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Opinion: I thought it was an anti-mask protest. I was wrong.
Voices Across America
Opinion: I thought it was an anti-mask protest. I was wrong.
Opinion by Julie Cohen
Yesterday at 4:16 p.m. EDT
Julie Cohen is a writer and high school English teacher in St. Louis.
Moments after I merged onto Interstate 70 northwest of St. Louis, heavy traffic began.
It’s 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, I thought, immediately annoyed. How can this be?
{snip}
As the car rolled along, I darted glances over at the people on the shoulder, hoping to confirm my suspicions. It was a strange kind of protest. Nobody was yelling or chanting, nobody holding up signs — no “End Mask Mandate,” “End the Child Abuse” or, most offensive all, misappropriating the words of George Floyd and others, “I Can’t Breathe.”
Then I finally spotted a sign. Aha, I thought, here it is.
Semper Fi, it read. Always faithful, the motto of the Marines.
And then I got it. Finally.
{snip}
At the next exit, I pulled over on the shoulder of the access road. “Where are we going?” my son asked.
I clicked him out of his car seat and picked him up.
“We’re going to stand with the other people.”
Opinion: I thought it was an anti-mask protest. I was wrong.
Opinion by Julie Cohen
Yesterday at 4:16 p.m. EDT
Julie Cohen is a writer and high school English teacher in St. Louis.
Moments after I merged onto Interstate 70 northwest of St. Louis, heavy traffic began.
It’s 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, I thought, immediately annoyed. How can this be?
{snip}
As the car rolled along, I darted glances over at the people on the shoulder, hoping to confirm my suspicions. It was a strange kind of protest. Nobody was yelling or chanting, nobody holding up signs — no “End Mask Mandate,” “End the Child Abuse” or, most offensive all, misappropriating the words of George Floyd and others, “I Can’t Breathe.”
Then I finally spotted a sign. Aha, I thought, here it is.
Semper Fi, it read. Always faithful, the motto of the Marines.
And then I got it. Finally.
{snip}
At the next exit, I pulled over on the shoulder of the access road. “Where are we going?” my son asked.
I clicked him out of his car seat and picked him up.
“We’re going to stand with the other people.”