This sequel sucks!

But your sign doesn't

An act of resistance can be a funny thing.

Somewhere between the moment you decide you’re definitely 100 percent going to the rally and the time you’ve got your sign made, your snacks packed and your transportation and rally buddies all sorted, your brain has had plenty of time to rub itself all over the idea that you’re attending this rally for someone else.

It’s an act of generosity, your brain might have decided, well before your packed bus even arrives — an act of bravery. If your martyrdom complex is severe enough (raises hand), you might even be sulking a bit that you have to leave the comfort of your home to do this thing you don’t want to do.

All pics taken by me at today’s Hands Off rally at Seattle Center

Once you get to the rally — after you spend the first 10-minutes black-out overwhelmed — and you’re actually acclimated enough to take in the hilarious and heartbreaking signs and the wide swathe of shared humanity seeping onto every lawn, every sidewalk, politely edging past you and chattering away behind you and chanting around you, visible as far as you can see in all directions, everyone messy and human, awkward and gorgeous, you start to understand who your act of resistance was actually for.

Yourself. Surprise!

The rally was for you all along.

Not only you, of course. But especially you.

We spend too much time alone with our fear and our despair. We nurse these feelings in the dark, wrapping them in anger and outrage before we even show them to the people we love the most.

But protest strips you bare and brings your truth choking into the light.

I went to the rally and I was changed. Again.

I went to the rally and it lifted me up.

I keep forgetting that part.

I forgot the way it felt to pull this ugly thing out from inside me and hold it up, bleeding and messy in the public square. To claim it as my own without shame or apology.

You can see that I’m vulnerable, and I can see that you’re vulnerable and we’re not looking away from that in this moment, together. We’re meeting this thing together today with humor and bravery and love. We’re meeting it with weirdness and queerness and fatness and awkwardness and love.

In this country, in this city — in this fear, together. In community together, with neighbors and strangers.

We are together, today. Remember that tomorrow.

Remember that next time you’re alone in the dark.

Your body will remember the chants, their cadence and rhythms, and your voice will remember the words.

But sometimes it’s hard to remember the rest.

I was 18 years old the first time I screamed out with others at a protest, at a Take Back the Night rally at Lewis and Clark College in 1998.

I was a sexual assault survivor, and though I had been raised without shame over this ugly thing I held within me, it was different to wrench it out, to scream it out, to cry it out, my arms linked with friends and strangers.

It hurt like hell. But it felt like freedom. It looked like love.

This is what democracy looks like, your voice will call out, and it will be effortless. You’ve been saying it for such a long time, and you will be saying it for the rest of your life. It didn’t start with you and it won’t end with you.

This is what democracy feels like, your heart will murmur, and maybe next time you won’t forget.