My Weekly Protest

Every Thursday for the last several weeks I’ve joined others at a protest. We meet at the main intersection downtown. There’s usually around thirty-five of us. I suspect each of us has our reasons for being there. 

I show up to protest for people, the United States, democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law. I show up to protest against the tactics of ICE, injustice, the violation of human and civil rights, and the cruelty, violence, and abuse of power by President Trump and the Republican administration.

Everyone there has a sign or an American flag, some of us have both. My sign says,

“Respect the dignity of every human being. 
Peace, justice, nonviolence for all.”

It’s a quiet gathering. We talk amongst ourselves and wave and smile at the drivers and passengers of cars passing through the intersection. A lot of the people don’t respond or make eye contact. They just drive on through. But there are also a lot who do respond. 

The vast majority who respond wave, smile, honk their horns, or give a thumbs up. Some say, “Thank you.” Each week there are a few who voice or gesture their disagreement. The women usually give a thumbs down. The men yell or offer a middle finger. 

I wonder…

I wonder if those few even read my sign. Are they really flipping off peace, justice, nonviolence? Are they really giving a thumbs down to respecting the dignity of every human being? Or maybe the fingers and thumbs are for me and not what’s on my sign.

I wonder if they realize that what I am protesting for is as much about their dignity and life as it is the dignity and life of the immigrants the current administration is hunting and oppressing. I wonder if they know that peace, justice, and nonviolence are as much for their benefit, the benefit of their friends and family, the benefit of President Trump, as they are for my benefit or the benefit of anyone else who might look, believe, speak, or act different from them. 

I wonder what assumptions they are making, what conversations are going on in their heads, what stories they are telling themselves. I have an idea of what those might be. I suspect they are making the same assumptions, having the same conversations, and telling themselves the same stories as I did that day I pulled up behind a big truck with what looked like an even bigger Trump sticker. 

I don’t know who the driver was. I never saw him or her. I never met them. I never talked with them. I didn’t know a thing about him or her. But I sure was making assumptions, having conversations in my head, and telling myself some stories about them. And none of it had to do with respecting their dignity. In that moment I wasn’t standing for peace, justice, or nonviolence.

Maybe you know what that’s like. Maybe you’ve had similar responses to Trump stickers, MAGA caps, protestors on the street, or immigrants in the country. I don’t know how we – how I – got to this place but I know it’s not where I want to be. And it’s not where I want our country to be. So I protest.

The sign I hold every Thursday is as much a reminder and challenge to myself as it is to anyone else.

Who am I to inscribe limitations on human dignity? Who am I to make assumptions about people I don’t know and haven’t even met? Who am I to tell a story about them when I don’t know a thing about them? And who are you to do that? Who are President Trump and the Republicans to do that? Who are any of us to do that?

Dignity is a given.

The thing about dignity is that it is a given. “How can anyone who is made to bear likeness to the maker of the cosmos be anything less than glory? This is inherent dignity.” (Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh. New York: Convergent Books, 2022, 7.) 

Dignity is not determined by race, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, wealth, political party, religious belief, or any other category we often use to assign or withhold dignity. It is not earned by loyalty. It is not something that some have and others don’t. Dignity just is. Dignity is inherent in every human being. We cannot give to or take from another her or his dignity. We either affirm it or we deny it. (Ibid., 7-11.) That’s a choice we make every day.

What choice are you and I making these days? What choice are we making as a country?

I used to bristle when Christianity and the gospel were reduced to simply being nice to others. I still think it’s more than that. But sometimes that now feels like a pretty high bar.

But here’s the thing. Jesus never said, “You all just be nice to one another.” Instead, he talked about loving others, even our enemies. He refused to strike back with words or the sword. He flipped over the tables of corruption but as far as I know he never flipped off people. He welcomed and cared about the poor, the outcast, the hungry, the stranger, the oppressed and marginalized. He offered his peace. He didn’t assume or make up stuff about others, he was present to them. He was willing to change his mind about people who were different from him. 

Jesus didn’t assign worth and value to some but not others, he recognized worth and value in everyone. What about us? What if we could enlarge our yes to some to be a yes to all? What would that take? What would it look like and mean in your life today?

Maybe that’s what’s behind the great commandment that tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Maybe that’s why Jesus wants us to do to others as we would have them do to us. It’s about human dignity.

Those were such easy and fun verses to memorize when I was a kid in Sunday School. But as I’ve said before, those verses need to come off the page and onto the streets. They need to get out of my head and into my relationships. They need to leave the classroom and enter the world – through my words, actions, vote, donations, protests, and prayers.

Today is Thursday. In a little while I will drive downtown and for an hour I will stand on a street corner with my sign. I will remind myself and anyone else who reads my sign that dignity just is and that dignity is just. Maybe one day the words on my sign will be written on my heart and the heart of this country.

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Image Credit: Coalition of Democratic Allies.