The Vigil in Somerville

[KarenInMA]

So I went to my first protest rally ever tonight. If anyone was there, I was the Karen-shaped girl in the "The Fake News is All I Need" T-shirt. The Davis Square vigil, in beautiful Davis Square, had about 250 people.

My frustrating habit of punctuality got me there about 20 minutes early. There are people who stand on this particular corner every Wednesday with "honk if you want to war to end" signs. I talked to a few of them for a minute, and they encouraged me to join them. One seemed rather angry, apparently a cop had hassled him earlier. I talked to an older lady, who was telling her friend about the "man who ran over Cindy's memorial". I tsked with them for a minute, gave them Larry Northern's name, and wondered aloud if he had a support the troops magnet. The lady looked annoyed at that and said, "We all support the troops. You need more than a magnet".

At 7:30, a quiet woman, who looked rather overwhelmed, asked us to light our candles for 30 minutes of silence. At this point, I really looked at the crowd around me. I had expected mainly angry young people and dirty hippies-Cambridge style. They were there, along with everyone else.

A man had a pin with a picture of his son, in uniform, that said, "My son. My Hero". A very very old man was wearing one of those Armed forces old guy hats with all the pins. There were grandmothers, grandfathers, people who had clearly just come from work, still in ties, business suits or skirts, students, angry socialists, black people, white people, old young, men and woman. It was a good cross section of humanity.

I want to thank everyone who showed up. Thank you for caring. Thank you for showing me that I'm not the only one in this neighborhood who's so angry.