Andrea M. Pawley

James, a friend I used to work with at the U.S. Coast Guard, was walking 160 miles from Philadelphia to D.C. as part of the We Are America March. That sounded about right for James. He’s big into team building and community building and remains the only person who has ever successfully peer-pressured me into joining an indoor kickball league. The league was a good time. I knew I wanted to join my friend when he got close to D.C.

After a few messages with James, I had all the details I needed and a plan to join the marchers from Hyattsville to Silver Spring, Maryland.

The fact I’d get to hang out with my friend, who I hadn’t seen in a decade, and meet his wife weren’t the only reasons I was excited about joining in. I’d be walking in a place I’ve only ever gone through in a car or on the Metro. That was hugely appealing. Nevertheless, I was worried about how I would keep my own recent  disillusionment about protests inside my head and not coming out of my mouth. The marchers were doing a good thing. I wanted to be supportive.

I packed the night before—the big hat, a tube of SPF-30, and my go-to hiking lunch of peanut butter and strawberry jam plus carrots and BBQ chips. A logistical concern remained—was I going to get from Southwest D.C. to the march’s starting point at the Hyattsville Mennonite Church in an on-time type of way. The Hotmail Gods once ate an email that said I was supposed to show up fifteen minutes before my planned U.S. Coast Guard job interview time. To the U.S. Coast Guard, “on time” apparently means ten minutes early. That email never arrived in my inbox. I’ve been waiting for it since the mid-2000s. My then-future supervisor forgave my “lateness.” Still, I remain nervous about being on time for things with Coast Guard people.

Luckily, I was ten minutes early to the church (or twenty minutes early by non-Coastie standards!)

A hug from James later, I was meeting people and being invited to breakfast and to take a load off until the marching started. I’ve done a few week-long and two-week-long hikes with tour groups. Much about the We Are America group was recognizable—the extra layer of hard-earned suntan, backpacks with at least one bauble to remind someone of a friend, and the easy camaraderie of people who have been through something together. They sat in a large church basement circle to talk, eat, and prepare for the day.

I’m not much of a marcher the past couple of years. I try to support my friends who are doing those things, but as a person who lives in D.C. and volunteers locally and extensively, I feel I’m living the protest in my heart all the time. It’s hard to stay positive about change when you don’t have any national representation and Congress can alter the laws of your city for the worse whenever it wants to.

The walk was a chance to hang out with James, but only a little. He had lots of group responsibilities. I guess that going in. The night before, he sorted out why the church didn’t have hot water and got it turned on. In the morning, he was dashing out to help with pre-packing the gear truck and coordinating with the rest of the safety team. I would be spending most of the day talking with people I didn’t know. Fortunately, that’s the kind of thing I like to do, especially if those I’ll be talking with are passionate about answering the questions I ask.

So I walked and talked with the marchers. A woman from Missouri told me she had joined sixty-five organized protests. On her own, she had taken to protesting after church on Sunday at the busiest corner in her small town. Others eventually joined her there. A Nebraska transplant living in Pennsylvania wanted to talk about what comes next. He was heartened by the idea that people in the We Are America March might start their own protests that would lead to change in their own hometowns. A Philadelphia engineering student on the verge of college graduation told me he was marching to support people hurt by national policies that target vulnerable communities. All the conversations were like that, whether they were with Marylanders taking a couple days off from work or with Alaskans suffering through the beginnings of a D.C. summer.

The stories didn’t surprise me, but I was glad to hear them. What got to me was the supportive honking of so many passing cars and the way people we encountered on the sidewalks or in front of businesses smiled and clapped. A woman in our group would run up to any cars that had to stop for us and would hand them a We Are America March flyer. “We walked here from Philadelphia!” she would say, and they would smile and honk their horn as she jogged away.

In D.C. tomorrow, this protest will end. Maybe in the days and weeks that come, it will begin again in other cities.

In the meantime, today was a good day to march and one that unexpectedly made me feel some new hope about America’s shared future.