This is a short diary to report on the “Hands Around Green Lake” gathering in Seattle on Saturday the 19th. It had the feel of determined resistance. The idea was to get 3000 people to ring a lake which is 2.7 miles around and join hands. Then have a 15 minutes silence where we focus on what kind of people we want our nation to be, a people who resist racism, homophobia, misogyny, religious bigotry and who want our families and children to practice compassion every single day.
It didn’t go quite as planned, but it did triumphantly result in a moment where the entire lake was ringed with held hands. There were cheers you could hear across the lake, there was a time of singing ‘We Shall Overcome’. But one takeaway was how much time it could take for an organic process to spread people evenly across almost 3 miles. It took the whole time to achieve that, but it felt exultant when the news finally traveled along the line that we had done it.
The group I was with had spirit for maybe doing this every month, with our communities needing to respond with resistance and compassion in visible ways and regularly. Thinking we would get better each time and take our places faster and more easily. Conversations happened between neighbors in the circle. Dogs happened, children happened, people smiled. But everyone I saw was deadly serious underneath, still in active grief.
It was largely organized via Facebook, but it did get on the protest list here at Dkos. Local news media did cover it and it was on the early evening news. But no mention of it in the paper ahead of time that I could find and quite a few activists didn’t find mention of it via their usual websites. All good learnings for our ongoing resistance public efforts.
I know someone mentioned having a non-diary way to keep abreast of the protests happening around the country and the idea was put forward to keep an updated list under Action (which is now entirely petitions). I have no idea how to further this idea except by mentioning it again. I would like to give my circle of connections a link to access such a list at any time rather than hunt through diaries for the latest.