Pro-life rally

This past weekend, I attended a pro-life rally and march.  It seems that the practice of taking to the streets is not just a historical footnote - it's alive and well in 2019.

A local organization called Northwest Families for Life hosted a pro-life rally and march last weekend.  I don't go to many things like this, so I didn't have very specific expectations, but I assumed it would be fairly small, perhaps a few dozen people.  I underestimated by a factor of 10.  The photo at the top of this post was snapped in the parish gym during the pre-march activities.  My rough estimate is that somewhere between 400 and 500 people attended.  They filled most of the folding chairs, most of the bleachers, and were standing in the back.

I attended as an individual, and my initial plan was to wander in and find a group to hang out with.  I had two possibilities in mind: I'd either find a group of parishioners, or some deacons.  But if any parishioners or other deacons were there, I didn't see them.  However, there was a group of three singers at the front, and I knew two of them, so within seconds I had been recruited as a member of the makeshift folk group.  We sang "We Are Called", "We Are Marching In the Light of God" and "Go Out to the World."  We were also supposed to sing "Amazing Grace", but, in the sort of half-organized spirit that prevailed throughout the event, we never quite got around to that one.

The basic outline of the day was: gather in the parish gym and hear some speakers; then march to a nearby municipal park; then hear more speakers.  The pre-march speakers were pretty interesting.  We heard from the organizer (who did a great job keeping things light and fun), and a couple of priests.  But from my point of view, the two most interesting speakers during this segment were an Illinois House representative from the local area (a pro-life Republican, somewhat of an endangered species among elected officials in Illinois), and a woman from a local parish.  Naturally, the House member talked about pro-life political matters, which are pretty dire in Illinois; the state recently signed into law one of the most comprehensive pro-choice laws in the nation.  We learned that next on the list for pro-choice activists is to repeal the state's parental notification laws for minors.  I support parental notification, so this was good information.

The woman speaker had a considerably more personal story to tell.  As a 13 year old, she had been sexually abused and impregnated by an adult relative.  Her parents got her an abortion; she wasn't given any say in the matter.  She recounted that, as a 13 year old, she knew almost nothing about abuse or pregnancy or abortion, and couldn't have made an intelligent decision even if she had been allowed to weigh in.  (As it happens, the doctor her parents took her to has recently been in the local news: when he died, the remains of many hundreds of aborted children were found, medically preserved, in his Illinois home and the trunk of his car.)  Her testimony to us on Saturday was that the abortion experience, while not medically unusual or problematic, was traumatic to her in ways that she didn't fully understand at the time.  She described it as "worse than the abuse."  Later, as an adult, her life spiraled downward - alcoholism, opioid dependency - and she attributed at least some of this to her abortion experience.  After years of therapy and a spiritual conversion, she was able to overcome this past.  For her, an abortion was something for which psychological and spiritual healing was necessary.

When the speakers (and, I'd like to wishfully think, our music) had everyone suitably fired up, we filed out of the gym and marched off the parish grounds and down one of the main drags of the town, which also is a US highway.  On the way into the event, I had been given a printed sign, about 2' x 3' on heavy stock.  It said "All Lives Are Precious".  A lot of us carried these signs, and I tried to hold it in such a way that it would be visible to drivers.  In addition to these pre-printed signs, there were some very large hand-made signs and banners, and a lot of the children (of whom there were more than I expected) had yellow balloons.  A surprising number of drivers honked as we marched by.  A car horn is kind of an ambiguous thing; it could have meant, "We support your cause", or "Get out of the way, you morons".  We optimistically assumed it was the former.

As I was walking through the parking lot, I noticed that two marchers were carrying a huge sign, held aloft on poles, which said "Trump 2020" on it.  I groaned; I didn't want to be associated with that.  But if you're going to march, you can't always be choosy about your fellow marchers.  In addition to the Trump banner, there were political campaign volunteers armed with clipboards and pens outside the parish hall, soliciting petition signatures to get candidates on ballots.  I said I'd sign one, but when it became clear that  I didn't live in the candidate's district, the volunteer snatched the clipboard out of my hands, presumably before I inadvertently disqualified his entire sheet of signatures.

The vanguard of the marchers consisted of some extremely energetic teens who belong to a group called The Crusaders.  They are Catholic teen pro-life activists.  I had marched with them once before, in my municipality's Fourth of July parade, a decade or so ago.  On that occasion, they were on roller blades.  Of course, ten years later, it was a different gaggle of teens, but it was the same organization.  On Saturday, there were no roller blades, but they had a drumline that pounded out a tattoo the entire way, and the teens whooped it up with chants and shouts, leaping and prancing as much as marching.  In short, they seemed to be having a blast.  As the preponderance of us were over the age of 40, the Crusaders injected a welcome dose of youthful exuberance into the proceedings.

When we reached the park, we all sort of stood around for a while, wondering what came next.  Eventually, the organizers managed to herd us near a makeshift speaker platform.  Then the second round of speeches commenced.  One of the speakers was Jeanne Ives, of whom I've written before at NewGathering.  She is a state representative, formerly obscure, who rose to prominence in last year's GOP gubernatorial primary, coming out of nowhere to get within a couple of points of knocking off incumbent (and pro-choice) then-Governor Bruce Rauner.  I have to say, her speech wasn't a barn-burner; she didn't seem fully engaged for some reason.

Then came a young woman who was a survivor of abandonment.  Immediately after her mother gave birth to her, she had been put into a garbage bag and tossed into a construction dumpster.  A construction crew foreman, cleaning up his site, had heard her wails as he was tossing debris into the dumpster.  He summoned some nurses from a nearby medical center.  She was rescued, revived, and eventually adopted.  Her adoptive parents told her her story when she was a teen.  I found her story to be pretty moving.  If you've read what I've written previously about Rest in His Arms, you know that the group tries to evangelize Safe Haven laws.

The last speaker was the best of all: Joe Scheidler, one of the true heroes of pro-life activism in the United States.  He was, at 92, the oldest person in the crowd that day.  One of the organizers described him as "the godfather" of the pro-life movement; inasmuch as he has been (unjustly) sued several times via novel applications of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws, that appellation seemed a little awkward.  But there is no doubt that he has been the tip of the spear of pro-life activism. At least three times, he and his organization have had cases in front of the US Supreme Court.  At 92, he is still stands up straight and speaks in a strong, clear voice.  He has been around long enough to have seen (and personally experienced) many victories and defeats.  He counseled courage and perseverance.

After a few more speakers, I was pushed onto the stage with the rest of the little folk band, and we sang "Let There Be Peace On Earth".  Then most of the group started drifting back to the parish.  The Crusaders were invited/ordered by their priest chaplain to remain behind to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  One of the organizers, who knows me, asked me if I'd like to join them, but at that point my feet were pretty sore from standing, so I made some lame excuse and returned with the main throng.

What, if anything, did it all accomplish?  Of course, I can't know.  It's possible it didn't amount to a hill of beans.  On the other hand, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of drivers and passengers along the main route through town were exposed to our messages and witness as we marched; some were pretty inconvenienced, as it took us 10 minutes or longer to cross the highway.  I found some of the speeches to be pretty interesting and even inspiring.  It's fair to say that it gave my pro-life principles a shot of adrenalin.  I'd like to attend next year, and I'll try to get some of the local deacons organized; we should be present at something like this.

 I don't know whether the world was changed.  But changing the world can be a journey, not an event, and perhaps this was a baby step along the way.

Further reflection was spurred by a couple of articles I saw this morning.  One, by David Leonhardt, an opinion columnist and pro-impeachment cheerleader at the New York Times, called for grassroots demonstrations and marches to try to tip the balance in the Senate toward conviction.  In support of his case, he cited the women's marches of 2017 as helping to swing public opinion toward the preservation of Obamacare at a time when the White House and both houses of Congress were in GOP hands.  He may be right.  And more generally, he surely is right that without grassroots activism, the status quo is likely to continue, with order imposed by the powers that be.

Leonhardt cites a recent Vox column by Matthew Yglesias.  Yglesias notes that the Democratic leadership in Congress is sufficiently old that Watergate probably is burned into their brains as the way to topple a presidency.  He believes that Pelosi et al are, consciously or not, following that basic template.  Yglesias positioned that process as a battle of elites, but he believes that times have changed, and questions whether that's the right approach.  He writes,

American elites rarely seem to do this, but they should consider the lesson that toppled Mariano Rajoy’s corrupt right-wing government in Spain in 2018, Park Geun-hye’s corrupt right-wing government in South Korea in 2017, and Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson’s corrupt right-wing government in Iceland in 2016: Large-scale public protests work.

Yglesias also cites the activism in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and Freddie Grey in Baltimore.

It's not difficult to think of other large-scale protests, here and abroad, that have sought change.  Peggy cites anti-Brexit protests in London in the post directly below this one.  The Tea Party was very much a grassroots effort which establishment conservative leaders and media had to sprint to get out in front of.  The so-called Arab Spring led to much change.  Recent teacher activism in West Virginia, Oklahoma and elsewhere had popular support.  And there is no doubt that activist tactics have helped keep the pro-life movement relevant.

Yglesias summarizes his views on marches and protests:

The mechanisms through which protest works seem multifaceted, with some of the impact driven by direct personal participation, some driven by witnessing the protest themselves, and some driven by media coverage which serves to rebroadcast key elements of the protest message. The key to it all, however, is that bothering to show up to a march is a moderately costly investment of time and energy. When a bunch of people do that, it serves as a powerful signal to the rest of society that something extraordinary is happening.