"Do protests or marches actually make any difference?"
"Do we protest just to say we did something, if anyone asks?"
I've done some activist type things. More than marching, but yes, I have marched before. Some of them were wildly boring and uneventful. I wondered why I was there. Other things, not marches, I worried I would be jailed, for more than one night. I've taken action too, wether it was voting, or cooking in a migrant shelter, leaving water in the desert or making a difference in my day to day life with the way I view and react to Black people and other minorities. Here I am, talking myself up. But this one freaked me out. The virus.
"I don't want to get sick."
"These protests are different. The numbers are making a difference. They need bodies."
"I hear them. They're here. Get your mask, let's go."
And we went. I was happy about all the pop-up marches, not just marches in downtown Atlanta, but marches in Kennesaw, Stonecrest, Athens, everywhere. When we heard the chant coming down our street, we went.
We marched with them up the street and around the block. Then, they gathered in the park and Alec and I split. For downtown. We walked to the Capital and when no one was there, we went to Centennial. It felt like a river that swept us up immediately and we walked. And walked. We kept our masks on and held hands the whole time, never letting go. The street was full. Traffic was blocked by the stream of people, but the cars that we blocked raised fists in the air, Black fists, cheering and screaming. We were in midtown and sheets hung from the balconies, declaring that BLACK LIVES MATTER. A man, a young organizer, yelled instructions through a megaphone, telling us when to go right when on-coming traffic was coming, or when to run to the sidewalk altogether. All I could see were blocks of people in front of me and blocks of people behind me. In midtown, he told us to take a knee.
"Ya'll are starting stuff and you can't do that. She'll call the curfew on us again and you have to stop. When you hear this beep beep from my megaphone, I have something to say and it's important. Let's go."
We simultaneously stood. And marched.
We were headed back south to my part of town. I heard a car, squealing, and started to run, dragging Alec with me. Charlottesville was all I could think. I saw a man, in a sports car, his back wheels squealing and dragging, creating mountains of smoke. He was Black, and his fist was out the window while he screamed into the air.
We marched back to Centennial, and then Alec and I walked home the extra mile. We didn't really talk. We just went home.
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