I’m no real stranger to protests. I’ve been going to them off and on since middle school, when I found myself in the thick of one on the Multnomah County Courthouse steps, watching my lesbian parents hastily marry (before the law was changed to annul it). This was my first real brush with the ugliness of complete strangers, yelling slurs at us about a decision that affected their lives zero percent. It was also my first realization that the law could be enforced…and yet unjust and wrong.

The No Kings protests this past weekend is being shown to be as one of (if not the) largest in American history. My son and I attended with whipped together cardboard signs. Mine was a favorite quote from my comfort food show “The West Wing”: “I’m so sick of Congress I could vomit.” My son’s was his own invention, “If I had a dime for every time education was defunded, I could have paid for college by now.” It was gratifying to stand on a busy corner in our medium sized town with about 500 other folks with their own signs (some with clearly a lot more effort put in than ours) and blow up costumes (the revolution will be televised and it will be silly). The majority of drivers either ignored us or cheered for us, with a few flipping us off and the most charming reaction of all, coal rolling. Because nothing draws folks to your point of view than a lungful of unburnt diesel fuel in their faces.

I want to say the feeling is lingering…but I feel more like I do after I eat McDonalds: the nostalgia part of my brain has been triggered by my tastebuds and sweet and sour sauce, but my 35 year old body makes me pay for it the next day; I’m slow, unmotivated, slightly greasy and a tad regretful. The fact this was the second big protest against this current burning dumpster fire of an administration is a mixed sign. Yeah plenty of folks are unhappy, but as better writers than I have already pointed out, where’s the lasting action? The community building? The voter registration drives for the midterms, the better candidates being supported in stepping forward for every office from school board to Congress? Where’s the massive drive to support those being most hurt by the tearing apart of our institutions, the immigrants, the government workers, the trans folks, the truth tellers, folks just trying to get through another day with every single support system wrecked?

Will these protests lead to an actual movement with actual aims? What aims are even needed to cage in the lasting harm the Orange Hemorrhoid and his full colostomy bag of an administration have already done? Has the wheel turned enough to allow for a legitimate third political party? Or has too much damage to both our institutions and our national psyche been done to return to any “before” times? Are the “before” times even worth returning to, because they’ve led us here? Are we heading to a complete reimagining and reworking of who America can and should be, one built for doing the most good for the most people, instead of just protecting the lands of white slave owners?

I’m not much of an organizer, just ask my son about how many of his birthday parties I managed to avoid planning for. It’s a muscle I’m working to build a little at a time, starting with endurance as a testing ground. Can I keep my cool when hot heads and emotions flare? Can I still dig for root cause and actionable items when passionate folks clash? Can I establish common ground among folks with deeply held opposite opinions, where no one side is wrong? These are the bare minimum skills it seems folks need to survive these days, no matter where they find themselves throughout the day. It could be at the airport when flights have been delayed because the air traffic controllers are not being paid and pushed to the brink in a crazy stressful job, navigating the “we can’t really talk about it but how do we not talk about it” work conversations that start every meeting, and especially the coming holiday season, where every crack between family members is laid bare…or avoided for the sake of a symbolic meal.

Everyone could use more grace than ever, and yet almost no one is really operating at 100%. There’s a massive reckoning and reorganizing of our entire society barreling down at us. We’re not ready for it, but that’s never stopped us all living in times our grandchildren will read about. I know I’ve not always made the best choices, the most clear eyed, the ones that do the most good or the least amount of harm…but I won’t be among those who scream and spit at Black children as schools are desegregated, a nurse helping a doctor sneakily sterilize an Indigenous woman, calling ICE on my neighbors or harassing two people getting married and building a quiet, normal life so their daughter can grow up and break so many generational traumas. As Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station reminds us, if you want a better country, be better citizens.