now we walk in the general direction of the starting point until we abruptly cannot walk, because the street is completely clogged with people. Absolute gridlock. It’s the sort of thing that would usually make me claustrophobic, but this is where the miracle begins.

At one point, a young woman begins to hyperventilate and needs to get through, and the crowd immediately makes a path for her, like Moses parting the Red Sea, many looking on with maternal concern as she passes, offering water, asking if she needs anything. Four Vanderbilt coeds have driven through the night from Nashville to be there, one of them wheelchair-bound due to a broken foot; strangers form a barrier around them to give them a little extra space. In the course of the entire day, there will not be a single episode of violence.

But where is the march? We want to march, and we’ve come a long way to do so, and here we are just inching along or standing still, unable to reach the route! Suddenly we realize: we are the march. The original river has formed a hundred tributaries, the floodgates are open, and we are flowing. All of Washington, D.C. becomes a great, epic march.

Eventually we are marching alongside a small band called brick-by-brick, a public art performance group that builds human “walls” against misogyny. They are wearing brick-patterned jumpsuits, carrying signs in protest of actions that threaten civil and human rights, and making wonderful music. We march along singing “This Land is Your Land,” “Down By the Riverside,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” – traditional songs of protest, hope and yearning. The music really does it to me, along with the sight of the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial in the distance, and the messages on the signs that people are carrying, some of them blunt, some witty, collectively a kind of poetry of the people. There is a feeling of extraordinary unity and unshakeable determination.

My eyes fill with tears. My heart fills with hope. Half a million people? A million? Who knows. We are everywhere. We are a harbor. We are the sea.

Posted on June 10, 2017January 8, 2023 by admin · 3 Comments

Troublemakers in Action

A Bunch of Troubles

by Cynthia Ward

Furthering the resistance has become a regular part of my life, although I have only recently begun to fully understand what monumental stamina, patience, and determination is required. Community helps, and I am a regular participant in a newly formed grassroots organization that meets in local living rooms, church halls, and after-hours offices. We discuss immediate actions we can take, as well as long-range political strategies. We are pooling resources to support candidates, and beginning to coordinate with other groups, such as Indivisible, in order to be a more powerful and unified entity. There are many issues of concern, but I have zoomed in on electoral politics as my focus, particularly flipping districts in 2018. I have found the organization Swing Left to be very helpful in guiding us towards pivotal districts and special elections (most recently Ossoff and Quist) as well as Sister District and Flippable.

Apart from the group, I stay informed, vigilant, involved, and noisy, and try to channel my outrage constructively. I donate, make phone calls, write letters, and use social media. I subscribe to a Daily Action reminder and selectively follow through. I am fortunate in that my senators and local congressman are “blue,” but I send them messages of thanks and encouragement. Most members of Congress do not care to hear from non-constituents, but I use Twitter to write to GOP reps, most recently about the healthcare debacle, the need to investigate Trump, and their shameful lack of courage. I watch for nearby town halls and meaningful demonstrations to attend, often use my blog to address living through this unfolding nightmare, and refuse to normalize or get used to the discouraging realities. It’s the opposite of my innate optimism, but we need to be open-eyed and relentless; there’s a way of holding heartache in one hand and hope in the other, and that’s what I am striving for. I cherish my family and friends and fellow resisters. Sometimes we step back, go for a hike, have dinner together, laugh … this, too, is part of the resistance.

Every day brings a new assault on something we hold dear. Let the record show: we stood, we spoke, and we fought back.

H.E.R.S.

by Sylvia Ramos Cruz

I participated in the Women’s March Rally at Civic Plaza in Albuquerque, N.M. on January 21. The most people I have seen at the plaza at any time during the 26 years I have lived in N.M. were congregated there, showing their determination to move forward together to make a better world.

I wrote this poem after reflecting on that event and in response to a call for poets to speak their truth to the times.

~~~

H.E.R.S.

Health. Economic Security. Representation. Safety.
Women’s rights priorities — Women’s March Global
Huffington Post, January 13, 2017

It’s hard to know what goes on around the world,
in Burundi, Antarctica, Lithuania, Japan, but
I think the same game plays in all these places—
anywhere we see feminine faces.

A game of 3-Card-Monte, a constant shuffle to hide
the issues of OUR day – doors to plum jobs and boardroom
bathrooms barred, groping hands, leering lips, voices stifled,
lives lived lean in old age, after a lifetime of wages stolen.

Cards that hide the issues of OUR day – faced and numbered,
shaped and colored – cut to divert our eyes, turned to uncover
a new neighbor’s plight, so we rush to lend a helping hand,
make the best of it for us, once more.

It puts me in mind of Kay Ryan’s poem, The Best of It,
begs me ask, “Will there be a point as our acre is pared,
our garden whittled down to a bean, when we’ll look
at what’s left, realize, one more slash and we’ll die.”

~~~

In designer heels
and tennis shoes
in Lima, Reykjavik, Banjul—
women’s steps
cracking pavements—
everywhere we see
feminine faces.

Cracking pavements
to get
their full acre
restored
for they grow thin
on a bean, no matter
how full of good
works they be.

Cracking pavements
to access
health,
economic security,
representation
safety—
rights
with no gender,
rights
they already own
as full-blooded
members of the
human race.

To all of you,
Sisters, I say,
Don’t make do!
Stop marching!
Rise up!
Grab what’s yours!
Yell,
“These are OUR rights,
as much part of us
as our skin!
Would you have us
peel that off,
too?”

Keeping The Faith

by Sophia Kouidou-Giles

After 100 days of President Trump’s reign, his stack of executive orders and office appointments is bearing poisonous fruit for America and the international community. I recognize the signs of a regime that is abandoning its people, losing sight of human rights and vision for the planet. This is not the USA I have known.

Resistance is laborious, like swimming upstream. My email is flooded with petitions, requests for donations, and phone numbers to call to protest the unethical “deals” made by a president who behaves like an unprincipled car-lot salesman. Comfort comes from seeing that the ranks of the disenchanted are increasing.

My counter is simple and ordinary. I carry on signing petitions, calling Congress, and marching in protest. I join protests against the reduction of the EPA staff and the dispersing of scientific information, the defunding of education, the xenophobic policies toward Muslims as well as economic and political refugees, and new attempts to destroy a health care system. A narrow-minded political party has lost its moral authority as its votes say no to progress. I take heart watching the swell of protests that mounts up, slowly aiming to drown misguided actions.

It may be a long road; my course is not heroic. I have faith that Aesop’s tortoise will win the race. This is the time to stay persistent and steady, and to work on restoring progress and respect for life and dignity.

Red State Resistance

Pat Carr

I live on thirty rural acres in a deep crimson state, and for the last four months, I’ve had to leave the women’s marches, the rallies at airports to welcome Muslim physicians, and the stopping on city streets to monitor white policemen giving tickets to black motorists to my three daughters in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Little Rock. While I watch David Muir’s evening news, listen to NPR and cheer on Trump’s implosion, I can, as Voltaire suggested, tend my garden. On my limestone mountain I’m limited to joining miniscule peace groups, sending small donations from my Social Security check to Democrats, forwarding petitions to Republican lawmakers, and asking my neighbors – as politely as possible – if they’d mind taking down their Confederate flags.

Hot Southern Wind

by Ronna Magy

The difference is,
the driver of the car
stopped by police in Huntington Park
is not white.
Is an immigrant without papers, without education,
without a license.

Car old,
fender dented.
Blue paint dulled,
sheen lost.

The difference is,
he’s not a crow who
when approached flies away,
spreading black wings to blue skies
above chromium in the ground,
above Los Angeles’ electrical power lines,
above dirty brown air
unsafe for human life.

The difference is,
the man with no papers, no education, and no license
is afraid he will be jailed.
Deported.
Police barging through his door,
taking children and wife.
Job in the Maywood factory gone.
Ugly face of the law.

The difference is,
this driver is
no longer young.
Ties to his native country severed years ago.
Flying home will take him
nowhere on a hot southern wind.

Mounting Rush No More: A Vision

by Patricia Pomerleau

I look up and I see the face of Rosa Parks! Guess What – Next to her is Gloria Steinem! Hold On! Just over Gloria’s shoulder is Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her arm around Susan B. Anthony … AND, GET THIS! Next to Susan and looking ready for anything – eyes flashing – the inimitable Elizabeth Warren! Further to the right, figuratively speaking – Hillary Clinton … Why Not?

I hear what sounds like crumbling rock: Congresswoman Barbara Lee, climbing over and shattering some old barrier in her way. Just behind her, through the tumbleweeds, come Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, founders of Daughters of Bilitis and the first same-sex couple married at San Francisco City Hall, 2004!

Atop a bluff I see Edna St. Vincent Millay with a robust Emily Dickinson waving her arm at someone – Oh, it‘s Georgia O’Keefe, ambling over, wearing her big southwestern hat. Grinning. What’s that sound?! Amelia’s plane circling! Circling. She’s going to land! Hey! She was never lost! All this time, she’s been looking for US!

Then Margaret Sanger comes up arm in arm with Betty Friedan and – DAMN! If it’s not Eleanor Roosevelt right behind with Sojourner Truth! Next to them Jay DeFeo attacks a huge canvas, paintbrush loaded. Is that Mahalia Jackson I hear? With the one and only Malvina Reynolds! OMG!

WHOA! Who’s THAT coming along there? Molly Ivins!!! UNBELIEVABLE! This just keeps getting better!

Out the corner of my eye, striding into view, Rebecca Solnit, notebook and pen in hand – losing no time – writing Truth to Power.

Not far off, a group of women laughing, talking, marching. One with a megaphone.

Coming on!

Steady

We all are coming on…

We have a future and it is not set in stone!

She Was Warned

by Catherine Aks

{Catherine (Cathy) Aks has spent her professional musical life wearing many hats: soloist, professional choral singer, published composer, voice teacher, and conductor. She was privileged to be one of two conductors of Hermonics, a women’s chorus created in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. Along with colleague Courtney Birch, she conducted Hermonics in the opening ceremonies of the Women’s March on NYC on January 21, 2017. A few weeks later, outraged at the disrespectful treatment of Senator Elizabeth Warren by a fellow senator, she composed “She Was Warned” in her honor.}

Posted on September 10, 2017January 8, 2023 by admin · 4 Comments

For Troublemakers

Marion Coleman’s Tee

Here is our entry for Troublemakers this issue – one more fabulous piece of art from the formidably talented and deeply wise Marion Coleman. She designed it for Sara Vance Waddell, photographer and curator of the exhibit, “Still They Persist.”