Mourning and Marching. Again.

The sign I held outside the United Nations
in 2002, when I protested the invasion of Iraq.

On a sunny day in 2002, I stood outside the United Nations to protest the Bush administration’s push for preemptive war against Iraq. I was one of only a few hundred protestors at most, as the administration’s campaign to rally the public was still in its infancy.

During the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, those of us who were vehemently against the war, and outspoken in our opposition, were smeared as treasonous by many on the right (and some on the left). Our patriotism was questioned. Our commitment to American ideals was questioned. Some even labelled us as terrorist sympathizers, a moniker that was especially painful for New Yorkers, like myself. I was on the front of the Staten Island Ferry the morning of September 11^th, 2001, and as the ferry approached Manhattan, I witnessed the first explosion resulting from American Airlines Flight 11 hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I remember the billowing smoke cascading upward in the minutes immediately after the explosion, and I remember the smell of death that seeped into the subway cars while riding through lower Manhattan in the weeks after the Twin Towers fell.

Months after 9/11, I stood outside the United Nations in the blazing sun and protested because the case for war with Iraq was flimsy at best; I protested because I didn’t want America to sacrifice its ideals and credibility on the alter of wanton global hegemony; most of all, I protested because I didn’t want more people to die needlessly. Yet I and the protesters around me were called “terrorist sympathizers.” The range of emotions I felt in those days was wide, but sympathy for those who murdered thousands of Americans was not among them.

As time wore on, more people began to protest. I marched on DC and again in New York, where by then we “terrorist sympathizers” numbered in the hundreds of thousands instead of only in the hundreds. Millions around the world eventually marched, but it was not enough to hold back the tide of aggression unleashed by determined politicians who cherry-picked intelligence to suit their agenda and their enablers in the media and political circles who were too afraid to be labelled unpatriotic to speak out.

Fifteen years later, on January 21^st, I will march again, this time as part of the Women’s March on NYC. (I never should’ve stopped marching, but complacency is an insidious foe and I failed to resist its charms.) Once again, I will march against a rising tide of aggression, a disaster that feels all but assured—the only unknowns being those of scale and duration: It’s not whether people will die, but how many. It’s not whether people will be stripped of their rights, but how many rights and how many people. It’s not whether the republic will be damaged, but how badly. Some may think this assessment is alarmist; I hope they are correct. But fifteen years ago, many people thought our leaders would never leverage the nation’s collective grief and fear, and rely on the thinnest of evidence, to attack a country that posed no immediate threat to the US or its allies.

However, unlike in 2002 when I marched solely against something, on January 21st I will march for something. I will march for women and their ability to govern their bodies. I will march for people of color and the elimination of systemic racial oppression that’s woven into the fabric of our institutions. I will march for the LGBTQ community and its members’ ability to love and marry and be treated with respect. I will march for Muslims and those of every religious minority who will no doubt face intensifying suspicion that leads to oppression that results in persecution. I will march for Native peoples, including those whose recent successes in North Dakota have inspired the world. I will march for members of the press, whose voices and perseverance will be more essential than ever in holding powerful people accountable. I will march for immigrants, both legal and undocumented, whose American dreams are many of the country’s most vivid. I will march for all those who do so much more to protect our democracy than simply march. And finally, I will march for my daughter: a loving, impossibly curious biracial child of two years of age. In solidarity with hundreds of thousands of women and their allies around the world, I will march for her future and the future of every little girl whose prospects now seem imperiled.

Once again, some members of the media will label us as treasonous. Some of our fellow citizens will malign us. And I’m certain the incoming administration will seek to silence, dismiss, delegitimize, and punish us. It’s a pattern as sad as it is familiar. I don’t welcome the coming onslaught; in fact, I fear it. But my greater fear is that if I don’t march, fifteen years from now my daughter will be marching—feeling the same fear and facing the same tide of aggression. I will march so that perhaps my daughter won’t have to.