Dear March—Come in
By Emily Dickinson
“Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell—
I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
I declare—how Red their Faces grew—
But March, forgive me—
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue—
There was no Purple suitable—
You took it all with you—
Who knocks? That April—
Lock the Door—
I will not be pursued—
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied—
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come—
That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame—”
As we have traversed the globe for the past 4,200 days, we have seen countless demonstrations and people MARCHing toward a different future. Sometimes these have been peaceful, sometimes they have been pulsing with tension in a way that feels so much bigger than any one of us. Sometimes these movements end in celebration and other times in heartbreak. We have learned a great deal from seeing many powers operating in the world from various cultural points of view.
Here are just a few of those memories…
We just happened to be at The Grand Palace in Bangkok, the day the longest-reigning monarch in history, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died. A hush fell over this booming metropolis and we learned about Lèse majesté, the law making a blanket ban on speaking out against any members of the royal family. As people flooded the streets, we returned to our hotel to watch the processions from the balcony as a nation mourning, clad in black, draped marigold chains around portraits of their leader. It made us wonder about those who were not mourning this leader, and who did not have a voice.
We were in Dublin, Ireland during a massive MARCH in support of Same-sex marriage and we were in County Cork during the celebrations of it becoming legalized in 2015. In Northern Ireland, the situation was quite different, and it took another four years before same-sex marriage was legalized for civil ceremonies.
We were still in relative lockdown during the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests in the USA in 2020. We found a spot a safe distance from the crowd in Bellingham, Washington, and listened to speakers at City Hall. They linked this movement to the reality that history repeats itself and spoke of this being the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. One of the speakers said, “If we do not struggle together, then we will not be free together.”
In France in 2022, as we were walking to the center of Nancy to find groceries, we were swept up in a candlelight procession against pension reform and for raising wages to keep pace with the rising cost of living. The man in charge told us, “The government must lead by example and take into account the social emergency. The strikes are a disruption for a week. The changes they are implementing disrupt our lives for generations.”
In October of 2024, tens of thousands of people organized a MARCH in various parts of Italy advocating for peace in Gaza and Ukraine. As we unknowingly met many of these activists, we learned they were urging the Italian government and the international community to revive a peace conference under the leadership of the United Nations.
New Zealand became independent from the United Kingdom in 1947. However, this was after the Maori people had suffered mass killings, land grabs, and cultural erasure over more than 100 years at the hands of colonial settlers. There are currently 978,246 Maori in New Zealand, constituting around 19 percent of the country’s population of 5.3 million. They are represented by Te Pati Maori, or the Maori Party, which currently holds only four of the 123 seats in Parliament. In November 2024, tens of thousands of people gathered at New Zealand’s parliament in Wellington, following a nine-day hikoi (MARCH) to protest the Treaty Principles Bill.
MARCH defined…
One thing I learned from my father’s return to the USA after three tours in Vietnam is this. Vietnam soldiers often returned alone. Unlike conflicts with massive demobilizations, men came back from Vietnam sometimes by themselves rather than with their units or companies. For a decade, as one person was shipped off to fight, another was returning to one of the longest-fought wars in American history. It was a complicated war, as war tends to be, but that does not mean that men and women who sacrificed so much should be met with anything but respect. After serving for six years, the welcome for many Vietnam veterans, including my father, was wrought with disrespectful and misinformed acts of violence by protestors. This is not to analyze who is on the right or wrong side of war. It is to say that there are humans on every side of a protest.
Activism takes many forms but the most successful are those movements that intimately understand who and what they are opposing. It is important to be deeply informed and to act in a collective way that makes a difference. The vision is to use our energy intelligently and wisely through meaningful and inspired acts in the direction of the future we wish to see. “Dear MARCH, Come in, How glad I am, I hoped for you before.”
One definition of MARCH is, to proceed or advance inexorably. This reminds me of Nelson Mandela’s quote, “The March to Freedom is irreversible.”
Or is it… “as we sway between, blame is just as dear as Praise and praise as mere as blame?”
