No Kings Protest

It's been a while since we've joined in a protest. 

And today just felt like a good day to protest. 

Today while Israel bombed Iran and Iran bombed Israel. Today while we waited to hear anything from anyone in Gaza. Today while a manhunt is underway for an assassin who shot and killed Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband (and made an attempt on the lives of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife and had a list of several other targets).

And that's just today (let alone the past few weeks). 

So we decided that we should show up, be counted, and make our voices heard. Even if all we were doing was screaming into the void...it was nice to do it together for a little while.

The kids helped make signs in the morning. I didn't know what to write on my first sign (there is so much—too much), so I settled on "UGH" and let Phoebe scribble on it.

She was so excited to go downtown: "We get to park in a parking garage!!?!!?? Yippee! Look—cranes! Look—dumpsters! Look—a train! This is the closest I've ever been to a train!"

It was not hard to figure out where to go after we parked:

I mean, first of all it was at the capitol building and that's already kind of hard to miss. But then there were the crowds! We couldn't even get into the square because it was already at capacity (5000 occupants) but they—the police—blocked off the roads along the square and we filled those, too.

Here are Benjamin and Zoë with their signs:

Benjamin's is a quote from a Star Wars-y thing and he was happy to have it acknowledged at least seven times by strangers:

Here are Alexander and I with our signs (with an explanation of our signs to follow):

Alexander decided that he wanted to write "Trump is rude" on his sign (and fair enough—his sign was also acknowledged by a woman walking by who said, "You're absolutely right, young man. Trump is rude!"). But if he was making a sign that said "Trump is rude" it felt nearly impossible for me to not make a sign that said, "Trump is pretty [freaking] rude" to go along with it. 

Here's the thing: Did you know they've made a musical out of the movie Death Becomes Her?

Well, they did. 

That movie is...wild. Rachel wanted to watch it since she's been seeing chatter about the musical, so I told her I would watch it with her because I hadn't seen it since I was very little and it just kind of lives in this...very strange...part of my brain...with other movies like Nothing But Trouble.

I'm pretty sure my parents were Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase fans—Foul Play is one of my mom's favourite movies. I also remember seeing Bird on a Wire and Overboard.

But, honestly, Death Becomes Her and Nothing But Trouble are probably the most...unhinged...of the movies I've seen Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase star in (respectively). 

So I watched Death Becomes Her with Rachel and Miriam and...yeah...it was just as strange as I remembered it. 

"I must have watched this when I was...like 7, 8, 9...something like that," I said. "And it's just been living in my brain ever since."

"Your parents let you watch this movie at age seven?!" Rachel gasped. "That's nuts!"

Yeah, so that movie, as I've mentioned, occupies a very...special...place in my brain. 

There's this one scene where Meryl Streep takes a big ol' gun and shoots Goldie Hawn right through the stomach, leaving a perfectly round hole. But then...Hawn reanimates and—dripping wet because the blast sent her flying into a fountain—stumbles toward Streep and...Bruce Willis (this cast, guys!)...and says, "That...was totally uncalled for!"

In the musical, though, her line is, "That...was...rude. That was pretty [freaking] rude!"

Now, we don't use the word [freaking] in our house, and even Zoë called me out on putting and F* on my sign. But...I explained to the kids that for me that meant freaking not [freaking]...and that was kind of a pun because we want to be "free" of "kings." And we also talked about how they would be encountering that word while we were out today. 

We have a strict "no sounding out graffiti" rule when we go downtown, but today we knew they'd encounter that word on signs and falling out of people's mouths and my sign gave us an opportunity to preemptively discuss that word with the children...so when a group of counter protesters (Proud Boys) walked by and the crowd started chanting, "#^&* you, Nazis!" until they went away...I could just calmly tell the kids, "Yeah, we don't need to join in on this one..." 

They were expecting it. They heard it. They saw it written down. 

It won't be the last time for them, either. 

So, yes, my sign was a little bit spicy, but there was a story behind it (and it was rather bland compared to many other signs that we saw). Here we all are in front of the capitol...Phoebe preferred to hold her sign upside down: 

Here's a picture that another protester took of us all together (near the end of our stay when Phoebe was so over it all):

She actually took it on her phone (you can see my phone in my hand) because she wanted to send it to her sister to show her that it would be fine to bring her kids out. And then she decided she wanted to send me the picture so she had me type my phone number in her phone and then left me standing holding her phone when she got busy passing out stickers with "F 🧊" on them. 

Evidently she thought I was trustworthy enough for that. 

Anyway...we have a family picture. And people were handing out all sorts of things—the kids all got American flags and friendship bracelets. People were coming around with water and postcards to mail to representatives and...it was a very friendly event. People were very mindful of our trail of children walking around like little ducklings between us, they would hold people back so we could all travel together. People were very thoughtful. 

Here are a few pictures of Phoebe with her sign the right way up:

And upside down again (I am not sure why these pictures are so hazy):

Poor Andrew was getting his workout in—at one point he had both Zoë and Phoebe on him (Alexander had a death grip on my hand the whole time):

The kids got too hot and tired to continue after about an hour so we called it quits and headed to Andrew's office to pick up a few things he needed to grab (and use the toilets).

I think one of the only reasons we were able to stay as long as we did (after the clouds parted and it got hot—I was initially afraid it was going to rain on us but was glad I insisted the kids put on sunscreen anyway because the weather pulled a complete 180° on us) was that there was a marching band going around. They set up camp on the stairs for a little while and played some fun songs that we could bounce to and sing along to and...I think that helped the little ones be a little less fussy about wanting to go do something else.

The kids were so happy to take a break in an air conditioned building.

Andrew had a bit of trouble getting in the building—security is tight and they recently re-issued ID cards and his wasn't working for some reason. The security guard came on and tried it and it worked for him, so he let us in the building. But then when we got up to Andrew's office he realized that he'd also forgotten his keys—so the books and laptop he needed to grab are...still in his office. But we got to see where he works (this is the first time for any of us to visit Daddy's office—Rachel and Miriam got to see it when they took the ACT downtown, but none of the rest of us had ever been to Daddy's campus). Here are all the kids peering through his window to see his what's in his office (those are some of his published papers clipped up on his window):

Alexander noted that "Mommy's campus is more fun because they have poetry there."

That's cheating a little since he came to my campus to attend a poetry reading...

We also have puppy statues, which is a huge plus in Phoebe's eyes. But Daddy's campus has way more views of dumpsters and cranes and emergency vehicles, which Phoebe feels was pretty cool. 

Alexander also noted that the buildings on Daddy's campus have more windows than Mommy's building. This is not Andrew's building, but it is a building that Alexander stopped to try to count the windows on (and is a GSU building):

My building only has six floors and Alexander counted the windows (ten on each floor) and quickly calculated that one face of my building had sixty windows! Daddy's building has 17 floors...and many more windows!

So that was a plus, too.

Daddy's floor is much more communal than Mommy's is. All the PhD students have cubicles instead of offices (I prefer offices, honestly) and they have open spaces in various places, like this little nook that apparently always has a puzzle going:

The kids noted that my campus is "fuller" of people, but considering it was a Saturday, I'm not sure they got the full effect of Andrew's campus, though he says it's typically pretty quiet. I guess because it's an office building and not a classroom building—so they don't get hordes of students in the halls between classes like we do in my building.

Anyway, it was a pretty fun trip downtown! I'm glad things stayed sane where we were. I was a little worried about violence flaring up, given what's happening in LA (and even in Doraville, near us, they used teargas on the protesters), but our experience was very lighthearted and fun. 

"There—was that even remotely violent?" I asked the kids when we made our way out of the crowd and out onto the sidewalk.

"A little," Alexander said. 

"What do you mean?" I asked. 

"Well, I saw a sign that said 'Off with his head!' And that doesn't feel very peaceful to me!"

And that's a good point, but we talked about how although rhetoric can whip people up to violence (as we perhaps are seeing in Minnesota with those assassinations), the words on that poster weren't inciting violence but were allusive in nature, referencing (perhaps/for example) The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.

The kids kept mentioning phrases from different posters that they liked all the way home. Perhaps they'll comment with some of their favourites!