RADICAL INACTION AT THE ‘FAMILIES BELONG TOGETHER MARCH’ IN NEW YORK:

The Brooklyn rally is almost indistinguishable from the Manhattan one. We chant more about resisting. Local politicians champion minority communities in the Bronx and Queens. I miss Al Sharpton’s speech by a few minutes—but I hear he said the sorts of things Al Sharpton says.

Rise up. Resist.

I find a park bench after gulping from a park water fountain. Soon a woman sits down next to me. Her name is Maria, and she tells me she’s been an activist for a long time. Her graying hair her tells me that could mean decades.

“But I’m not a revolutionary by any means,” Maria tells me. “I made my own sign, see?”

It reads: “Walk in another’s shoes.”

Maria explains that she comes from a family of Trump voters, but isn’t one herself. She just wants to love people. She’s talkative and kind—in my sunstroked haze, I feel like I’m making a friend.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks, beckoning me with a whisper.

“Yeah of course.”

She gestures at the loudspeakers on the lawn and sighs.

“None of this is new. This is just the same old stuff they told us to chant in the sixties—and nothing changed then either.”

Heh. Read the whole thing.