Don't let them take this from us
The political power—and necessity—of walking
You’re not the only person who exclaimed, “Are you fucking kidding me,” upon learning that Donald Trump’s second inauguration would happen on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
After a long year of bad news, as corporate greed and ethnonationalism joined forces to torpedo liberal governments across the west, this was too much. I pictured Trump taking the stage at the ceremony, vomiting up his inevitable stream-of-consciousness rant about how terrible it is that Americans have been slightly less cruel toward racial minorities, feminists, and other countries since 1989: the year when Trump called for the now-exonerated Central Park 5 to be executed. To be subjected to this, on a day of remembrance for a leader guided by love of humanity and justice, is just sickening.
So instead of watching the inauguration this Monday, I’m going to do something else—as a way of remembering Dr. King, what he accomplished in his years as a civil rights organizer, and what he had been planning to fight for; just before he was assassinated.
I’m going to take a long walk.
Of all the actions that Dr. King was involved with, one of the most mythic is the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery that he co-led with activists like Diane Nash and James Bevel. The 54-mile walk was sparked by the murder of the civil rights leader Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had been beaten and shot by Alabama state troopers. But the march was also intended to demonstrate that Black Americans living in the Jim Crow South wanted something that white Americans were granted without question: the right to vote. In 1996, the National Park Service officialized the route of the civil rights march and they called it the Selma To Montgomery National Historic Trail.
I first learned about this while visiting Montgomery for work in the summer of 2021, and naturally, I wondered if it would be possible to walk some of the trail to the edge of town; to better imagine 25,000 marchers entering the state capital on March 24th, heading for the Stars Of Freedom rally where Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, and others sang, and then to the State Capitol Building itself, where Dr. King said to the crowd, “I know you are asking today, How long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.” But it only took two minutes of poring over maps to remember that most of the “trail” here is U.S. Route 80—the intercity highway along which the marchers ate and camped, all while facing the risk of cars flying along the road, in a state afflicted with white rage.
The Selma to Montgomery March is a crucial chapter of U.S. history to remember at this moment because it offers us the encouragement of historic tradition, but also a warning to heed. As Rebecca Solnit wrote about in her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, taking to the streets by foot is one of the oldest and most powerful forms of collective expression. “The street is democracy’s greatest arena,” Solnit argued. “The place where ordinary people can speak, unsegregated by walls, unmediated by those with more power.” I’ve experienced this in practice too many times to count, and in a few cases, my participation in a protest march was unplanned! It was something that just happened, because the lack of barriers on our streets make it possible for us to cross paths unexpectedly—which, in turn, makes it possible to get willingly swept up into something bigger than yourself. In 2008, when I was attending college in L.A., I was fuming after reactionary Californians voted for Proposition 8, which (temporarily) clawed back the hard-won right for same sex couples to marry. One day, on a bitter amble around Downtown L.A., I happened upon a protest march taking shape. There were hundreds of people there, convening near Union Station with rainbow flags and homemade signs that decried Prop 8 and the poisonous sentiments behind the law.
Curious, and relieved to have found an outlet for my anger, I followed the procession west along Sunset Boulevard.We walked for the next few hours, through the parched hills of Echo Park and Silver Lake, to the stars of Hollywood Boulevard. The crowd had grown bigger with each mile, numbering thousands of participants by the time we reached the interesction of Hollywood and Highland. And it was here where many of the marchers stopped walking and sat down, occupying the interesection right near Grauman’s Chinese Theater. LAPD squad cars arrived, their lights flashing. Helicopters buzzed overhead, and the evening sun went yellow to red. Less than two years from that evening, a federal judge would overturn Prop 8, and by June of 2013, after a long legal battle that extended beyond the Golden State, the right to same sex marriage would be restored for Californians. While you couldn’t sonogram the precise impact of that march or the ones that followed, the act of walking helped make this happen.
Every march for freedom, justice, and dignity is an echo of recent history. We’ve been doing this for centuries, from Selma to Sunset Boulevard to the streets of Washington D.C., where tens of thousands of activists from across the U.S. are holding a People’s March today; in defiance of Trump, his allies like Elon Musk, and what they represent.
But an echo is not an evergreen thing. It might offer us a glimpse of what can happen in the future, but it’s not an assurance that such things will come to pass. We can look back at protest walks like the Selma To Montgomery March with appreciaton for the risks the marchers took, and an understanding of why these walks are important. And yet, to ensure that the echoes continue rippling across time, we have to keep walking.
Because if we don’t keep doing this, the power of walking can be taken away from us.
Over the last few decades, America has become a more dangerous place for walking. Manufacturers are making bigger and deadlier cars, driven by consumer demand. The number of pedestrians hit and killed by cars each year has been rapidly rising. It’s not uncommon to find yourself in a town or even a city neighborhood where infrastructure that makes walking possible (sidewalks, crosswalks, etc) doesn’t exist. These days, when marchers take to the streets, they face a higher risk of being run over by an irate driver. This is not hyperbole. It’s happened more frequently since the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a man drove his car into the counterprotesters. One person, Heather Heyer, was killed. 35 others were injured. And yet, Republican leaders in multiple state legislatures have responded to these events by passing laws that grant immunity to drivers who hit protesters walking in the streets. We can expect a federal version of this policy to be introduced sometime after Trump gets sworn in.
Our right to be present in the streets and to walk them together is under assault, and we are not taking this seriously enough. Chances are you’ve heard someone you know dismissing the usefulness of street protests; insisting that they doesn’t accomplish anything, and that meaningful action happens through elite persuasion. But in reality, these things work in concert with one another. People need public forums in which they can express themselves in times of danger and duress—without having to slip on a blazer and translate their raw feelings into something you’d hear on C-SPAN. Ideally, the “elite persuasion” step of activism is a negotiation between policymakers and the people who are walking and shouting out in the streets. Otherwise, what’s the point? Who are the elite persuaders representing when the streets are vacant and silent?
Thankfully, it’s not too late to unlearn the ahistorical notion that walking, as a form of protest, is useless. In 2017, just one week after the horror in Charlottesville, a far right organization called the Boston Free Speech Coalition secured a permit to hold a rally at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common. Naturally, people in Greater Boston were appalled, and word quickly spread that a counterprotest was being planned; a demonstration that would outnumber the neo-Nazi sympathizers attending the rally. Predictably, Mayor Marty Walsh, Police Commissioner William B. Evans, and other Boston officials urged people to stay home; to starve the far right rally of attention. But people came out and marched anyway—knowing that, historically, being passive and nonconfrontational in the face of authoritarian culture doesn’t work. You have to face it head-on, to keep it from spreading. And that’s what Boston did. Over 40,000 people marched across to the city to Boston Common. I joined the procession near the Southwest Corridor in Roxbury. We surrounded the far right rally at the bandstand.
For a moment, everything felt better. If nothing else, walking together was a gesture of affirmation—that we would not stand for this, and that we would fight back against it.
Over the next four years of Trump’s presidency, there will be moments like this when distressing events compel us to walk together, once again. We will be discouraged from doing this, and some of the people urging us to stay home will be politicians and institutional leaders whom we like and respect. Do not listen to them. Instead, listen to history. Listen to what’s wrestling with your heart. And listen to the streets.
Because they’re still ours, after all these years.
We need to keep it that way.
Love this.
Thank you for reaffirming why it’s so important to speak out for what we believe in!