There was no way this well could be so deep.

—excerpt The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I will offer my thoughts on the Women’s March of 2018.  We are into the 2nd year of the Trump Administration.  This is the second Women’s March. The march of 2017 came the day after his inauguration.  An offering of compromise from the administration on a range of concerns would have made a second March unnecessary.  Not only in Chicago but in major American cities, and many smaller cities, and even in metropolitan areas around the

world,–thousands congregated to register resistance to the dark intentions of the Trump administration.

This is a very deep well.

Sure I grew weary, standing for two hours in Grant Park, listening to speeches.  The roster was long as many wanted to have their say.  In retrospect

the women who spoke were articulate, focused on human concerns, displaying a steel resolve to protect their survival and that of their children.  It was unmistakable that nothing less than survival was at stake.  Survival has many sides: women’s reproductive rights, equal wages for equal work, freedom from fear of deportation, freedom from gender and/or racial discrimination, etc.  The list is long.

I am an old white guy, a member of the class that has been in power.  I found the women who spoke to be a dramatic contrast to the erratic ignorance, atavism, and violence of the Trump administration.  The speakers were persuasive. They were asking for a stake in society. They desired to “play well with others.”  I

felt privileged to be present for the overly long speechifying.  I paid special attention to the Islamic representative, Asha Binbek, and the transgender activist who spoke, Channyn Lynne Parker.  I listened, keenly aware that I am not personally acquainted with anyone from those groups.  I would enjoy making the acquaintance of and learning from those two female speakers.

The march continued for at least an hour.  Three hundred thousand is a lot of people.  Most appeared to be typical citizens, nobodies such as you’d find in any neighborhood in

this country, individuals without connections.  As women they know from experience how to give birth, how to nurture and cultivate strength for self-preservation, the critical importance of fairness and collaboration in the business of life.  The central assertion of the women who spoke, and all of us who marched down Michigan Avenue, is — voting at the polls to elect women to local, State and National offices is essential if we are to have a humane nation.  Power must be taken back from those who “do not play well with others.”

Are they right?  I think so.

CODA

Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections.

So people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground.  There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions the lynchers thought.  Then just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning.  The voice of god came crashing down.  He told the people that he was adopting him as his son, giving him full powers and privileges of the Son of the Creator of the Universe.

From this moment on, he will punish horribly anyone who torments a bum who has no connections.

–excerpt Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut