Blinded

To the editor:

Last week, my sign still said “hands off Medicare Medicaid.” My wife held a new one, “MELT ICE.” Of the other couple, one had the big “Beacons For Democracy” sign, her wife had “Save Our Democracy.” Last week we were two elderly couples, plus one. Jill and I have been part of a group called Beacons For Democracy. There are groups, nationally, in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota and California. For the past 18 months, Beacons have stood out on Johnson Avenue with protest signs for a half hour on Thursday evenings. Our groups number 5-12, and all the 42 groups do the same thing on Thursdays. That makes... about 300 people. The earth does not move for that.

We are a project birthed by a prominent west side rabbi, now retired, and Union Theological Seminary. Each week there are the same honks and waves, the same looks away. There is often a walker who says, “Me? Join you? Why would I?” I don’t have an answer. I do know that what I really want is to feel safe in America. To be reassured, by something. There is little, in 2026, that is reassuring. We are being ruled by a king, his royal family and its submissives. When I returned to the corner last week and found Regal Pharmacy, the deli, the bank and the coffee shop, all still there, the latter with laptops in its window, heads bent above them, it seemed to me that the world had become bricks and glass, unchanging, and it said, “you will not heal America by holding up a sign.”

The silence of passersby said, “we don’t have time for signs, not for those fools in Washington.” The effect of news, of distant war, the darkness cast by a distorted Washington, seed numbness, detachment, cynicism and fear. I call this being blinded by darkness. It is not unusual that I feel that. The regime is interested, really, only in domination. And we hold up signs. Holding up a sign says we are witnesses, we are inside what we witness. I am not blind when I can see those who would take away our socialistic health care, who would send men in masks to take away those who speak out. We also see backwards. Remember McCarthy and the Rosenbergs, the great rallies for civil rights, Vietnam and Cambodia, women’s rights, gay marriage, all of it.

We with our signs are of age. For me, a half hour is a lot. I don’t know how many signs together might make a beacon of light, but standing in the darkness even as we see the darkness, feeling the numbness and darkness peel away, we are making a citizen’s choice. There is only one public life at a time, and we stand inside it. We are not blind. If you ask why I’m out here, it’s because I can see, I am a witness, it’s the right thing to do, and that is my best answer.

KIP ZEGERS

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