It was a Golden Rule parade — you acted the way you wish the government would act, with goodness, and tender respect, and this held the peace. —
Two things carried the day: regular people saying no to power, and glorious camaraderie. We were sad and afraid, and we had done the most radical thing of all: we had shown up, not knowing what else to do, and without much hope. This was going on a huge picnic at the edge of the fog, hoping you could walk through to something warmer. The mantra you could hear in our voices and our footsteps was "I have a good feeling!" The undermutter was silent, spoken with a sort of Jewish shrug — "What good will it to do nothing?"
The barricades were broken down for once, between races, colors, ages, sexes, classes, nations. There are so few opportunities for this to happen — at first, it feels like us versus them, and then you're shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people, reading one another's signs that pierce you and make you laugh out loud! You rub shoulders, smell the bodies and the babies and pot and urine and incense and fear, and everyone's streaming past, including you. For once, you're part of the stream, and in that, in being part of it, you smell the pungent green shoots of hope. The feeling may only be for the moment. But it's a quantum moment: it might happen again, and spread and spread and spread; and for a moment and then another, there's no judgment, no figuring out, just an ebullient trudge, step, step, step.
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith