Kumbaya, Springtime

What the 4B movement used to be called.

April 17, 2017

Warm weather means people stop to talk longer. A lot longer. After two days of sunshine, I can already see that I have to rethink my approach to this action, or I will lose hours of my life talking to people who think my sign says, “Tell me your life story.” I mean, there’s always been an element of that going on, but the wind chill made people more succinct about it.

What can I tell you about today? A brief chat about upcoming actions with a young woman while waiting for the light at 5th Ave.

A twenty-minute talk with a paramedic in Union Square in which we try to recite the order of succession without resorting to the internet.

A twenty-minute talk with a musician on a mobility scooter who plays me the song he wrote for his son.

A bunch of schoolkids on the street ask to see the sign, I tell them we’re going to set things right for them, and one thirteen-year-old girl addresses me like she is my auntie: “You go, girl, you tell the people.” Thanks, ma.

(NB: I sneak a look at my own sign every once in a while to make sure it’s right side up, since that time I discovered I’d been carrying it upside down.)

A white, touristy family of four give four thumbs up as they pass. Sometimes I feel very jaunty, walking down the street, smiling and nodding at people like I’m the mayor. Like I’m in a video where I walk down a city street, and everyone I pass, all the construction workers and waitresses and business people and postal workers, fall into a parade behind me, and then we all dance.

But now the sidewalks are full, and I already hate walking down the crowded sidewalks in the city, and I think adding the sign thing will turn me homicidal, and also I will never get anywhere because suddenly everybody wants to express their opinions to me at length.

I’m not ready to put the sign down for good. It’s become a security blanket. It protects me from having to bear my anger and fear alone as I travel through the world.

When the grandkids I will never have ask me, “Grandma Janice, what did you do during the Trump times?” I want to tell them, “I sang.”

(To read Kumbaya, Motherfucker in chronological order, click here.)