International Women’s Day has come and gone. I had my boots on the ground in a March 8^th march, held up demanding signs, symbolized the fuck out of my presence on the streets of Brussels for hours. I scrubbed floors and tidied shelves in my apartment, cooked hot meals in my kitchen, opened my doors and fed other women in my home. All in all, it was about as demonstrative and community-oriented a Women’s Day as I’ve ever celebrated in my twenty-nine years.

I’m glad I went all-out that day, but I still felt relieved when it was over. Like it had just been another event to socialize for, like a birthday or Christmas. The comfort of catching up and being gently perceived by friends, after not meeting up for some time. The obligatory Instagram story to feel that little bit more seen and connected to a network of other folks Experiencing Things. 

Marches and protests and people’s mass actions, so I’ve read and heard, have the power to topple dynasties, win rights for the marginalized, and generally transform society for the better. But my experience of them, as a non-organizer and tag-along, is akin to a very loud walking tour where people are just enjoying the company of their own groups and maybe occasionally chanting shared slogans.  I didn’t feel much empowered by the Women’s March, except to experience a certain camaraderie with mostly other women and gender minorities.

You could argue that’s what it’s all about – it has certainly been enough for me to get out there. That was something I should have known all along: you march basically to connect and have fun with your community in the midst of adversity, and not to fervidly protest social conditions as an ethical duty. I did not know this in college. Back when I was a bit lost in my philosophy and praxis, there was a leftist crowd I fell into that framed mass action as a moral obligation. I believed that and fell right in line, despite kind of hating going out to protest in joyless, angry rallies with org-mates who were honestly not my friends and who were not friends with each other in ways that I could understand (they do generally self-describe as “comrades”). I have since learned that most of these people simply enjoyed doing all this stuff – the repetitive chants, the deafening speeches over megaphone, the sticky, dehydrated press of bodies in urban heat. That’s why they got together every few months and did all that, not because it was the one right thing to do or even an arguably effective thing to do.

Some people like to do it, and it sometimes helps a greater cause. But mostly they just like it, so they do it. 

Strange how I didn’t even realize you could like the way you chose to be in community with others, or the way you try to make the world a better place. But without the tides of other people’s movements forcing me one way or the other, what is it that I can do? What space is it that I want to see in this world, that I can live authentically and truly belong in?

I have shy dreams of starting up a monthly book club in my neighborhood, where folks just turn up and talk for hours over tea and coffee about history and narrative themes and characters. People could recommend me great books and I’d recommend my own finds. I’d catch up on reading classics every month, and understand stories much better by having discussions over them. It will be a bit clumsy and awkward, if I could even find any interested folks, but at least it would be by my own volition. Self-organizing what I want to see in the world – as far as my nerve doesn’t fail me. That’s power in the best sense, and this world can only be the better for little things like that.

love, larisse