FAR TOO LONG

The small, fortiesh man in a t-shirt and stocking cap stands at the mic in front of the state capitol in Olympia and says, grinning, “When the Asians come out protesting, you know there’s some shit going down.” The man is a high school biology teacher and his grin is a grimace now as he breaks down and tells us how scared his students are, how scared he is too. “It’s bad,” he cries. “So bad.” He collects himself and continues, choking, no guns at school, don’t force teachers to be armed, please, no.

I’m sitting on the capitol steps with a couple hundred or so people, lots of old white hippie throwbacks like Ed and I, a few young, black organizers, a sizable number of female and male clergy in white collars and black cassocks and colorful stoles, clapping as the speakers take their turns. It’s the fourth Moral Monday in the Poor People’s Campaign, and I’m trying to wrap my head around this movement while my heart swells and hurts as the people, “the least of these,” Jesus would say, tell their stories.

Over and over throughout the past weeks, I’ve been moved. By the Native Americans who identify themselves by their ancestors’ names before they begin. By the social worker who cites the horrific suicide rate of transgender children. By the tall, choppy-haired millennial whose father died from poisoning from Weyerhauser pulp mill settling ponds. “I’m walking for you, Daddy,” she said. By the middle aged man who still tears up when he talks about his father’s combat fatigue, “shell shock, they called it back then.” By the parents of the teenaged boy who hung himself after neglectful medical “care”. By the woman in the blue beret, who, after rolling to the mic in her wheelchair, described herself as “Jewish, disabled, morbidly obese, transgender, and mad as hell at the way this country is stomping out the poor.” By the people, so many people, upset, incensed, determined to show the world, in signs and in song, “Somebody’s hurting my brother, and it’s gone on far too long. And I won’t be silent anymore.”

The young woman at the mic now, a pastor, African American, long, curly black hair, a red and white stole on her shoulders, asks us to close our eyes. She prays for help as we go forth, tells us what we are doing is right and needed, tells us to press on in spite of our uncertainty and fear. “Amen,” we say.

We march now, through the streets of Olympia, tracked by state troopers in cars and police on bicycles and a few gapers. Some of the members of the campaign engage in “civil disobedience”, sitting and blocking traffic, “dying in” on a Big Pharma/Big Oil lobbyist’s yard, refusing to leave the capitol at closing time, getting arrested to bring attention to the systemic evils in our culture. Ed and I are “moral observers”, meaning we haven’t yet gotten arrested but support those who have by marching with them and singing freedom songs and holding up the Poor People’s Campaign banner. Sometimes I feel foolish, a teeny, ineffective drop in the protest bucket. Sometimes I feel a swell of gratitude for my fellow marchers, particularly the singers who lead us in the freedom songs, most of which I remember from the sixties and love every much now as I did then. Sometimes I feel exhausted and just want to sit down. Always, when I get home, I’m glad I took part.

I cry more easily now. A little more of my heart is open. I’m more grateful than ever for my privileged status and good fortune. I waver sometimes when I anticipate the next rally and march, but then I remember the beautiful, strong, sad faces and voices and stories and I know I’ll go back and contribute whatever it is I’m contributing. Because somebody is hurting my people, and it’s gone on far too long. And I won’t be silent anymore.

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