The atmosphere in the parking lot was like camp before battle. The sound of nervous laughter, the clatter of pots and pans, the blow of a bugle horn. The laughter was understandable. We were, after all, about to embark on a trip whose scope was difficult to grasp all at once. Over one hundred students on three buses driving through the night to our nation’s capitol to march for women’s rights, then coming right back home again; a twenty-four hour round trip, covering over 600 miles. This was activism, ecstatic and American. Youth, life and the open road.
We huddled up in groups to beat the chill that had grown since sundown. Most were in sweatshirts and long pants, hats pulled down tight over red ears and eyes, elated and awake, hiding behind flushed cheeks. The weather forecast for DC was in the 60’s with a chance of rain, but we were a warm and wild little crew, impervious to the elements, even to our own limitations, waiting for our buses to arrive.
At the center of this seething commotion was Kathleen Salmon, sitting cross-legged on the pavement with an enormous list in her hands. On it were the names, cell numbers and bus assignments of the 127 students she and the other members of the March for Women’s Rights crew had rounded up to participate in this journey. It hadn’t been an easy job. It had come right down to the wire, but they had done it; they had sold enough tickets to cover the cost of three Peter Pan buses and an entire crate of oranges, bananas and bottles of water for the trip. A few ambiguous lines formed, and Kathleen registered our names. She checked her list and handed us tickets with the name of our bus printed on them. “Thanks guys,” she said with an impish grin. “You guys are riding on George’s Bush.”
The buses arrived to cheers.
WAKING UP TO THE AMERICAN DREAM (5:31 AM)
The bus was quiet except for the hum of the air-conditioner, and the sky outside our window was filled with the weary gray glow of the dawn. Everybody was asleep. These were moments of rest snatched wherever one could find them, mouths hanging open as if bellowing a final death-wail. But this is what we were there for; the discomfort, the intensity – we wouldn’t have signed on for this trip if they weren’t part of the deal. This wasn’t the comfort crowd. We liked our buses cold and our protests edgy. This was our chance to buy a piece of something real and sincere, in all its brutality. And when it was all over, this would be our culture, our shared history, the story we would tell our grandkids about how we were young and did something that was undeniably important. And so we drove on into the dawn, and those who could, slept.
DESCENDING ON THE UNREAL CITY
We came in from the east under the brown fog of a spring dawn and found ourselves in a large, vacant parking lot on the outskirts of the District of Columbia. This was where our bleary-eyed little party disembarked to catch a train, the Green Line, into Washington proper. The Metro station was pure chaos, the Planned Parenthood commandoes having assembled there in the wee hours to distribute T-shirts, hats, noisemakers and party-bags filled with matching protest accessories. Enormous women in pink hats hawked pro-choice banners. “Get your free posters here! Come on guys, something free in this economy?”
In one pastel mass, we swarmed the turnstiles and the Metro attendants got nervous, telling us not to bang our drums in the terminal and to please form a line to the left. They ushered us onto two successive trains and we were off. The train system in Washington is extremely clean; on board they observe strict laboratory conditions. An attendant told us that we couldn’t eat our cookies on the train. At this point the group was finally starting to wake up and become giddy. Planned Parenthood balloons were inflated and used like light-sabers. We were loud and grinning like mad, energized with that weird early-morning euphoria that comes with the dawn of an exciting day like Christmas or the first day of summer vacation.
“I feel,” said someone near the back of the train, “like I’m at Disney World.”
We got off the train a half-hour later and emerged, all of us blinking simultaneously, in front of the National Archives Building. For a moment, chaos reigned. No one knew quite where to go. Maps were unfolded and rotated. We began a confused but decidedly enthusiastic procession down Constitution Avenue towards the Mall, where the marchers were gathering. One student began to beat on his drum, a converted paint bucket covered in duct tape, and sang an altered version of “The Ants Go Marching One by One.”
“The ants go marching four by four / the little one stopped to march for abor….tion rights.”
A block or so later, we emerged onto the Mall. The scene was totally unreal. The strip of grass between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument was swimming with people, more than most of us had ever seen in our entire lives. As we entered the field, our banner was raised: “300 Wesleyan Students March for Women’s Lives.” The crowd parted for our bucket-banging entourage like the Red Sea, and our pictures were taken. As we passed, people cheered and took photographs. “Alright, Wesleyan’s here!” somebody in the crowd shouted. Yes, Liberal University had arrived, but who among us had expected this kind of welcome?
THE ANTS GO MARCHING ONE BY ONE BY ONE BY ONE…
A few hours later, as our bugle player let out a rallying refrain, Wesleyan’s delegation assembled behind our banner. The band leader blew her whistle and counted off the drummers. The assembled news media flocked to our happy little battalion and their tapes were rolling when we shouted, “My Body! My Choice!”. The other marchers moved in tightly, and soon, we were the heartbeat of a massive, serious body of protesters, moving in fits and starts across the Mall and into the streets.
The drummers tried to keep everyone in step, but soon the onslaught of marchers was too much for our little crew to maintain any kind of cohesion. Within the hour, Wesleyan students were scattered across the Capitol. The pace of the march was relatively slow, but the sheer volume of people made it impossible to stay close to any one person for too long. Stop to gape at one clever sign and suddenly your marching buddy was halfway to Capitol Hill, swept away in the tide.
When you are alone in a march, everything changes. It may say “Wesleyan” or “Duke” on your sweatshirt, but you are fundamentally and totally anonymous in a crowd of that size. When your friends are gone, when you are tired and sore and your feet are killing, you ask yourself, what, exactly, did I come here for?
It is at this moment, if you’re lucky, that the person you care about most pops into your head. Suddenly you are there not to show what you can do, but to find out what we ALL can do when we set aside what makes us special for just an afternoon and say, “this is important and we must fight for it.” And so you march on, one drop in the ocean, one cloud in the sky, the damp gust that brings the rain.
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