When I got home, I realized I was having my first serious headache in a long while.
I stood on the bridge, staring at the cars going by on the freeway, a break from the conversations where we were yelling to communicate.
I stood counting the number of vehicles that were beeping.
Out of the first fifty, none beeped.
The second fifty, sixteen.
The average car gave about three beeps.
They were doing this for the beeps.
Of course, more than that, but also the beeps.
About six or seven cars out of a hundred beeped.
Mostly, because they were driving seventy-some miles per hour, with cars all around.
They had signs taped up to the bridge’s fence.
Plenty of them:
JAIL TRUMP 25TH NOW
We the people RESIST
SHE HASN’T SHUT THE HECK UP FOR 3 DAYS
DEFEND DEMOCRACY LINCOLN SQUARE
HAIL NO Los Alamos Data Center
HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR & GREED
Some of the signs not even facing the drivers, but facing them, like reminders of why they’re there.
I can’t imagine the drivers actually being able to read the signs.
But it’s not about the signs.
It’s about the presence of people, seeing people on a bridge, knowing they’re protestors, even if you have no idea what they’re protesting.
Protesting isn’t protesting—
the way I’ve gone to church and realized church isn’t church.
Sometimes it’s networking, sometimes it’s singing, sometimes it’s duty, sometimes it’s because a person you’d like to date is there, sometimes guilt, sometimes longing for God, sometimes because your Mom made you.
A hundred reasons. More.
It’s the same here.
I ask people why they’re here and they talk about:
data centers and Trump and trans rights and the complexities of the prison-industrial complex and class issues and there’s no brand no slogan no capitalistic approach to the protest.
The protest is just a protest,
a quiet (very loud) protest.
I get pointed to Sandy, quickly, in her yellow vest, her READ BOOKS. WALK DOGS. FIGHT FASCISTS. ballcap.
She’s been doing this weekly since February 2025, the lead organizer, when “terrible things started” and she predicted “a lot of bad stuff to come.”
I take her to the side of the bridge, the end of the fence, where she says, “That’s enough,” not wanting to go further, not trusting me.
Not trusting runs through the group.
One wears a body cam, “in case.”
They wear dark sunglasses.
Two self-appointed guards watch the cars where they’re parked;
they tell me of five, six of the cars having their tires slashed one time, discovered when they got done, the sun down, telling me of how hard it is when you’re tired, realize you can’t drive, have to wait for multiple tow trucks.
They never caught the person, worries they’ll return.
They tell me of a car swerving towards them.
Talking to the two car-guards, a car goes by and the passenger in back leans out the window, half of his body outside the car, and screams, quick, the feel like it was done to frighten.
There’s a lot of what SNL comedian Michael Che calls “white jogging,” shirtless tan men who run by as if the protest is just people standing in line.
Quite a few black people walk by, none participating in the protest.
It’s a very white protest, an elderly leaning protest, peaceful, non-confrontational, on the outskirts of Ann Arbor.
Sandy tells me 14,000 to 15,000 cars pass by when they do this
I-95.
Sandy tells me their messages change every week.
Last week it was: Michigan is not for sale.
She focuses on class issues,
is relaxed, very, like she’s home, a very noisy home.
She tells me “460 bridges are doing the same thing right now” as part of the Visibility Brigade.
Even if the visibility is a driver seeing them for a split-second.
But that visibility, based on the numbers Sandy gives, means 6 to 7 million cars are seeing these people on these bridges.
“We’re not in anybody’s way,” Sandy says.
I ask if protests are about getting in people’s way, if that’s the point.
“I chose this bridge,” she says, for safety, the roadway separated from the trail for joggers, for protestors.
She says it’s a joint protest, with their presence, and the motorists joining in with “honking and waving.”
I see no waves in the hundred cars I watched, but honking, yes, the semis like sperm whales, the loudest animal on Earth, 230 decibels.
I have no idea how the protestors stay there longer than a few minutes.
For Sandy, it’s a commitment to “get the money out of politics.”
And a despair.
But where “the antidote to despair is action,”
admits she’s not sure where she’s getting the quote from,
the internet insisting it’s Joan Baez.
It’s female-led, this protest.
Multiple grandmotherly types smile at me, welcoming.
They don’t talk to me, due to the inability to speak over the engine after engine after engine, as if America is all gas and metal and oil.
I yell to Landon, a red-haired, laid back, calm man who tells me he’s “on vacation.”
I ask why he’d go to a protest when on vacation.
He yells back that he can’t stand MAGA, that “it’s a cult, it’s a cult!”
adds, “I’m not part of the cult!”
He’s an Ohioan, tells me about the protests down there.
I’m surprised at how laid back everyone is, positive, focused.
I ask Landon if he ever gets exhausted from breathing in all the exhaust, but he just shakes his head no, something monk-like about him, in all the positive ways you think of monks.
I go to leave, the traffic fading fast behind me,
the liminal point between concrete and forest off to the side,
this infinity of reasons why each person is here,
the mix of messages,
and the strong need to connect.
I talk with Gordon, body cammed, but the conversation goes nowhere, mostly because it’s all being recorded, not as open as Sandy, him dressed in police blue.
I go to leave, feeling content.
I can be a bit anti-protest sometimes.
It comes from living in Berkeley, memories of seeing bloody footprints after one of the protests, a streetlight corpsed in the road, a bank I disliked with windows shattered, walking by at one point when a person walked up and put their megaphone to my ear, screaming into it, realizing, later, that, oh, I’d forgotten I’d been wearing an American flag T-shirt and got mistaken for a Trump supporter, but the tinnitus making me a bit angry at the aggression, people I saw, on both sides, who were there to fight, in my opinion, stories of skinheads trucking down from northern California solely for the purpose to confront.
But every single one of the protestors here was focused on getting semis to honk,
the way I used to do as a kid,
there for support,
to support,
more than to protest,
to be unified.
I respected that.
I was just about to leave, when I figured I’d chat with the two car-guards, one final talk.
They reminded me of Through the Looking-Glass characters, a bit of Jeff Daniels’ behavior, 2014-era, to them, standing side by side, one wearing two walkie-talkies that I had as a child,
the two having, comically, the same stance.
I told them I understood their presence now, the vandalism.
One of them implied that’s what conservatives do—vandalize.
We gabbed.
I acted as a devil’s advocate, asking if Democrats and Republicans need to work together, not treat each other as binary opposites.
Asked if it might be time better spent to get involved in politics for actual change rather than just collectively standing on a bridge.
You could feel the discomfort growing.
I’m someone who can be convinced,
always looking for logic, for counterargument,
like to do point counterpoint,
to learn,
to see new ways of viewing things,
but the questions just aggravated.
Maybe it was that it was two-against-one,
maybe it was that they do see things as binary,
that questioning means opposition
and not enquiry.
I told them everyone seems to be here for different reasons,
asked why they were here,
and the conversation turned to their concern of U of M stopping any help for transgender transition.
I scribbled fast, asking if that’s true.
I was shocked, asked their names.
One told me she’d be angry if she was quoted directly.
I won’t quote her directly,
won’t name her.
I pushed for more information that the university medical was banning transgender medical assistance.
Then she changed it to that it applied to under 18 only.
A big difference.
They didn’t see it as a big difference.
I asked how young someone should be able to transition.
And one said,
“We’re done.”
Said they’d say no more,
the interview was over.
Same thing as happened to me at protest 1.
I keep thinking protestors are there to discuss,
that I wanted to learn,
wanted to hear perspective.
She said, “Come on, follow me,” and walked away.
The other one followed.
I thought protesters would fight for what they believe in, would be OK with being questioned, would actually even be able to expand the way I looked at something, give me ammunition that would help me fall even more strongly on their side.
I walked to my car, looked at the tires, all fine.
Every protest is different.
Every protestor is different.
But there’s a strong need I felt there from them to belong,
to connect,
to follow.
