2017 Inauguration Protest Collage for Laynie

For a few days before going to the protest, I gathered images of women and girls and arranged them in a group: ancestors, dolls, figures, goddesses, paintings, the living and the dead, some with whom I had been communing. Some are hidden in veils and masks and voodoo. Some are brides or in braids or shy or bold. Daughters, stepdaughters, daughters-in-law, mother, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, great greats, sisters-in-law, relatives in hiding. C. D. Wright in Libya, Miss Lucille Clifton, Barbara Guest on her eightieth, Rosa Luxemburg before jail, Adrienne Rich. Worshipers, resisters. Beloved reading group, beloved panel at Buffalo. An urn by a Bedouin woman, paintings and photos by women friends, and by Frida and by anonymous. Punk girls’ band. Barbie, Miss Piggy, Red Riding Hood, Aunt Betty, my mother Helen, Aunt TLou. Women at Creech. Poets and priestesses, Ana C. Hundreds more in my heart. I taped a chant in the middle of the collage and repeated it fifty-two times sitting on the bed: fierce kind radical women, we have too many problems to list them — sad, glad, black, brown, and white girls, let’s make a better system. The catastrophe is larger than one election; it’s a disaster of classism, racism, sexism. I am white and my job allows me to protest without threat. The women will stay strong. When I get to the Capital, I’ll walk for women who can’t be there; some asked me to march for them and I’ll pin their names inside my coat.