She handed me a little Californian flag, with the words “TRUMP IS UNBEARABLE” handwritten above the grizzly. The older woman had about a dozen made, and she gave them to anyone on the metro who hadn’t brought their own sign.
The Women’s March embraced such kindnesses. People handed out water for free, danced together in the streets, and, in Los Angeles, we reunited a parent and child.
We had just turned onto South Spring Street, with vibrating chants...
It was there a woman came up to me, her eyes frantic.
We had just turned onto South Spring Street, with vibrating chants that echoed easily through the full roads and bounced back to meet us. It was there a woman came up to me, her eyes frantic.
“We’re looking for a little girl. This tall, brown hair, her name’s Georgia.” She moved to someone else a few feet away from my friends and I and continued to spread the word. I saw a man, Georgia’s father, as I would soon learn, standing on a fire hydrant. He screamed her name, repeatedly. I’ve never seen a father look so small.
The energy shifted. The air was stuck somewhere between the people who didn’t realize anything abnormal was occurring and continued to protest, and those of us who yelled for Georgia. No one stopped walking. The march was a current, a riptide, pulsating, and we needed to gain control of it. Stopping in our tracks, we screamed long enough for clarity to settle over us. Georgia. George-uh. GEORGE-UH. Her name became a chant of its own, perhaps the most pressing one we’d said all day. I was overcome with emotion; could an event spurred on by spreading love end in catastrophe? When suddenly, a man a few yards away ran through us with a “She’s over here! She’s here!” I turned to see the dad’s face, but all I could make out was the blur of his hair as he ran to her.
Hours later, as I headed back to the metro (by now it felt like that stranger had handed me a flag of solidarity), I actually saw the girl. She was hugging her brother, smiling. I wanted her to know how loved she was, how she was a microcosm of the humanity we’re constantly trying to resuscitate in our country nowadays. I wanted her to know that the Women’s March should be remembered in her mind, not as the time she got lost, but as the time she was found. I hope she knows the world will not be as kind as the feminists she met that day, and that it will soon be her job to help find the little girls lost in the crowd. Please, come say hi when you do, Georgia.
This post is part of a series: Teen Eye Take To The Streets. Read about Em almost skipping the Women's March altogether, Lauren experiencing her first ever protest, and Furqan taking the international approach.