The Faces of Protest

Sujata Massey


I regret to interrupt my regularly scheduled post--which was going to be food-related, alas!--because my life keeps getting interrupted.

Just like my nation's standard operating procedure.

These days, my writing schedule seems divided between fiction and emails to senators, congressmen, and activist friends. And I've been on Facebook more in the last week than in the last six months.

My new, highly distracted life began with the election of Donald Trump and the day after, my participation in the Women's March on Washington. It was a large march with more than 500,000 participants. I imagine this might have been the largest group gathering I'll ever attend.

Statisticians specializing in crowd counts put the talley of marchers participating in 500 simultaneous marches throughout the US on Jan 21 at between 3.3-4.6 million.  Marches around the globe added thousands. As if to answer us, the day after the Women's March, President Trump defunded Planned Parenthood and made other sweeping actions against women, including closing down the federal office that assists domestic violence prevention organizations. He also halted US aid for women's health clinics overseas, if the clinics had anything to do with abortion.

I knew we were getting close to the march when I saw from the bus window a lot of women wearing pink hats. One week before, word spread via Internet to wear "pink pussy hats". Some women confided they had learned to knit just to make a hat for the occasion, following a simple pattern for a cap with pussy-cat ears, a reference to the president's vulgar reference to female genitals. The problem with throwing around a nasty word is that it can come back in a way that makes your eyes hurt.

Washington DC March photo: Helen Dellheim

The red-haired woman and the other one with a camera were reporting for Time magazine.

With me are fellow Quaker friends Kathy (right) and Nancy and Emilia (behind)

For me, the best thing about the Women's March on Washington was the patience and kindness people showed to each other. It was a textbook example of peaceful protesting. I saw no pushing, lots of smiles and encouragement, and plenty of admiration for the witty signs and costumes. Women of all ages--from young children to grandmothers--came together for a shared purpose. The rallywas multiracial and diverse, and included perhaps ten percent male participation. These men, who almost surely believed that "women's issues are everyone's issues" (thank you, California Senator Kamala Harris) were treated like equals.

A porta-potty line at the DC March is far longer than my camera could show

The march's map showed plans to proceed together on on one street toward the White House, but the crowd was so vast that it spilled onto the mall itself. There were plenty of police around, but they were non-threatening and in some cases, even jovial. They realized the impossibility of keeping marchers off the mall grounds. Can you believe a march of more than a half-million people without a single arrest? 

Riding the bus home from the protest, we sang songs including "We Shall Overcome." I felt so much stronger and happier.  

But--wouldn't you know?--disturbing executive orders kept coming from the White House. The most shocking, at week's end, was that that refugees and green card-holders bornin seven predominantly Muslim countries were being denied entry into the U.S.  Because we have laws barring immigration discrimination on religion and national origin, I was stunned. Freedom of religious expression is precisely what drove pilgrims from England and Europe to set up a colony that later became a nation.  

 On Saturday, I participated in a forum entitled "Emotional Survival During Difficult Times" at the Stony Run Friends Meeting in Baltimore. I sat with many of the same people who'd traveled to Washington together on the bus. The strategies for survival were helpful. One of the points a Friend made was that people who engaged in activism were happier and less stressed than those who stayed home. Therefore, when another person at Meeting mentioned there would be an airport protest that evening, I decided to change my plans and participate.

The airport protests of Jan 28-29 were spontaneous and had no central planning committee. It was very different from the two months of planning that preceded the Women's March. That Sunday, a Facebook event page appeared with links to information about protests being held at dozens of airports around the U.S.  The biggest protests were in New York, Los Angeles and Dulles International outside of Washington D.C.

I headed out to Baltimore-Washington Intenrational Airport (BWI) with a friend and her college student son. As we entered the airport, it was very quiet. We decided the protest was likely near the customs exit, so we headed in that direction. We walked along and soon enough were flanked by dozens of people carrying signs with statements like "We Welcome Everyone." These protesters seemed to be mostly age 40 and younger. Because the presidential order targeted prospective immigrants, the draw to this protest included many people who were either immigrants themselves, or the children or grandchildren of people who came to this country. 

Young crowd at BWI/Abhinav Khushalani

A global aspect to this gathering /Abhinav Khushalani

Compared with Women's March, this protest felt very different.

It started with the sound. The airport's high ceiling filled up with many call-and-response chants led by men with powerful voices. I chanted and took photos and shared a hug with a woman wearing a stars-and-stripes hijab,similar to the image on the Shepard Fairey "We are the People" poster we both carried.

Another difference was the presence of spectators--dozens of US military service members on an upper floor, pushing carts with luggage. The sight of us protesting would be their last image of the United States, as they headed off to the Middle East.


The airport protest was confined to two floors in the international arrivals and departures area. It was easier to move around than at the Women's March. I wandered and came to chat with a large group of lawyers sitting at a table. They'd come as volunteers to assist families who might have someone arriving from the seven banned countries was being held. No such travelers were coming in during my time at BWI. Still, resounding cheers broke out anytime non-American travelers emerged from customs. I can imagine how surprised and pleased they were by this rousing welcome.

Jewish protesters shared their family experience with discrimination

Although there was no formal program of speakers, several lawmakers who came to BWI included former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who ran for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, and Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who thanked me for being part of the protest.

High school photographer Abhinav Khushalani, far right of his mother and younger brother

Another highlight was running into friends from book club, the children's schools, the Quaker Meeting, and neighborhood. I sensed that I could have sat down and enjoyed a cup of coffee and good talk with almost anyone in the estimated crowd of 2,000.

Many Muslims represented /Abhinav Khushalani

He looks like a Scot but said he was a mutt!

Our new president might see himself as a populist leader. However, his actions have surprised all of us with the creation of a new people's movement that is filling airports, city streets, and points still unknown. 

What to Wear to the Revolution

Most of what I’m writing today is based on hearsay.  Then again, most of what I write everyday is based on imagination, so I guess that’s an improvement, at least if you’re looking for “just the facts.”  This piece is also slim on photos, for it did not seem opportune to take the ones I’d like.

Last week I wrote about the source of the anger streaming onto screens around the world from that now famous area bordering Greece’s Parliament, Syntagma (Constitution) Square.  This week I thought it only fair to point out how very different life in Athens actually was from what you saw in the media for virtually all but the hardcore protestors.

Tuesday was the first day of a two-day general strike across Greece against Parliamentary votes on Wednesday and Thursday that adopted the stringent measures required by Greece’s lenders in order for the country to receive additional bailout funds.

No doubt the strike brought hell to a lot of tourists in the midst of holidays, but for Athenians at least it was not nearly as inconvenient as it sounded.  When the power company announced it would join the strike, that meant “rolling outages” and a published schedule of which neighborhoods would be affected and when (I hurriedly typed the first draft of this before my time had come).  Stores remained open and although public transportation was “on strike” the metro kept running.  Greeks are, after all, practical and their people must get to the protests inevitably accompanying a strike.

Taxis, too, were operating for Greeks are also entrepreneurs.  And what sane Athenian would drive into Athens on a protest day?  Then again, perhaps “sanity” is not limiting enough of a qualification when it comes to the Athenian’s approach to their countrymen’s protests.

Athenians accept protests as an inevitable part of their way of life, and until this week, walked around them as people elsewhere would a rowdy football celebration.  The focus of the crowd was not on the people on the street, but on the government, and as long as you stayed away from the very few serious anarchist types going head to head with the police and outright vandals seizing the moment, you’re basically ignored.  As for those omnipresent whiffs of tear gas, well, you got used to them.

At least that’s what I'd always heard from friends who did business in and around Syntagma.  

When Syntagma is not “on the air” it’s home to some of Athens' finest hotels and shopping.  As a matter of fact, on Tuesday afternoon I received a call from a friend who worked within “throwing distance” of Syntagma and asked me to come down to see “what’s really going on.”  I was assured it wasn’t dangerous.  “Sort of like after midnight mass on Easter Saturday, when the kids are tossing firecrackers.”  

I asked about the tear gas and she said, “It’s not bad, but might not be good for your allergies.”

I jumped at that macho excuse for passing on the invitation. 

Then she said that she had to be at an appointment on the other side of Syntagma at six, and was worried about wearing her Louis Vuitton backpack, as it might seem ostentatious in light of the austerity measures that precipitated the demonstration.

Life in Athens had become surreal.

The evening before (Monday) I had a six-thirty appointment a few blocks from Parliament.  My first surprise was that my drive into town took only fifteen minutes.  The past record was twenty minutes with a little more than two hours on the down side.

When I came out a couple hours later the streets weren’t any busier.  So, I decided to take a spin past Parliament and around Syntagma.  Police buses were lined up along one side of the building, but there were a lot more TV broadcasting vehicles than that lined up elsewhere—perhaps covering both the demonstrations and the Special Olympics World Summer Games going on between June 25^th and the 4^th of July, in part just a few blocks from the heart of the protests.

There were police and military types milling around but no one seemed engaged or concerned.  The famous Grande Bretagne Hotel on the corner of Syntagma just across from Parliament looked to be doing business as usual, although its first floor windows were shuttered.

The square itself was not at all what I’d expected to see.  Yes, it was cloaked in homemade banners proclaiming all sorts of unachievable things, and filled with "indignado" protestors camped there for weeks, but there was no noise.  Calm before the storm?  Maybe.  But it seemed more like a Woodstock experience between acts.

Then came what made me dismiss my friend’s concern over her journey through the crowd.

At the end of the square farthest from Parliament, by the main entrance to Syntagma, vendors were selling Greek flags and whistles—a wise marketing decision considering the purpose of the gathering.

BUT, just inside the entrance and running along both sides of the walkway for forty feet or so, lined up five rows deep, was a breathtaking assortment of every conceivable knock-off designer bag!  And beyond that, rows of knock-off watches.

My friend had nothing to worry about, I thought.  This revolution seemed to appreciate the properly accessorized.

Sadly for the Greek people, it turned out that my friend and I were wrong.  This demonstration did become dangerous Tuesday evening, and tear gas lingered in the air in far greater volumes than whiffs.  Thankfully, my friend delayed her trip across the square until early Wednesday morning and was out of the area by the time violence resumed at noon.

But the violence of these demonstrations was of a sort quite different from that of Greece’s Mediterranean neighbors, as captured in a scene by an Associated Press photographer.  Ekathimerini, Greece’s daily newspaper of record, reported that in the midst of the conflict “[a] stun grenade exploded in the hand of a Greek riot policeman, severing a finger.  Police and demonstrators ceased combat and scoured the debris-strewn street, uniting in a frantic search for the missing digit.  They found it.  The finger was rushed off in a wet towel to a hospital, where doctors reattached it to the injured man.” 

PS. For those of you who may have seen a sign or two in the midst of the demonstrations saying “Jeffrey leave Greece” it wasn’t directed at me.  Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou was born “Jeffrey Papandreou” in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jeff—Saturday