What we want to do and what we can do don't always align. That's one of the hardest parts of my life in the last year and more, trying to get out of the way of my straining mental health.
This weekend, I experienced a personal victory. After years of wanting to support the causes I care about through protest, I finally did it. Amid the mostly charming chaos of two little kids in our living room and my friend and I making breakfast for us all, I created two double-sided protest signs calling for the freedom of Palestine and an Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Making a sign, I know, isn't the same as showing up in person. Without people in the streets, the protest doesn't happen. Without enough people in the streets, the news doesn't get made. Each person, each heart, each voice adds to the public's interest. And public interest moves causes toward reality.
That's why I've told myself each time that I would go.
And then I wouldn't go.
At first it was because I couldn't risk the exposure to COVID, since I was the mom of a baby. And then it was because I felt too intimidated to figure out what to bring and know to keep myself safe, since I am easily overwhelmed by procedure. My reasons were mine and I needed to listen to them, and yet I still longed to help.
The most recent time I considered attending a protest was last fall, after the 2022 Central Visual and Performing Arts High School shooting in St. Louis. And despite thinking about how much I want this terrible violence to stop, I finally accepted that protesting isn't for me, at least the me I am right now.
With acceptance comes understanding.
I started to think about, what could I do to support the protests? Action, not intention, creates change. The people who are dying for terrible reasons need our help.
I thought about a protest event and its attendees themselves. Who are the people who go? What do they do? What helps them do those things?
They need to get to the protest site. They need to keep themselves fed and hydrated and protected from the sun and the rain and the cold. They need to know their rights if they get arrested, and what they can do to try to protect themselves if they are. We who don't go to the protests could help with any of these things, through our presence and resources: the ability to drive, access to a car, the ability to buy and deliver food and water, knowledge of the police and the legal system. Providing any of these could help protestors and therefore protests and therefore the people and the causes who protestors support.
And then I thought of it: signs. Explaining things! Drawing things! Hand lettering! These are things I can do. These are actions I can take.
Of course, I initially dreamed of the biggest and cleverest way to do it. Set up a tent on the way to the protest starting point. Make some signs ahead of time, and also set up tables and supplies for people to make their own, and have a place where I can make them for people who have something to say and yet don't know how to say it or draw it.
Maybe I'll yet do some version of that. But this time, this past Sunday morning as I was once again sharing protest information to social media friends, without any plans to attend myself—this time, I did something different from all the times before. This time, I wrote an offer below the event information: Let me know if you'd like me to make a sign for you.
It might seem strange to be celebrating this personal victory in the company of grieving and raging against the violence that Palestinian and Israeli people are suffering right now. Making two signs is so much smaller than what is needed to bring safety and reason and joy to people who deserve it. And yet, just as each person in the streets adds to the movement, each person at the easel, or supermarket, or carpooling list makes a small difference that adds up to the big difference.
It turns out that for me, going to the protest isn't as important as supporting the cause.
Do what you can to support the causes you care about! We each have different ways we can give at different moments in our lives. And our fellow humans need everything we can give.
So this weekend, this month, this year, this lifetime, take stock of what might be needed and what you can do, and take a step that you've never before stepped.
And then celebrate afterward. And then rest. And then notice, and feel, and act, and celebrate, and rest, and then do it again. With each person, each heart, each voice, we will build the just world we all deserve.
Mentioned in this issue: The so-called Israel-Palestine Conflict, which is explained clearly in the linked 10-minute video from news site Vox (a video which, yes, is 7 years old); and the 2022 Central Visual and Performing Arts High School shooting, which happened this past October in St. Louis, MO, at a school down the street from the grocery store I visit weekly.
For an explanation for why I stand with Palestine and ask that the US work with Israel to initiate a ceasefire and to forever stop the genocide and control of Palestinians, see my admittedly vague spring 2021 essay, The multitudes of a tomato.
And many thanks to Jia Lian Yang, who took this issue’s photo, which shows a view of the arch behind this past weekend’s protest in St. Louis, MO.