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Last Saturday, I joined millions of Americans (maybe including you!) at the Hands Off protests across 1,400 locations in the U.S. and even in Europe. My local protest was in Boston, where an estimated 25-30,000 people thronged Boston Common and City Hall Plaza. I went with members of our local chapter of Authors Against Book Bans. The rally began with a speaker who declared: "Welcome to the resistance!" The wave of cheering that erupted afterward was incredibly buoying. I also felt something that surprised me: a flood of relief. You don't need me to tell you that it's been a depressing time out here in America, and one of the most depressing parts of this time is the feeling that few people are resisting the new administration. Clearly, that's wrong. The resistance does exist, and being surrounded by it even for a short time on Saturday was an energizing and invigorating surge that I had not known I needed. But I really needed it. After the rally, I lingered on Bluesky scrolling through the #handsoff tag to see pictures and videos of protests from seemingly every corner of America, from small towns in red states to San Francisco Civic Center, the site of plenty of protests I've attended in the past. If you haven't yet seen these images, take a look. While I was on Bluesky, of course I also saw folks debating whether mass protests would do anything. But the point of widespread protest isn't to force immediate change (although of course that would be nice!). It's to give all of us a jolt, to show us we are not alone, to bring us together and energize us to keep working for change. I very much appreciated this essay by Tim Murphy in Mother Jones about the Hands Off protest in New York City: "Ultimately the big story is ... the deep groundswell of anger and unrest that brought so many people in so many places out into the streets and other public spaces of their communities. The message is: crowd large. A lot of politicians and administrators and business leaders, in bowing to Trump, have drawn confidence and comfort from the perceived vibe shift. Events like this puncture that delusion. They are an unavoidable illustration of outrage. Trump may have gotten a lot undone in the last three months, but the opposition never went away, and it may finally be emboldened. On Saturday, it showed that it is everywhere."
The resistance is everywhere. Remember this.
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