I was glad to read of the events in Chapel Hill and Carrboro last Saturday as part of the No Kings Days. I participated in a rally in downtown Pittsboro.
Last Saturday, the sun was eating away the chill in the air as my children and I walked to the rally. We were late, due to my daughter’s morning soccer game, so protesters had already lined the street, smiling at us and waving their homemade signs. Several volunteers in orange safety vests escorted us past the roundabout and across the street where 1,500 people had gathered in front of the Chatham County Justice Center.
The speakers were inspiring, particularly Robert Reives, our state representative, who spoke with no notes and pumped up the crowd. There was also music, including songs led by Singing Resistance Chatham, a local group inspired by the chorus of crowds in Minneapolis and across the country. Adding one’s voice to a catchy chorus is always moving, even if, like me, you can’t carry a tune: “You gotta put one foot in front of the other and lead with love.”
(Image via Tony Mergliano)
A protest is also about the people you meet — like Jon, in his “unpaid protester” T-shirt. We discovered that we lived only a couple miles from each other. My older sons had attended a preschool near his home, and he knew our friends who had operated it before the pandemic. We made quickly connections to more people, including the pastor at his church and a gentleman in the choir whom I knew from poetry readings.
In her study of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted, “Terror can rule absolutely only over [people] who are isolated against each other.” She argued that every tyrannical government “bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all.” (The Origins of Totalitarianism). Perhaps you knew that loneliness is a public health epidemic that has demonstratively lowered life expectancy. But had you considered the fact that a lack of social connection and community is also potentially fatal to our democracy?
We are connected to those who came before us as well as to those who will come after us. In the moments when we show up for one another, we discover a deeper sense of who we are than we could ever discern merely by the voice in our own heads.
I know that life is busy; as mentioned, I hustled my kids from a soccer game to this rally. They would have preferred to head home, but once we arrived, we all enjoyed ourselves. (Even if the teenager didn’t want to admit it.) So, I am not denying that times are challenging but rather claiming that because of the adversities and tragedies, we need life-giving relationships more than ever. Gathering in community is worth the extra effort.
My new friend, Jon, put his arm over my shoulders, and we marched in place, singing, “We gotta put one foot in front of the other and lead with love!”
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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