Our theme for the month of June is “confessions.”
I’ve only ever heard about the worst of protests. In the summer of 2020, I was living with my parents in the Chicago suburbs, and my dad watched the morning news with his Fiber One and greek yogurt. We’d watch blurry news footage of the previous night—people breaking windows, smashing cars, looting stores. Fox fed us the narrative that these people were dangerous dissidents using racial justice as an excuse to sow chaos. I told my dad that these were the acts of a few taking advantage of the situation, but that narrative of fear stayed with me.
I didn’t protest then. I told myself it was because I was helping care for my grandparents, which was true to an extent, but it was mostly because I was scared.
I’m a naturally fearful person. I really should’ve figured out I had an anxiety disorder way sooner than I did because it doesn’t take much for me to want to run away or cry. So I always deemed protests as “not really my thing.” I told myself I could be an activist in other ways as I sat on my couch and scrolled through political TikToks and did nothing else.
The next time I heard about a protest was this last April. I wanted to go, but I was still scared. My boyfriend asked me if I wanted to go, but my cover story was that we already had plans with our friends that I didn’t want to cancel. So we still drove downtown but went antiquing instead.
This time felt different, though. It felt like a moment that my grandchildren would ask me about when they realized I’d been alive that long, long ago, and I couldn’t face the shame of having stayed home and played video games.
My boyfriend and I were on call the whole time I drove to the No Kings Protest. He arrived early because he was worried about parking, and I got there a few minutes later because I was dragging my feet getting out the door.
After I parked, it didn’t take long to see another protestor. He was a man well into his eighties with a slight frame, and he couldn’t have been taller than 5’4. As I got closer, I read the sign he carried over his shoulder, which said, “Trump is no king, butt he’s acting like a royal ass.” I smiled at him. He smiled back.
My boyfriend met me halfway to Rosa Parks Circle and walked me to the park. The closer we got, the more crowded the streets became with people and tents and signs. People bought food from taco trucks. Middle-aged women hugged each other, catching up amidst the flurry of moving people, and a woman wearing rainbow sunglasses handed water bottles to her friends. It smelled like summer heat, good food, and clean air.
We made our way to the center, where a crowd gathered to listen to scheduled speakers. The first person wore the colors of the Mexican flag and talked about the issues facing Grand Rapids immigrants. His voice didn’t carry, but the crowd cheered in agreement when he spoke loudly enough for us to hear. The people seemed eager to affirm, to raise up. The second speaker addressed racial injustice, and the third LGBTQ+ issues.
My boyfriend stood behind me and massaged my shoulders, only stopping to pull out his sixty-four ounce water bottle and pass it to me. We stayed and listened until I started to feel lightheaded. We decided to grab ice cream at Kilwins, which I felt guilty about.
I asked my boyfriend, “Are we bad protestors?”
It didn’t take long for us to notice that everyone else in the shop was wearing “No Kings” shirts too.
We ate our hot fudge sundaes as we watched the protestors interact with passing cars. The honking was almost nonstop, especially when the light was green and brought new passerbys.
“How do we know if the honking is in agreement or disagreement?”
“Huh,” my boyfriend said, watching a sedan lay on his horn. “I don’t know.”
A car with a Mexican flag on its dash honked down an entire block. I said, “I think that one likes us.”
We left pretty soon after we finished our ice cream because we wanted to beat the departing traffic, and I had a lunch date to get to. On his way home, my boyfriend ran into someone from the climbing gym, and two people in my apartment’s elevator introduced them to me after we discovered that we were at the protest at the same time.
Despite walking in with low expectations, I didn’t see anything that made me feel unsafe. I felt welcome, seen, a part of something. I had thought of the protest as a message to those who disagree—legislators, voters, or newscasters alike—but I hadn’t considered that it could be a form of community. I had no idea that so much of Grand Rapids felt so passionately that they would give up their Saturday to make their voices heard. It was dissent, of course, but it felt like something more. It felt like hope.
When I got home, I started looking up ways to continue to fight. I read about volunteering opportunities and typed in my contact information, but I couldn’t bring myself to press “Enter.” I’m chronically overcommitted and figured I should wait until my schedule calms down (so I told myself). But I had taken the first step, which was enough for now.
Tiffany Kajiwara graduated from Calvin in 2022 with majors in literature and writing. Now, she continues to live in Grand Rapids and works at Baker Academic Publishing as a marketing assistant. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, thrifting, and psychoanalyzing cartoon characters.
