Politics

The Crowd at the Women’s Revolution

By Henry RosebudscloseupRESIST (1)
January 20, 8 AM I’m riding downtown in a standing room only pussy cap crowded Expo line car, and do not give up my seat to anyone. Right on, look how far we’ve come, right? Time’s Up for all that old timey gender-role shit.

When a pretty face flashes a smile, I immediately desire to wine & dine her, but I do not hit –there’s a wrong word—on her. Metro Rail’s male PA keeps saying: Do not sexually harass or touch anyone on this train, giving the sheriff’s number to text if someone does.
In the Times: “Paul Booth, Antiwar Figure, Dies at 74.” In 1965 in D.C., he organized the first major march against the Vietnam War. What a woke obit to wake up to today!

9 AM Wokest Pershing Square placard seen so far: “RESIST,” across a Star Wars storm trooper wearing a helmet with that yellowy you-know-who type of coif.

10 AM “Hey hey ho ho, GOP has got to go” is so last millennium. Come on! Another Spring Street chant, “Cheeseboiga cheeseboiga, Defenestrate Drumpf!” Tepid response.

10:30 AM Humongous crowd. Amy Goodman—radio goddess! —will report on Monday: “Tens of thousands marching in Los Angeles…” Try 700,000. (Or is that typical local hype?)

11 AM Wokest speaker: actor Viola Davis, who quotes MLK on how, “Time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively.” That if we don’t move it forward, time becomes “an ally to the primitive forces of social stagnation.” Time needs to be helped by doing right every moment.
Have you ever heard time described this way? Inspiring!

12 PM Idina Menzel sings “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. Melissa Ethridge rocks too hard for this gathering, which I think is the quietest 700,000 citizens ever listening. My Indivisible affinity group is called, “Woke West.” (We’re woke, but subdued.)

1 PM Two-dozen speakers so far. Not a single joke about King Idiot. Even Larry Wilmore is serious! Where are the comedians? Sarah S? Lena D? Willow B? (The last one is a friend who is a comedian and I just wanted to give her a shout out.)
Maybe Time’s Up sponsors are saying it just isn’t funny anymore. In New York in the 80s, “Time’s Up” was depicted on tenement and subway walls this way: an upside-down martini glass. Meaning: “the party’s over.”

2 PM Maxwell sings. Time to go.

3 PM From the back end of our westbound Expo Line car:
“Tell me what democracy looks like!”
“This is what democracy looks like!”

If that is what democracy looks like, what is to be done with our democracy?
Is Time’s Up telling us that time is of the essence? That time is the essence? Time only for love? I rallied downtown in hopes of rallying myself from being too much in mourning for my life, feeling that self-pitying-seeing-it-all-slip-away-unsatisfied thing, like a nowhere-going gondola-mucking-up-what-is-actually-a-pretty-grand-canal kind of feeling.

Hey hey ho ho, time’s up for that low. Happy Valentine’s!
The end

Categories: Politics, Venice, Women

1 reply »

  1. Writer::”Time needs to be helped by doing right every moment.”

    The grandiose speaker quoted and writer as if “TIME” were a thing to be manipulated, or an even some-ting that can be done to…

    another assumed, clever, cliche = misuse of real words =
    that have some assumed “real” meanings ( plural). Duh

    And who defines that “RIGHT ” ….for the rest of us ?
    Not u. For sure.

    Misuse of abstract, vague Concepts.
    Otherwise, interesting writing.
    Glad we missed trip,
    and u all were there instead.