MARCH FORTH (2025-1)

A day of peaceful protest.

This year Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, happens to fall on my birthday and my daughter Sarah's birthday, March 5th. Each year we pick something to do together. This year we chose to peacefully and passionately protest on the day before our birthday.
Yesterday we marched forth. On March Fourth. 

The day began at the kitchen island, which became the staging table for our emblems of protest. Dave dug a pile of old election signage from under the back deck. “Elect Dave Connors Mayor: Farmington- Worth Preserving.” Those signs had done the trick twenty years ago.

An old washcloth and spray can of cleaner soaked up two decades of Farmington dust so the foam core would accept the sticker paper I had printed. We cut the boards so that the old signage was on the inside and the red, white and blue colors would not bleed through the new messages. The backs were clean-slate white.

Repurposing campaign signs.

When you’re a kind of sluggish but liberal minded old lady in small-town-right-wing Utah you could easily become complacent, justifying that your opposing vote won’t matter. But something in the core of me quivers and buzzes, compelling me to rise from my comfy easy chair and use my intelligence, creativity, social skills lighted by a bit of divine nudging from my angels, (who are probably liberated angels) to speak up. There is an energy exchange that comes with the motion, even if the journey doesn’t end up where you might have hoped. I am seeing our Constitution being twisted and torn, our leadership moving toward autocracy, and our people being lost in the promised land.

Truth be known, I’m a registered Republican. That alignment was based on a belief that less governmental control allows people of conscience to help each other without being compelled by laws. And if the party I once felt at home in were actually what it once was, I wouldn’t have so much distress. Currently I have that pit in the stomach feeling, as if I just found out my parents secretly belonged to a ritualistic cult and had been deceiving me all along. The break in trust is gut wrenching. 

An honorable public servant following his conscience.

So yesterday my sister Libby walked down from her house in her DUMP TRUMP shirt and helped me make signs to protest governmental overreach and tyrannical rule. I thought it ironic that a band of liberals would be protesting governmental overreach.  But here we are. Dave ran to the hardware store to get wood strong enough to hold up to stiff Utah wind. We laid the completed signs in the back of our van.

At the capitol Dave, Libby and I met up with our daughter Sarah. Our niece and nephew Katie and Elliott joined us. My friend Lindsay texted and joined in, and we happened to run into our friend Corbin there as well. Each of us, aligned with others of varying degrees of passion for independence, freedoms, devotion to liberty and justice, and faith in reason over tyranny, clustered on the steps of the capital and marched peacefully down toward the holy ground that once welcomed oppressed people who had been driven from their homes. 

Team Hansen.

Good humor calms the spirit.

It hurt my heart to see the flag flown upside down.
Not everyone did, and I understand its a sign of distreess,
but it hurt my heart.

Do you hear the people sing?

Protesting puppy.

That evening I sat in a presidency meeting for the church organization that nurtures and teaches the values of Jesus Christ to the young children in our church. 

Little Millie had written this on our whiteboard in the Primary room.

My calves cramped up as I sat the couple hours we spent planning and discussing. One of my fellow leaders said she was sorry my legs hurt. I replied:

“Its OK. I guess in the same way that grief is a sign of love, so is this pain a sign of devotion to a cause.”

The outside of our peaceful protest signs may have read this:

"All that tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

But inside the signs read:

“Worth Preserving.”

My favorite sign.

My sister and my husband.

With lovely Lindsay.