A crowd of about 300 to 400 gathered yesterday on Broad Street in front of the Pike County Courthouse in Milford, Pennsylvania on a drizzly afternoon in April of 2025 to protest against Donald Trump. As I looked around at the people, liberally salted with gray hair and weathered faces, I realized that many, like us, had been doing this for a long time.

I could have seen them at a Vietnam War protest in Georgia or Colorado, or an anti-racism march in New Orleans, or a Human Rights Campaign fund raiser in Nashville, or an early-days feminist gathering in New York City. In each of those places, their faces, unlined and framed in un-gray hair, would have looked the same as they looked today: at once mad and sad that it was necessary once again to use their voices to state the obvious, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law, that war is a crime, that our bodies belong to us and not to legislators, that healthcare is a right, not a privilege, that allowing others to live in poverty is unacceptable, that wealth may convey power but not goodness.

We thought Nixon was evil, that both Bushes were studiedly stupid, that Reagan was a puppet, that Trump the first time around was a fool. We used our votes, we used our voices, we used our feet, some of us got beaten, some were arrested, and all of us thought that we had won something big when our nation – yes, this country – elected a Black man to the presidency. Along the way we won battles, even some major, unexpected ones at the Supreme Court.

There were setbacks, sure, and frustration, but nothing like this.

And so, there we were, angry and sad beyond the point of tears that once again the country that we sometimes found so difficult to love is broken again and needs us. But I saw something else in the faces around Tracy and me: I saw the same strength that helped to end a war and gain rights that had been denied, the same will that served to hold us together and drive us forward. I saw the indomitable love we have depended on to overcome hate, and beneath those angry brows, I saw eyes filled with determination and hope.