Presidents Day. Monday Feb 17, 1:00pm Union Square, NYC.
"NYC NOT VICHY!!!" was my fave sign. "WHERE IS THE LOVE?" the second.
We are doomed to repeat the joys and sorrows of our life over and over, I thought, paraphrasing Nietzsche, riding over to the demo in the cold. We don’t get to choose the life we are living. We live the life thrust upon us.
Standing chatting with her, I looked at women with a sign that declared.
“‘You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice,’ Bob Marley.”
My mind trailed to running into Andy Velez at a similar rally eight years prior, after Trump’s first vanglorious ascent, taking us on a descent into Dante’s circles, with each year, increasing pandemics, wars, violations of rights, trade wars, battles with friends, alienating comrades, playing footsie with fascists, making deals with war mongers, gutting polio vaccine, on and on.
Signs and messages and conversations filled Union Square, where Emma Goldman once spoke. I love seeing old friends and new at demos. Sure we wanted a different movie. But we don't know it ends, said one new friend.
I know some are clamoring for a March on Washington. March on Wash, Million Man, Womens, don't we know how those end? Sure the 1963 March on Washington produced results. And I'm not sure if Bayard Rustin is around. Instead it's up to us. I like a 50 state strategy. Thousands are in the streets. We are not quite dead yet. Immigrants are welcome here. People carried Emma Lazarus signs, no LGBQ without a T signs, solidarity expanding, signs appealing for compassion and care, for democracy and justice, for public health and science. It was like a love letter to the city, to our city, where immigrants are welcome, the home of Stonewall, where you can’t have an LGB, without a T and Q, where Emma Goldman screamed about sweatshops and patriarchy, and we are still out in the streets. Facing freezing cold, New Yorkers were out and on the streets as we have been for weeks now.
I read through messages from people around the city. No one could find each other. Far too many people out. Babs was on one corner of Union Square, I was on the other, a few thousand in between us. No problem. Even more on the way to Washington Square, on a crisp Feb day.
Home, I took to facebook, checking out my friend’s posts and pics. Post after post about the feeling of marching with 10,000 others. "It was the biggest, most beautiful crowd anyone has ever seen; everyone says they've never seen numbers like this, frankly, in the history of the country there's never been such a big march."
Ken Schles put it succinctly:
“Donald Trump’s less than one full month in office is engendering a growing popular backlash. The decapitation of federal agencies through billionaire Elon Musk dodgy DOGE project and Trump’s 19th century colonialist approach to foreign policy is bringing people together in fear and anger. And today they took their anxieties out onto the streets. Nationwide, 50501 protests drew thousands on this frigid Presidents’ Day (not Kings’ Day) protests. According to the NYPD, over 10,000 marched from Union Square to Washington Square Park. The people are not happy with the state of the state.”
Jay W Walker posted:
“Over 10,000 impassioned New Yorkers demonstrated today with a rally and march from Union Square, down Broadway and over to Washington Square Park [ORGANIZED and EXPERTLY MARSHALED by @risenresistnyc] to loudly and clearly say that We The People will not stand idly by while #Felon47 and the #ApartheidMuskrat ransack and loot the federal government, shred the United States Constitution, and eviscerate the Rule of Law. We will not allow this #whitesupremacist, #neofascist, #ChristianNationalist COUP led by Donald J. Trump to turn the United States into a replica of the #Apartheid South Africa that spawned Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the rest of their hateful junta.”
And, of course, Jim Eigo, was feeling existential, posting about watching Sir Paul, who had been in town all week, playing shows in the Bowery Ballroom, before an appearance on the 50th Anniversary of the Saturday Night Live, in which he played the Abbey Road Medley, including Golden Slumbers and Carry that Weight. He was chatting with Viki on fb:
“Thank you. Viki. Thank you, Paul. I got back from the demo in Union Square, made myself an omelet, fired up the computer & watched this as I thawed out. Paul sang, "do not cry," but somehow I could not help myself. How incredible that this music, released when I had just turned 18, still has such power to move me at 73. (I have a powerful memory of a roomful of college freshman, including me & a girl I had once dated & her new boyfriend, sang at the top of our lungs every word of the Abbey Road medley -- that's how important that music was to us poor lost souls at this juncture of our lives.), And how much more incredible that Paul McCartney, older than I, still has the power to deliver.”
Jim and Vicki Noe had been corresponding about that feeling when they first heard this music, years and years ago. Eigo went on:
“ I just got home from a reading of a solid new Virginia Woolf/Orlando play at the Public Theater. Freezing out, & incredibly windy -- about a 15-minute walk. Too tired to make the supper I had planned, & I wanted something lighter since it is so late anyway. So I made a platter of cheese & olives & nuts & apple slices & watched this clip again. Just as thrilling as the first time, & now I could catch some of the smaller details. I was thinking that the last time I felt as culturally adrift as I have since Trump's re-election was in 1969, after the ascension of Richard Nixon to the presidency put the kibosh on the bloodless revolution I had felt sure would occur after the multiple international shocks of 1968. Woodstock, as wonderful as the music was, only sealed for me the fact that a drug-addled counterculture was a rabbit hole & would not have me as a fellow traveler. The medley from side 2 of Abbey Road spoke uniquely to that cultural lostness a lot of us were feeling at the time, & somehow managed to find a kind of opportunity in it as well -- "But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go." I hope I find a kind of opportunity in the corresponding lostness I have been feeling since last November.”
Viki recalled, “1968 was the year I thought the world was coming to an end. This feels very similar.”
And I chimed in, recalling that feeling in carpool, hearing the Abbey Road Medley on the radio... not knowing who wrote it, or where we were going, in a new town, in Texas, what the hell, not my home of Atlanta, not Princeton, where dad had been fired, in Texas, on the way to school, in the back seat of the car, not knowing what was ahead. But it turned out to be a gorgeous moment. on that magic feeling, nowhere to go, found a place. Texas turned out to be a wild ride.
Still, we have the choice to carry weight or live with unbearable lightness. We carry that weight, as Paul sings: “boy you're gonna carry that weight.” What is the weight, I wondered, but seemed to understand. Jean Paule Sartre ruminated on the importance of carrying weight in life in his play The Flies. For Sartre, shirking responsibility was the wrong choice. Our freedom requires acknowledging that everyday choices carry weight. They require us to strive to act in ways that reflect beliefs and values. They have implications. Earn your attitude, ACT UP used to say. Earn your attitude, put your ideas into action. Demonstrate. Agitate. Speak truth to power.
+++
It has been a rough few days. News, a horror show every day, our government cheering for the AfD in Germany, the right wingers, playing footsie with fascist rhetoric and symbols, embracing dictators.
Saturday, the NYC reported, “Even in Death, Navalny Is Seen by the Kremlin as an Enduring Threat Russian authorities have zealously prosecuted people with links to Aleksei A. Navalny’s organization inside Russia in the year since he died.”
All week, I read Emma Goldman and her writings on sexual liberation, women's rights, and free love. She fought persecution constantly, her boyfriend’s persecution and her own. Her lover was imprisoned and she kept going, pissing off Russians and Americans, Bolsheviks and prudes everywhere.
"I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases" she wrote. "Love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere".
I feel like Emma is with me now, ever reminding me, we’ve been here before.
She was with me going to see Mom on a bluesy Sunday.
Feb 15
With me, on the F train out to go dancing Saturday night, the train full of people, a guy asks what i am reading. It's a history of activism in new york, i say, referring to ron goldberg's epic memoir\history of act up. The other book in my bag, living my life by emma goldman. I recommend both. Two Golds. Hmmm. Cool the guy says. We've been here before, I say. He agrees. What are you reading, I ask them. The pleasure of life is a pile of books to read. The whole car pops into a conversation. Fist bumping about books we are reading, about the very act of reading. Oh my, New York. Oh my, the conversation continues.
On the way home, this poor guy was trying to sleep by me on the train. First one then two three four and five cops came up to harass him. By the time the cops were done waking this guy, who went straight back to sleep when they left, the express train careened out the station. In the meantime, the mayor in charge is unleashing ICE on New Yorkers, in a deal for his political future. The war on the poor rages forward.
Earlier in the day, we made it out for the immigrant's right rally.
"Stop the raids, stop the deportations," trade unionists in support of immigrants chanted. Stumbled into Donna and Jay, ever activating, even in the snow flurries. Nothing perfect about the resistance. Is it up to the challenge? Certainly not. But each day more people are engaging. And we are reading about what happened before we were here. There is a lot more to do. People are doing what they can. Can we do more, certainly. Do we need to be scolded for not doing enough, certainly not. Larry Kramer is dead. Jeremiah is gone. Prophets are overrated. In the meantime, let's look out for each other. In between it, some snowy day shots of Twin Peaks pilot episode and pic from a stroll with the teenager.
Feb 14
The teenager made it home from Boston for some hot pot and chit chat with the family.
Their bus got in early. I was at the Stonewall for the rally,
Jackie puts it,
“Emergency rally at The Stonewall Memorial to fight back against the National Parks Service removing the T and Q from the Stonewall website. Stonewall was a rebellion started by TRANS women. There is NO LGB without the T (or Q). We will NOT be erased and we will NOT leave anyone behind. #protecttranslives #lgbqtia #wewillnotbeerased #actupfightback”
No.LGBQ without a T. People are acting up. They are pushing and we are pushing back. Happy Valentines everyone. Leave no one behind.
Standing outside, I ran into Ray, who snapped a shot of us,
“Two cis guys showing up for their trans friends and looking really cute while they’re doing it.”
Feb 13
Eric Sawyer, whose birthday, we celebrated Monday at Julius, wrote from DC:
“Five AIDS Activist (including me) were arrested disrupting a sham Congressional Hearing on USAID where republicans are spreading lies about USAID waste and depicting LGBTIQ programs as Drag Parties. The chair lies after our disruption saying we should watch FOX because waiver have restored funding already. This is a lie, funding is still frozen, staff layed off, offices and clinics locked shut, medical records a emails off line, less than Ten Percent of drug distribution programs are open including pediactric TB programs shuttered. Republicans lie, people will die.
Ann Christine wrote:
“AVAC WON! Freeze on USAID foreign aid money permanently lifted! Another legal victory.
I’ve just updated my big roundup of progress published last night… LOTS of advances….
Title: “People Have The Power”.. on Substack - link here:
https://open.substack.com/.../p/people-have-the-power...
Feb 13
Spent the last couple of nights at the Monkey Bar, Oyster Bar, at Grand Central, and Julius with Eric, taking in the strange scenes of the world, talking with old old friends, one from high school, who i used to meet here, the second from my early days in New York, a quarter century prior, trying make sense of it all, wondering what happened, looking at the expanding resistance, efforts to push back against the chaos.
Feb 12
"BREAKING: Appeals court refuses to halt an order requiring the Trump administration to unfreeze all federal funding."
Baby C spent the morning at City Hall fighting for her rights, our rights in the snow. It's a leaky democracy, but it's still not for spectators. We gotta fight for it.
After we got back from DC the week before, I got a message from Kaitlin of Housing Works, who helped organize the PEPFAR action the week before. “As I reflect on my time at Housing Works, it is clear that the MOST important part has been the power we’ve built together through our collective advocacy. I recently found a journal entry from July 2023, after I attended a talk on centering joy in progressive movements that reminded me how important our community truly is. I wrote:“I truly want to form more connections amongst people doing Advocacy. That feels like how we can celebrate joy and each other. When I asked the presenter, “how do you do this work when the losses keep coming?” She said, they have not rooted success in results, rather in community solidarity, power, and mutual aid. Yes, we’re fighting for policy change, but at the end of the day we’re really fighting for ourselves and each other. And building that bond and strength to look at each other and say, “I’m here for you, I’m here for your client, I’m here for your brother who I know is struggling.” That is power. That is success. And so even when we’ve not gotten our legislation passed, we are still winning because we’re thriving together, dancing, laughing, tiring our feet out on the pavement, protesting. And that’s something that cannot be taken from us, no matter what’s in a budget or law.” I have admittedly, at times, gotten hyper focused on the ‘results’ of our advocacy. With the next four years of this administration, it will again be easy to narrow our vision on what constitutes success. If there is one thing I want to leave with you all, it is a reminder that the community we build together through our advocacy work is the true measure of success. I know that for me, my friendships with you all have had the power to completely transform me.”
Charles king writes, “Gonna keep on fighting until PEPFAR is fully restored. This isn’t about some government beauracracy. This is about saving the lives of millions of people around the globe living with HIV. And it is about preventing the spread of HIV to another generation. We will never back away from our demand to restore full funding now!!!”
We are gonna keep on being kind, looking out for each other, and pushing back, watching movies when we can, and leaving no one behind. We’re gonna keep reaching out to each other, smiling and supporting rolling that rock up the hill.
Post Rally/ Postscript
Sitting at home after the President’s Day rally, I watched a trashy and lovely French movie, Blue is the Warmest Color. The theme of existentialism runs throughout the film.
In an early dialogue, Emma, one of the protagonists, discusses Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly the idea that "existence precedes essence." For Sartre, we define ourselves through our actions rather than pre-determined traits. For Emma, we have the freedom to choose our own path, our own meaning through art and personal choices. Adèle, on the other hand, compares Bob Marley's song "Stand up and Shout" to Jean-Paul Sartre's axiom "existence is humanism" as the two discuss philosophy, the meaning of life and freedom.
My mind trailed back to that Bob Marley sign at the protest today.
We have the possibility to choose how to live, what weight to carry, what struggles to endure, even when things get dark and the winter cold.
