Around the Block

Around the Block

We are rapidly approaching the Women’s March in Sacramento, scheduled for Saturday, the day after the inauguration, and corresponding with other protest marches all over the world. I am going to carry a sign that says, “Human Rights: Acknowledge, Respect & Guarantee (ARG!)”

I inserted these words into a piece of writing I posted recently, and they reflect the attitude I am carrying with me to Sacramento. I am not interested in quibbling with terms; I am interested in preserving the basic rights of all human beings.

Whether you are female, gay, Muslim, black, Catholic, bipolar, Mexican, wheelchair-bound, 92 years old, conservative, a kindergartner, flat-topped, pock-marked, atheist, weight-challenged, red-necked, lesbian, bearded, height-challenged, anorexic, left-winged, punk, uneducated, hippie, or even male, I am standing up for your right to be the person you are.

My sign

I have been around the block a time or two. I watched through the 70’s, as student-driven organizations fought to establish basic human rights for themselves and others who did not fit the bill of being white, straight and “normal." I supported each and every cause, as long as it used peaceful means to implement change.

Along with millions of other Americans, I thought we were finished establishing the fact that we are all guaranteed the right to pursue whatever blows air up our collective skirts, as my sainted father used to say.

There was a time when no politician-let alone a business/con man-could even consider making a disparaging comment about women or minority groups, without getting lambasted in the media. This was nowhere more prevalent than in professional sports. Now we have a racist, bigoted, misogynistic, bully of a President-elect, working his hardest to set the clock back to the fifties.

I was born in 1952, three months before Dwight Eisenhower was elected to the first of two terms, in an era when the Republican Party still reflected American values for everyone, regardless of your economic status.

Now, of course, the Republican Party concerns itself only with the top one percent of the people in the country, in terms of economics. Instead of family values, which include caring for the elderly and sick, the Republican Party thinks only of ways to increase revenue, for itself and rich friends.

The protests this Saturday are not directed at the president-elect, so much as they are attempting to reassert that basic human rights are currently in place. We are protesting the possibility that Congress will attempt to remove these rights.

In numbers there is strength and we will have the numbers on our side this Saturday, all over the globe. Specifically, I am marching to demand that basic human rights remain Acknowledged, Respected and Guaranteed.

ARG!