exercising your rights.

it was hot in new york city today, scalding hot with nary a cloud in the sky, and i have the salty footprints of sweat on my forehead to prove it, as well as the aching feet and slight case of dehydration. this discomfort, however, is offset by the fact that today i participated in Something Good, joining more than 400,000 of my fellow americans in the streets of new york to protest the regime of our city's newest visitors, the delegates of the republican national convention.

the march started at the intersection of 14th street and 7th avenue, an intersection that we were stuck at for more than an hour and a half, because they hadn't closed 14th street--which meant that the vast hordes of protesters had to wait for the light to change before we could cross, allowing only about a hundred of us to get through at each iteration.

we ultimately managed to dodge the hordes of empty buses and get through, though things didn't speed up much for a while after that. it took us another hour to get the nine blocks up to 23rd street, by which point i was on the verge of collapse from heat exhaustion and my delectable boyfriend had to drag me to shade, cold beverage and restorative nosh before i keeled over. we rejoined the fray around 28th street, where the biscuit and i finally found each other (after an entire morning spent playing phone tag) and ran into a few more of our friends (who quickly disappeared back into the ether). this is also the point where my incredibly short skirt and i hopped a police barricade to get back in the mix. good fun for all.

we finished out the protest as a group, grinning wickedly as we took what felt to me like a victory lap down fifth avenue, returning, four and a half hours later, to the beginning, exhausted and overheated, but happy. because the thing is, on a day so beautiful as today, it would have been so easy for all these people to make excuses to avoid the protest--after all, it was hot, it was uncomfortable, and it was crowded beyond belief--but they didn't. nearly half a million people flooded the streets because they believed that the time had come to stand up and be counted. because despite the government's best efforts, we retain our right to free speech, and our right to free assembly, and while nothing says 'time for change' like going out and voting, it feels fucking fantastic to exercise your rights.

so to everyone else who made it out today, i say this: thank you and congratulations, for proving that peaceful protest is possible, for standing up for what you think is right, and for reminding me so powerfully that no matter how bleak and horrible things get, there are some things about this country that are really and truly worth fighting for.

like you.