As I work on this blog I sometimes find myself thinking of Voltaire’s Candide: or, The Optimist (1762) — hey, I’m an English teacher. While it is satire (against the philosophy of Leibniz if you are curious), it ends with Candide deciding to settle down and arguing that “we must cultivate our garden.” It is basically a bildungsroman or coming of age story, in which Candide’s travels lead him to experience cruelty, corruption, and great suffering that challenge and overcome his naive optimism. While you can read the end in several ways, and I am not about to get into that, the phrase “we must cultivate our garden” often floats into my mind with its dual instruction to literally focus on the land and the cultivation and sharing of its bounty and the metaphorical “minding our own business.” To some extent now I am on research leave and imagining eventual retirement, I have to do the latter as far as my university is concerned so I can make time for the former — the garden I talk about here and my research, which actually also feels like gardening. My business is local and my world seems contained.
But it is neither.
Sometimes, minding your own business is neither possible nor ethical. And current events in the US are an example of that. Even though technically posting my opinion and sharing messages and videos on social media could lead to my relatively new US citizenship being removed — who could have imagined such a thing a decade ago? — that is not much of a threat in comparison to what is going on across the US. Sitting here in my garden watching videos and listening to Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From an American” podcasts and other commentators and watching videos on social media is almost unbearable.
On Monday as protests following the execution of Alex Pretti spread from Minnesota to the rest of the US and around the world, a small group loosly affiliated with “Americans Abroad” joined in. I saw a message in a FaceBook group and drove to Gaillac to join them, poster in hand. Not much, basically a photo op (it was also that), but a voice at least. Our numbers swelled to the mid-20s by noon. Small but many of us only got details this morning.
It felt as if the main point of this was to make us feel better, a little bit empowered, a little less isolated. And it did, I suppose. I almost didn’t bother to go. I called someone out the other day in the States who said he didn’t protest “because they were never at a time that fits my schedule” (“the revolution is unlikely to be convenient” I quipped), so I kind of had to go. And I’m glad I did.
In these times especially, I don’t think we should approach protest as if individuals don’t make a difference. Enough people blowing whistles make ICE’s oversteps visible and posters in windows and yards remind us that others agree. If there are enough of them — regardless of the size — international protests put US politicians on notice that the world is watching. They also remind those who see and read about them that something is going on, and maybe make them wonder whether they really want to attend the world cup in the US — maybe it should’t be there at all? A French person commented “this protest reminds us that not all Americans agree with what your country is doing.” Good. We don’t. And now we have acted we can act again. We were reminded to make sure we are registered to vote abroad. We can also make phone calls to US politicians and donate to support community activism.
The garden we tend has to become larger, no matter how little optimism we might feel.
And a big thank you to The Connexion for covering the event and for advertising the rally in Paris on the 28th.
