on the march

Most unusually for the current environment, B. and I actually went out and did something today. It was to participate in our town's Black Lives Matter protest march. As with the Women's March, it was hard to think of a reason not to do it, not if social distancing could be maintained.

And for the most part it could. Absolutely everybody wore a mask, and we spread out rather comfortably, with B. and I mostly on the edge of the group. Unlike the Women's March, it was mostly younger people, and we were among the few senior citizens. Our city is, as I recall, only about 2% black, and by that account there were a fair number of black people there, though it was mostly white and Asian with some hispanics, which is about what you'd expect around here.

Marchers were asked to wear black, and most of them did. I don't have a black shirt, so I wore one that looked impressively deep-dark blue at home, but out in the sun was more obviously blue. There were many signs, but the snark of the Women's Marches was entirely absent. I liked a couple that asked, "How Many Weren't Filmed?" And several signs pointed out that today was Breonna Taylor's 27th birthday, or would have been had this EMT not been shot to death in her own home in a completely unnecessary and unwarranted no-knock raid. Towards the end were a couple of clueless gits with "All Lives Matter" signs, but they were adequately responded to with one reading "All Lives Don't Matter Until Black Lives Matter."

The walk wasn't difficult, from the newly rebuilt section of downtown over about five blocks to city hall. It was only moderately warm at 5 pm, and fairly windy. Some motorcycle cops were adequately managing traffic where we crossed and then went along a major street, which is what they should be doing. At the park area in front of city hall, B. and I sat down and rested on a park bench. Vague cheers could be heard further in to the crowd, but we couldn't hear anything being spoken, and someone who had ventured further in said they couldn't hear anything from there either.

So after we'd rested up, we walked back to the downtown garage where we'd parked. Total time elapsed, only one hour. It was, quite literally, the least we could do.