When he pushed his way in, we were packed together on a street corner, placards and people happily jammed together. Seven thousand of us turned out that day to rally in small-town Geneva, IL. Plus one angry man, pushing and nervous.
He aimed his face close into another’s face, raised his finger and declared that “Socialism is wrong!” What’s he talking about, I wondered. We’re not Socialists, we’re anti-Trump. He ranted at one man up close. The man sidled away. So did the next and the next. All this not two feet from my elbow.
Suddenly, a woman knocked me from behind and shoved herself into his path, her own finger raised. The two faces pressed close together on stretched necks, bullhorning their rage. I heard and felt anxiety mount.
It was just the scenario many of us had feared. I imagined tomorrow’s headline: The Incident that Sparked a Riot. What to do? I remembered Coach Walters telling how he would intervene when teen boys fought in a school hallway. “I’d put my hand on one of them and it would stop,” he told me, “because they knew I was not afraid.”
To the two rally warriors I said nothing. I laid my hand on the woman’s shoulder and left it there. I was gentled. Her body responded. She slowly quieted, retreated. Her adversary backed away. I wondered if his anger would bubble up somewhere else. Would it ignite another demonstrator.
I looked down the slope of Geneva’s main street, dense with people on both sides, down the hill and back up the other side to where the crowd disappeared over the horizon. It was awesome to think this was going on all across the nation at the same time. We were a hopeful scrum who shared a commitment to democracy and a desire to keep the peace.
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