"Is This Normal?": Melissa Harris-Perry at the Women's March
There were so many wonderful speakers and performances at Saturday's Women's march, the program ran long and I delivered an abbreviated version of these remarks. Here is the full address as initially prepared for delivery.
Yesterday I attended the inauguration of President Trump. I respect the many reasons people did not attend, but I am glad I was there.
I accompanied a bi-partisan, multi-racial group of students who have been traveling, working, and learning together since the Iowa caucuses. Wake the Vote promised over a year ago we would go together to Iowa and to the inauguration. By getting here yesterday, we kept our promises to each other, which is no small feat in our current environment.
I was here because I am a writer, a voter, a citizen, and a human. I have a right to be in public space to watch the public transfer of power. I will resist being told some public places and spaces are not for me. And I will not submit to having the authenticity of my commitment to justice policed on social media any more than I will submit to having my patriotism questioned on the same.
I was here because this election has confirmed that mainstream broadcast media is so highly selective in the images it shows us and the voices it gives us, that we can only understand this media as dishonest. Whether these media are dishonest on purpose or through sheer ignorance is irrelevant. I knew I had to be there to see for myself in order to draw any kind of judgments I could even begin to trust about the first minutes and hours of the Trump administration.
For all those reason I came and for all those reasons I am glad I came.
So let me tell you a very brief story about yesterday and then I will pass the mic so you can hear from many other people. I know one of the most important concerns about attendance at the inauguration was the worry that attending would have the affect of "normalizing" intolerance, bigotry, exclusion, and hatred that fueled much of President Trump's campaign.
The question of "normal" came up yesterday while I was with just two of my students. We had gotten separated from the rest of the group and were trapped in one of these corralling areas. We were penned in on all four sides with about 40 other people by the 10 foot fences. These are the same high fence barriers I last saw at the RNC in Cleveland.
While we were trapped in this area with the gray skies and drizzling rain overhead a man on a loud speaker about a block away was shouting about murderous Muslims, baby-killing abortion doctors, and Hilary Clinton's need to repent. Other than that it was silent. Trump supporters were not chatting happily with each other as Obama supporters had done in inaugurations past. No one was playing music. Just gray skies, high fences, and loud speakers spewing hate.
Lauren, one of my students, turned to me and said, "Is this normal?"
I knew what she was asking. Having never been to an inauguration before she was asking me, as her professor, if this is the way inaugurations always proceed. Should she be worried? I could sense her rising panic, because I felt it too.
"Is this normal?"
I had to decide to answer.
Do I say, No?
We're Americans. We move freely and joyfully at inaugurations, celebrating the choices made in voting booths across our land, knowing that even if we did not prevail this time, will have another chance in just a few years. Even the losers in our democracy know we will we shape our arguments, get new candidates, assess our tactics, but that our liberty is secured by documents centuries old and instantiated in the very soil on which we stand.
Or do I say, Yes?
Yes, this is normal. We are Japanese Americans. We were ripped from our homes; our property stolen; labeled enemies of the state even as or sons fought and died in war. We shivered in horse stalls at the racetrack as we waited to be shipped to American concentration camps.
Yes, this is normal. We are black Americans. Our tax dollars build glittering edifices we cannot enter and solid prisons we cannot exit. We pay the salaries of those who slaughter us. We have never moved freely across this free land. We came shackled in the hulls of ships, were pushed into Jim Crows crowded ghettos, and are even now pinned in the penitentiaries of profits.
Yes, this is normal. We are women. Every boy and man lays claim to our bodies. The state's compelling interest lays claim to what's inside us. Some supposedly woke fool calls us the community's greatest resource while he uses us up. Fathers, brothers, dates, and strangers will pin us, trap us, and silence us as we struggle then call us liars if we tell.
Yes, this is normal. We are children. So precious as embryos, irrelevant once born. No one even asks what we want before imposing change on us. Assuming we can't possibly have a preference or deserve a voice.
Yes, this is normal. We are the undocumented. Separated. Walled. Removed. Voiceless. Betrayed by friends and foes alike.
Yes, this is normal we are Sikh. Turbans of faith misidentified. Slaughtered in silence.
Yes, this is normal, we are Muslims. Called enemy, deemed foreign, tested, registered, rejected.
Yes, this is normal, we are queer. Our very being deemed unnatural, our love unworthy, our families laughable, our identities criminal.
Yes, this is normal. We are disabled. Locked out of homes, and jobs, and classrooms, and sidewalks.
I did not know what to say. Is this normal?
We are going to decide today if this is normal.
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