Patriotism

Today, while sitting around in the derm office listening to my attending tell stories to his rapt all-female audience (seriously, there is one male resident.  ONE.  8 other residents, all 10 or so nurses, and 2 PAs are all female.  What is WRONG with that program?!?), he was chatting about watching protesters in Portland, OR.  "They're all the same, you know, just looking for attention.  They protest week after week, just pick different things."  All the girls (except me) laughed and agreed, with various corroborating statements.

Now, I have to admit that I have never walked in a protest, or stood in a demonstration.  It's not that I've never had the opportunity to do so: my church is constantly staging vigils outside of women's clinics to pray for the end to abortion.  And it's not that I don't support peaceful protesters.  I honk like an idiot when I pass sign-wavers on street corners.  It's just that I suppose I've never felt passionately enough about something to stand on a busy street letting strangers ogle me all day, and I've never gotten over the horribly sad feeling I get when I imagine myself begging a troubled 16-year-old girl not to take the only way out she thinks she has (Yes, I'm a coward, and that's another issue, which we'll address later.  Save your comments). 

But I will passionately defend the right and the effectiveness of protests.  Perhaps the method of protesting has gotten a little lost along the way (PETA can be a bit ridiculous...), but the essence of what it means to protest something has remained the same.  Look at how protesting has played such a significant part in our country's evolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement.  No one should be belittled for choosing to participate in a demonstration, even if they're carrying a sign that says "Friends Don't Leash Friends" (I've never seen such a sign, but if I had, I would have laughed, since it has significantly sexual undertones...).

These thoughts came later, though, after I'd had time to reflect on the little "How-Pathetic" party my attending was throwing.  At the time, all I thought of was this: over spring break this year, my family and I went to Colorado to go skiing.  One evening, we watched through a store window as a bunch of people marched through downtown, carrying signs calling for peace and an end to the war in Iraq.  I lifted up E, pointed through the window at the marchers, and taught him what it means to desire peace. 

Maybe all demonstrators are the same people, protesting some new fad injustice every week.  And maybe these marches do or do not change anyone's mind, or have any impact on the world at large.  But maybe protests speak to something at the very core of what it means to be American.  And maybe, just maybe, a march will live on in someone's heart as a very proud memory. 

On that day, as a photographer for some local paper trailed along behind the protesters, he paused to capture the sight of my 4-year-old son, who was peering solemnly through the window and making the peace sign.