Two different marches

For years I was a newspaper reporter. We covered marches, we did not march in them. It’s taken me a while to realize that I don’t have to keep up the pretense of being objective anymore. So on Saturday, I joined a group of neighborhood women who caught a city bus to take part in the Portland Women's March. It was comforting and exhilarating to see so many women, men and children, of all ages and from many different backgrounds, united to promote and protect basic human rights. There were drums, singing, chanting and one-on-one conversations with women I knew and those I’d never met and will probably never see again. Our group walked home from the bus stop hours later, soaked to the skin (yes, it was raining in Portland) but encouraged ever so slightly. At least hope glimmered over the horizon of worry that has consumed me since the election. 

Then on Sunday, I boarded the same bus, again with a group of neighborhood women I mostly didn’t know, to take part in a different march. An informal interfaith group had organized a silent march and vigil, a visual reminder of the Beloved Community so dear to the heart of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This silent march drew only 200 people, much smaller than the 70,000 to 100,000 who turned out for the Women’s March. But as we walked the mile from Congregation Beth Israel to downtown’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, we did not speak at all. For some of us it was a walking meditation. In the beginning I was trying to focus on each part of my foot striking the ground and feeling connected to the earth below me. Further along, I saw the stores and businesses we passed, the stadium and the transit center, the people who stopped to look at all of us carrying our battery-powered votive candles. At dusk, we settled in the square. Sitting on brick steps, some of us prayed, some of us meditated, some of us sat with our thoughts. There was power in our silence, in the unity that we were able to sustain without speaking to each other. If Saturday’s march was a tidal wave of support, Sunday’s was a quiet but steady current. Both move boats.