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The Neighborhood of Protest and Irony
January 23, 2007 12:12 PM
NITYA VENKATARAMAN WRITES:
Crossing a street of marching protesters is not unlike a game of Frogger: you begin with tentative tension, you identify breaks in the crowd, you dart, you sashay, you pray you'll make it to the other side without being swept away into a current of chanting, sign-wielding, passionate demonstrators.
At least that's how it felt yesterday afternoon when a colleague and I went to Capitol Hill to pick up press credentials for tonight's State of the Union, not thinking about the abortion foes we would encounter along the way.
I was moved, as I generally am when I stumble into a Monday afternoon protest, by their numbers and their conviction. That in a country we color with so much stay-at-home apathy, they assembled en masse to make their case.
There were a lot of K-12 types there. And whenever I see children holding protest signs, I always wonder how much they understand the debate, how it's been explained to them and who did the explaining. So I did a lot of eavesdropping.
Some of them came with youth groups, others with parents -- and they did what most kids that age do: they talked about movies and iPods, high school dances and hallway crushes, after-school activities and favorite tv shows. (Some even complained about their parents, though not for bringing them.)
I slowed down to keep pace with a 15-year-old girl clutching a protest sign who turned to the friend walking next to her and said, "I'd never want a middle child -- just an oldest and a youngest."
She went on to talk about a future she'd planned around two children, no more, no less. About what made most sense for her, her imaginary husband and her yet-unconceived family.
Something about the innocence and irony of her offhand remark about personal choice, family planning and what was right for her stayed with me: that there in the heart of protest, on the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the essence of the debate pulsed on.
-- Nitya Venkataraman
January 23, 2007 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (1)
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Or, you could interpret that young girl's comments as the seeds of doubt having already been sown in her mind, since she is so certain (and we all were at that age) of her rights and abilities to plan a family without any outside interference. What happens if those rights are restricted?
Posted by: chuck | Jan 23, 2007 3:18:31 PM
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