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After the reckoning
2004-04-29 5:00 p.m.

I awoke in a cold sweat this morning from what one might call uneasy dreams. It's not often that I have nightmares; my dreams are usually nothing fantastical or romantic - rather they're usually straight up, plot-driven, and sensible occurrences that might well be reality.

This one, though, geezy creezy. Steve and I were alone in a desolate stretch of dirt and rocks, a barbed-wire fence surrounding us. I was thin, washing away, starving to death, and Steve was doing his best to hold me upright as I seemed to be falling down no matter how hard I tried to stand. Walking past us, on the other side of the fence, were beautiful people - plump and tan and dressed in fancy clothes. I saw some people I recognized - old friends, people I once worked with. Their faces vibrant, they tried to push food through the fence, but nothing seemed to fit. They looked at us with pity, and just stood around waiting for us to say something.

"How can he do this?" Steve said, "We haven't done anything wrong!" I remember trying to respond, but feeling like my mouth was glued shut. Looking around, I saw tattered, newspaper pictures of Bush and Cheney, high up on the fence posts, looking down at us. No maniacal laughter, no torture, no SS-like soldiers with guns to our heads. Just me and Steve, seemingly starving and imprisoned, with no one around on our side of the fence. Still, I seemed to understand the "he" was the president, and the "we" was Steve and myself, tossed in some desolate place and left to rot because of something political we had done, like oh, say, speak our minds or exercise our right to protest.

No climactic end, no falling to my death, no suspenseful moment. I just...woke up, scared to death that someday it might be possible for me to get arrested in my own country for my ideology and values.

Perhaps it all stems from how mad I was that after returning home from the biggest protest march I'd ever seen, the crowd reaching over a million people, I saw only a fifteen second blurb about it on CNN. No other reports - very few news camera crews or network helicopters overhead. How do you ignore the voices of a million people? Let's ask the so-called liberal media, shall we?

Though I could have done with out all the old men with megaphones yelling "Dykes! Get back in the kitchen!" as we walked past, I must say the march was one of the highlights of my year so far.

Aside from the size of the crowd, there was such diversity there that I was overwhelmed with emotion. Old, young, male, female, Asian, Black, White and Hispanic people lined the streets of DC and made it clear that Reproductive freedom and justice for women is mandatory and will be fought for. Falling in with different groups of people from "Grannies for Choice" to the "International Socialist Workers Party", we found everyone to be friendly, supportive, and excited as hell to be there, just like us.

Though I thanked Steve profusely for coming with me, I could tell that the march was as important to him as it was to me. I wondered as we drove back from DC how I got so lucky, and how it was that in this big, bad scary world, where people scream "murderer" in your face because of your political beliefs and spit at you as you walk past, where people accuse you of "thinking too much" or question you because you're passionate, where people let something like a good television show keep them from going out and living life, where pessimism, materialism, and depression abounds, that I found Steve. He's beautiful, he's kind, he's motivated and active like I am. We talked forever last night after a free movie our friend Andrew took us to a screening of (A fabu remake of The Stepford Wives that I have mini-issues with but overall thought was really well done). I marveled at Steve's intelligence, perceptiveness, and open mind last night the way I did when we were driving up 95 on Sunday night, returning from a great day of cheering, yelling, chanting, and marching in defense of what we believe in.

I was glad to see, as I said, so many people there, and glad that a number of my students got interested enough to venture down. We drew loads of attention to causes that not enough people are aware of - like how funding gets cut to clinics who perform abortions under the Bush administration, even the funding that is supposed to provide pre-natal and just general health care to women who can't afford to go to another Doctor. Since I was one of those women before I had health insurance, and had to listen to the clinic workers' stories of money troubles every time I went in for a routine physical exam, this makes me particularly angry. Because of my class status, I was eventually able to afford health insurance and could leave the clinic behind. But what if I couldn't? And what about the millions of women who couldn't? What about the women who need good pre-natal care or reproductive health care but can't get it because their clinic also happens to perform abortions, and this administration has punished them by cutting all their funding?

After being so angry for so long, after fuming under the classist and sexist decisions this administration has made over and over and over again, all the group hugs and the optimistic, hopeful power of the March made me feel amazing.

I feel lucky to have gone, lucky once again to have Steve in my life, lucky to have talked to and marched alongside so many brilliant and concerned people.

Viva la liberte.

Pictures from the march coming soon! I'm scarce here for a bit, I'm working on a new story about Morocco for a travel magazine. yay! deadlines!

xoxo,