Bookends: Making Good Trouble

Guest essay by Lois West

It was 90+ degrees with over 90% humidity. My husband and I decided to break up the mile walk to the John Lewis Make Good Trouble Rally at Philadelphia’s City Hall on July 17 by stopping for an early supper at Pizzeria Vetri at the half-mile point.

The couple sitting next to us, about our age (old!), asked us if we had eaten there before. They then explained that they were Iowans visiting Philadelphia – one of the destinations on their bucket list. We had a lovely conversation with them – about, to us, the strangely enormous interest in college wrestling in the Midwest, about Civil War battlefields (also on their bucket list), and about baseball (the wife adores Kyle Schwarber, especially after his three homers in the All-Star Game). They commented on the sign I was taking to the rally – “My Dad Liberated Dachau. He’s Rolling in His Grave.” The husband said, “He must have had lots of stories to tell.” I replied, “No. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t.”

We recommended some of our favorite Philly restaurants and historic sites to them, we shook hands, and said good-bye.

At the rally my sign evoked two reactions. One was a grim, knowing nod. The other was a look of confusion and the question “What is Dachau?” – usually mispronounced as Daitchaw. The question was most often asked by 20-somethings.

As we left the rally, a woman approached me and asked me what my sign meant. As I began to explain what Dachau was, she interrupted me and said, “I know it was a concentration camp. I’m Jewish like you.” (She had noticed my star of David.) She continued, “But are you saying that ICE is like the Gestapo? If you are, don’t you feel like you are dishonoring Jews killed during the Holocaust? ICE is not killing anybody.”

I was taken aback. I replied, “ICE is like the Gestapo, like the East German Stasi, and like the French police who rounded up Jews in Paris on July 17 – 83 years ago today. And, you know, it never starts with a gas chamber.”

She shook her head, turned her back on me, and walked away. I have to say that my pre-rally conversation with friendly tourists from Iowa was much more productive and uplifting than my post-rally encounter with a member of my own tribe. Go, Hawkeyes!

See also We Will Not Let Them Down.