Showing Up

Honestly, it's on us now!

Wayne and I went to our local Make Good Trouble protest demonstration yesterday. I was on the same town green in New Milford with my homemade sign for the No Kings rally a little over a month ago.

Both times, the stakes were far lower for us than they’ve been for people demonstrating in urban areas, especially for black and brown people, who are in short supply in small-town Connecticut. There were no riot police or ICE agents, masked or unmasked, waiting to haul people away. A couple of New Milford police cars were hovering at the margins—but I’m pretty sure they were assigned to keep people safe during an outdoor rock concert happening at the same time. The demonstrators on the green were, by and large, gray-haired Baby Boomers like ourselves, sick at heart at the wrongs being perpetrated by the band of thugs and fanatics in the White House.

Yes, it’s terribly important to show up and to keep calling Congress and write letters to the editor and give money to organizations that are helping the innocent people being harmed—and just to be kind, as kind as we can possibly be in the context of all the cruelty and utter lack of empathy that we hear about every day.

Life feels like a very old fairytale now. We were living our lives in whatever bubble of complacency and denial we’d chosen, loving the people we love and trying our best to achieve our goals. And then down from the mountain of nightmares, there comes a big bloated dragon, spewing smoke, belching fire, and shaking the very ground beneath our feet. The dragon is grabbing and gobbling up men, women, and children in its path, without respect to their rights, due process, or Constitutional protections.

It’s a scenario we’ve seen before in human history.

We know, from history, that what we do about it matters. We know, from history, that those who choose to ignore the evil will be seen, later on, as complicit—and that those who oppose it may have to risk or lose their lives in doing so.

We know this story. And it’s unfolding right now, in 2025, here in the U.S. and, tragically, in many other places in the world.

Mother Earth herself is calling out to us to wake up. The very habitability of the planet is at stake—and, seriously, it may already be too late to preserve this green and gorgeous paradise we inherited.

One of the gray-haired ladies at the demonstration told me proudly that she won’t even speak to Trump supporters any more. But how can people’s minds be changed if we refuse to engage with them? I’ve heard similarly hateful and close-minded things from people condemning Islamists, admitting that they’d like to see all of them bombed to smithereens.

Really? What about the children of radical Islamists or Q-Anon conspiracists or proponents of any ethno-state? Have we all lost our humanity? Have we all lost our minds?

Hatred will never be conquered by hatred. Dehumanizing anyone dehumanizes us all.

Every nation-state in our world was founded on the marginalization or destruction of other people who lived there first.The onus is on us as a species to evolve some greater wisdom about how we’re going to live on this planet with all the many other kinds of people who live here.

We’ve been failing at this since the dawn of human history.

We teach our children in nursery school how to share. But as a species we still haven’t assimilated this most basic of lessons.

Race is a social construct. Religion is a story we tell ourselves. But every human heart is constructed in exactly the same way: no human heart is worth more than any other.

Every child is precious.

There must be ways we haven’t even dreamed of yet to fulfill the potential of our humanity—to bring peace, to live with kindness. To send the dragon back to the land of nightmares.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an idealist and a romantic—and, while we’re at it, a progressive who doesn’t even particularly believe in Capitalism. I think the role of government is to help its citizens live better, healthier lives. I think all of us should do our bit, in whatever way we can, to make the world a better place, contributing whatever gifts and talents are in our giving.

We have to continue showing up. The late, great freedom-fighter John Lewis told us what to do: "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America."