With Solemn Duty and Awesome Joy....

I wanted to report back on our participation this Martin Luther King Day in a march and rally organized by One Million Moms for Gun Control to press the urgent case for federal gun control legislation.  Last weekend, we gathered with others in Brooklyn to make signs and I spent last night wrestling with duct tape and cardboard tubing to get the sign stable and sufficiently nonlethal for the NYPD.  The morning dawned about ten degrees colder than it has been, but it was not yet snowing - perfect demonstration weather!  I piled the layers on both of us, grabbed the sign, the snacks (forgot the water! damn), the metro cards, and headed off to meet other friends and kids on the C train to the assembly point for the march across the bridge.  A lot of kids, a lot of adults, some great homemade signs, some well-branded signs from One Million Moms, a bloody cold breeze off the East River.

It was a bit tricky with all the kids to hit the right note - they were excited and there was an air of parade festivity with the banners and signs, and but the subject is a serious one, and among the marchers were those who had lost loved ones to gun violence.  In the end, it made sense to let them take it all in however they wanted, to get the hang of it.  They posed for pictures, thrust signs in the air, tried a bit to hear the speakers, and then bounced around waiting to go.

The procession over the Brooklyn Bridge began slowly (there were strollers to be hoisted up the narrow steps), but spread out over the bridge.  As we hit the Manhattan side of the bridge, the kids could wave their signs down at the cars on the entrance ramp and provoke some supportive (we hope) honking, which was satisfying.  By the time we looped around Chambers St., the troops were starting to wane and, well, whine.  Massed in narrow but thick crowd stretching back from the podium at the foot of the sidewalk bordering City Hall park, stamping cold feet and propping signs on our shoulders, we tried not to lose the momentum totally.  Suddenly, though, the sound system switched on loud and the speakers - Jackie Rowe-Adams from Harlem SAVE in particular - hit the cadence of a revival and an empowered call to action and the kids were transfixed, wide-eyed, thrilled, as if suddenly, in some way, they got it, got what it means to speak out, to call others to action, to take a stand.  I may be over-interpreting this, and will check back in with my child and the others to see how and what sunk in, but it still felt, in that moment exactly right, exactly why I wanted my daughter to be there.

With a quick stop off for some cocoa, we made it back to Brooklyn in time to catch most of President Obama's second inaugural address.  I made three kids sit there with me and watch, and I hope some of it sank in.  There was much in the speech that I admired - let the pundits tear it apart and parse the intimations of future policies.  On that first listen, I tried to keep us attuned to its big ideas, and though I don't go in for the trappings of patriotism, I liked it as an expression of American populist idealism, and grabbed this for the kids and their march today:

"You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

"You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

"Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom. "