Recently, I participated in an ICE Out! protest rally in Greenfield. We had a great turnout — anywhere from 350-600, depending on various estimates. Lots of cheers and honks from passing cars, and strong spirit amongst we protestors. The resistance is incontrovertibly growing!

I held a large hand-lettered sign, JOIN US!, and stood on the median of the city’s main intersection. A large shiny black pickup truck pulled up at a stop next to me, waiting for the light to change. An oversized speaker was propped up in its backseat, blaring loud abrasive music with a steady bass beat out the open window. The driver, a burly middle-aged man, rolled down his window and shouted at me, “Nothing’s going to change! Nothing’s going to change!”

Thinking he was despairing of there ever being movement toward justice, I thought to encourage him and replied, “It’s already changing. We’re doing it right now!” But instead, his voice rose to a semi-hysterical scream: “Nothing will change! We love our king! Long live the king! Twelve more years! You’re all a bunch of … idiots. Liberal idiots! You’re idiots!” As the venom coursed through him, he became more and more vitriolic and apoplectic He was about 10 feet from me. The light at the intersection stayed red. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Having gone through non-violent civil disobedience training, I focused on de-escalation. I stayed calm. I didn’t move. I looked at him, not away. I listened to him. I thought about what his life experience may have been to have generated such rage and contempt. What obstacles had been in his way, what violence, want, hunger, disdain, job insecurity, trauma might he have endured and survived? How has capitalism impacted him?

I continued to hold my JOIN US sign, facing him. I listened to him without taking his anger into me. I wondered whether there might be a cellular, unconscious level on which my demeanor, my hearing and seeing him, might make contact and ever so subtly, open some tiny part of him to see my own humanity.

He raged on and on. The light changed, and he passed through the intersection. But a few minutes later, he was back to repeat his tirade. He’d circled around. His loops continued for perhaps 8-10 minutes. I stayed silent, continuing to hold my sign facing him. I held my ground. I wasn’t cowed. I wasn’t leaving. Behind me were hundreds of protestors.

Clearly, the strength of our conviction and our numbers activated his rage and possibly fear. His contempt. It was incontrovertible that we are a strong force and are only growing stronger.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the lack of de-escalation — on both sides — in the Ellen Nicole Good murder on Thursday, the lack of training in de-escalation for ICE agents, as well as for many activists, and how the trauma that we all carry and which is unacknowledged and only rarely healed and released, spirals out of control when we are triggered. I was clear that I would not follow that route, take that bait. I feel good that I fulfilled that intention. And yet, I was not facing a crowd or group of angry counter-protestors. There were no masked, uniformed men pointing rifles at me. No one was being dragged away, no babies crying for their mamas and daddies. This was one man in a pickup truck. I saw no gun. The light would change and he would move on. And behind me, I felt the strength of the hundreds who had my back.

May I keep showing up. May the practice of all my ancestors through the millenia, and of all beings who choose the path of love now, support and strengthen my own.

Join me.

Sarah Bliss lives in Montague.