Reflecting on protesting in the Plaza
By Rory Johnson, SOU student
On Saturday, Jan. 24, I woke up in my comfortable bed. I woke up with my heater on, because it was fairly cold outside. I woke up worried, like every day. How could I not be worried in times like this?
When checking social media, I read the dreadful white words on the black screen: “11 a.m. Central. Victim has been pronounced dead. Federal agents have killed another person.”
I don’t cry immediately anymore when I read about tragedies like this. I feel bloated and oversaturated with terror, frustration, even anger. I feel like there is no room anymore to put my grief, no area of my body that is not already full to the brim.
I post on Facebook mere minutes later. “I will be at the Plaza at 11 a.m. today to protest.” I give myself an hour to prepare, because I still need breakfast. I need time to get dressed. Even as I am so angry I cannot even shed tears to mourn the lives of all we’ve lost, I give myself the luxury of time these people will never have again.
I don’t read the comments after the first one. “He was ‘illegal’… [and] resisted arrest,” the commenter scoffed.
I don’t care if he was living in the U.S. illegally or not. I thought this to myself, over and over, as I marched to the Plaza with my measly sign in tow. He was a person who deserved life like anyone else.
I realized the moment I felt the wind that I was not dressed for this weather. I shuffled to the sidewalk, where I’d stand for the next hour in my flip-flops in 45-degree weather.
But I didn’t care. I imagined the children cold, in cages, without their families and with no promise of just trial or release. I reminded myself that this wasn’t imagination at all. It wasn’t a nightmare, or happening in a distant, faraway fantasy — it was happening now. It is happening now.
My sign flapped in the wind, held up by my two shaking hands. It read, “When will you get angry?”
On the car ride over, I had imagined myself yelling at the top of my lungs in the plaza, begging someone to care, shaking their shoulders and asking them why everyone was so comfortable going about their day. I wondered where everyone held this grief in their bodies. Was it in the throat? The aching stomach? Did it overflow like mine, not confined to any one place, spewing out and spreading and swallowing them up?
I realized soon enough that people absolutely did care the same way I did.
For one reason or another, their grief stayed in their bodies, coming out in vibrant ways I hadn’t anticipated.
Some even came to join me.
A silent gentleman with a small cardboard sign stood beside me first. He nodded to me, and I remarked I hadn’t expected anyone to come, but I wouldn’t have minded, because I still would have come out regardless. He quietly agreed.
Moments later, a very friendly woman, Kate, joined us, and made a comment about my shoe choice. I laughed it off. “I should have been more careful,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do.” After a moment, she surprised me by taking off her warm vest and placing it over my feet. “Stand in the sun,” she instructed politely, and I did.
Once I felt more comfortable, I said, “It’s hard to put into words, but I wake up every morning just sick to my stomach.”
“You can’t do that,” Kate scolded lightly. “It’ll eat you alive.”
Many people of all ages and backgrounds came to speak to us. They walked by and simply whispered, “thank you,” or “you’re doing the right thing.” One woman exclaimed, “Doesn’t it make you want to go to Minneapolis?” and expressed her disbelief at the prospect of people being killed or wounded for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Most notably, an older man walked by, pausing to read our signs. He mumbled, presumably in response to my sign. “I am angry,” he said. I sat with that for a moment. I knew many people were. I wished my sign instead read something longer, something more detailed, like: “When will enough be enough? When will everyone find peace?”
When we dispersed, I found myself feeling simultaneously more full in my heart, and more afraid in my body. If everyone felt so strongly about this: What should we do? What could we do? What do I do with myself when the grief has no place to go?
Kate hugged me before we left. “Come here, sweetie,” she said, and held me tightly. She cracked a few jokes about being a “stand-in mom” to me. I couldn’t express how much I appreciated her in that moment, so lost and far away from home, but I said my thanks and waved as we walked in opposite directions.
I drove around town, admiring the trees, my town, and my home. I felt connected to the grass and the sky. I listened to classical music — I finally cried. I thought of my cousins and uncles. They are brown too, just like the children and women and men that are being targeted. I’ve heard my cousins complain of being profiled at school. I cry for their safety, knowing they are targets, even though they are not living in the U.S. illegally.
And, after all of this, I had a grand realization, one I should have come to know long ago. Love and grief are not mutually exclusive. They bubble up and overflow and make you stand out in the cold in your old flip-flops. They make you place a vest on a stranger’s pair of feet to warm them. They make you think about things greater than you. They are one and the same — and they are a wonderful stepping stone to action.
Rory Johnson is a student in the Communications Department at Southern Oregon University as well as a writer for The Siskiyou.
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