We are living in Orwellian times.

I saw the best minds of my generation resist the descending heel of fascism masquerading as patriotism.

Activists who screamed raspy calls to action from the gutter, their voices barely reaching the ears of the 1% in the penthouse apartments above them,

who knew that wealth would never trickle down the drain pipes with the rain, despite the engraved tablets of lies being handed down to them by white, varicose veined hands,

who carried signs burned at the edges that crackled with the electricity of resistance,

who blocked traffic, sat down in the middle of Broad, marched down the middle of Market, shut down busses on JFK, paced circles in the international airport,

who were so angry they let go of their quiet dispositions and let their voices join the swelling howl of disbelief,

who read the Constitution for the first time in their lives so they would recognize if she was ever violated,

who finally realized that the personal is political and the political is personal, that ink spilled in Washington eventually rains down on the whole country, covering highrises and farm houses alike in black sludge, that the stain doesn’t come out with one wash,

who bought so many copies of 1984 that Amazon sold out of it,

whose every thought was a thought crime,

who wore their hair in Star Wars buns as they marched down boulevards because if Carrie Fisher was alive she would not stand for this shit,

who hid books in the nooks and crannies of their homes, anticipating the day they would be collected and tossed into towering bonfires,

who, freckled and stubborn, scratched “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” into cabinet walls and the soft skin of their inner arms so they would never forget it,

who found so many connections between their lives and dystopian fiction they couldn’t possibly list all of them,

who endured night sticks, pepper spray, fire hoses, German Shepherds, tear gas, rubber bullets, metal bullets,

who scratched and clawed and hissed and were kicked away like annoying pests,

who found themselves dejected and deserted, standing alone on a desolate, littered street, skyscrapers looming above them like tyrannical kings,

who fell and fell and fell, cracking the faded asphalt where they landed, fatigue weighing them down like algae covered cinder blocks and rusted chains,

who got the fuck back up again, scratched and clawed and hissed again,

who howled, howled, howled into the crinkled paper faces of authority

until their voices gave out,

until their breath gave out,

until their legs gave out,

who knew, even from where they were splayed out on the ground, that their spirits would never give out,

whose spirits never. gave. out.

I am with you.