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The Secret Fear No One Talks About Before a Protest
What happened at my first protest.
Have you wanted to do something, but you didn’t know what to do?
The feeling of needing to do something troubled me for months until, finally, I signed up for the Hands Off! protest in my city.
Of course I’d seen protests on the news, yet with no history of protesting or getting involved beyond voting, the feeling of, “You need to do something!”grew with every news story.
Was I scared? Yes. And my fear came as a shock to me. And people I know who don’t scare easily were confessing they were scared, too.
Protest day arrived. Taking the bus for the first time since college, I met other people headed to the protest and I met others attending their first protest.
On the bus, the driver said to the protesters holding their signs, “Y’all don’t get off at the stop and walk. I’m going drop you right there.” And she did, saving us the three-block walk.
After a 15-minute bus ride, we arrived early, watching as people kept pouring into the capitol square. Later, I learned it was an estimated 5,000 people, many holding homeade signs, some waving upside down flags — the universal sign for distress. A few capitol police…
