This past Saturday, March 24, I attended San Francisco’s March For Our Lives rally and march. It was the first social justice event, let alone march, that I’d ever attended.
I arrived at the event a full hour before it was scheduled to start as per the volunteer guidelines. Already the Civic Center Plaza was strewn with people. A huge stage was set up as music played while speakers tested the mics. I located the volunteer booth and was handed a shirt to wear, along with a trash bag and gloves—clean-up crew.
The sign I’d brought with me was a pathetic reproduction of the event’s slogan, printed on flimsy printer paper in dull black-and-white—my school didn’t have color printing. Luckily, there were boxes of large glossy posters laid out on the floor with a sign instructing us to Take One! and so I did, grabbing a poster that had flowers coming out of guns on one side and the words “Schools Not Warzones” on the other. Then I headed closer towards the stage.
Standing alone in the growing crowd, I rocked back and forth on my feet nervously as I fingered my poster. Music was playing—“I Will Survive” and “The Greatest” and other anthems of perseverance—but the event was nowhere near beginning. I was trying to abstain from using my phone too much and draining the battery before the speeches even started, but I was only partially successful in overcoming my urges to photograph everything in sight, wanting to capture each moment.
One of the elderly women near me leaned in, and I immediately assumed she was going to reprimand me for experiencing this event through the filter of my phone, or that perhaps I’d committed some other heinous faux-pas. I tensed up, anticipating of the criticism I was sure was coming my way.
Instead, she asked, “Has someone taken a picture of you with your sign yet? Do you want one?”
“Oh!” I said, happily surprised at her perceptivity and kindness. “No, not yet. I would love one, thank you!”
She snapped a few shots as I posed with my poster, and when I thanked her, reviewing the pictures she’d taken, she even asked if they were good enough or if I wanted her to take more. I assured her they were perfect, unable to keep a smile from spreading across my face: I had proof of me attending a historic event.
She must have read my mind. “Soak it all in,” she said. “You’ll never forget this.”
I agreed that I certainly wouldn’t, confessing that this was my first march. I asked her if she’d been to many marches.
She gave me a conspiratorial smile and moved closer. Overhead, the music boomed from the speakers and the sun shone down.
“I’ve been attending protests and marches since the Vietnam War,” she said. “And it made a difference. Right now, you’re making a difference.”
There were thousands upon thousands of people attending the march that day, but for the first time, I felt like my contribution was important. Like it mattered. This woman made me feel that if I’d chickened out of going to the march, as I had contemplated that morning before leaving my dorm, my presence would be missed.
I thanked her profusely before returning to my photography. Throughout the rest of the event, she continuously worked to accommodate me, alerting me when students were called forward and offering me the best spots in the crowd so my view of the speakers wasn’t obscured. Even as incredibly kind as she was, she wasn’t the only elderly woman who impacted my experience that day. During the entire rally stood another elderly woman to my right. She’d arrived at the event even before I had despite not being a volunteer, and though she was alone, she stood with a quiet confidence.
Despite the sun, the brief rain, and the fact that the speeches stretched on for hours longer than initially planned, she never wavered from her position in the crowd. She didn’t fit the “mold” of what I pictured when I thought of an activist—quiet instead of loud, calm instead of angry, demure instead of brazen. Yet I was none of the aforementioned adjectives, either, leading me to question if people like me could even contribute to these events.
Her quiet activism inspired me, and throughout the hours, we consistently made eye contact and smiled at each other. Thanks to this woman, I now know that I don’t have to scream to make my voice heard. Sometimes simply showing up is enough to send a message.
“Excuse me,” a man said, redirecting my attention. He was young, clean-shaven with tortoise-shell glasses, a newsboy cap pulled down firmly over his head, and a book tucked under one arm. “I’m Canadian, and…”
He launched into an explanation of Canadian gun laws (which are much more, you know, reasonable) and asked about the poster I was carrying, but two elderly women behind me interrupted his questioning, one of them saying, “She’s got a great poster,” referring to the other. We talked with each other for a while, before the Canadian asked about—well, asked "aboot"—why we were attending the event, and whether we felt anything would actually be changed.
“Are you hopeful?” he asked.
I said I was, but my opinion wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was the reply of the elderly women.
I couldn’t count how many elderly women I witnessed attending the march that day. Hundreds if not thousands, alone or in pairs or accompanying their grandchildren. Seasoned marchers and new ones, activists since the 60s and activists since Sandy Hook. All of them supporting youth, encouraging them, listening to them. All of them serving as inspiration and role models. I was so used to being invalidated by adults that to see thousands of elderly women cheering on student speakers, clapping fervently at their points and cheering them on, was the most heartening experience.
Sometimes I forget just how marginalized elderly women can be. How they grew up in eras where gender equality was a distant dream, one that they fought hard to actualize. How even now, their opinions are just as invalidated as youths’, their input brushed off as coming from “crazy old ladies.” That couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that these women have been fighting for a long, long time. They have so much experience to share, so much wisdom. And still so much fight left in them.
If youth returned the favor, if we supported and cheered on the elderly as much as they cheered on us on at March For Our Lives, then the differences we could make would be infinite.
“Are you hopeful?” the Canadian had asked.
The elderly women were seasoned activists. One of them was long-time gun-control advocate who'd been protesting around this issue for decades.
“I am,” she said. “For the very first time, I’m hopeful.”
