A reunion, of sorts
On June 28, I had the privilege of joining the Indivisible Montgomery book club for a discussion of my book, The People United: A Memoir of Hope and Resistance During Trump’s First Term. Talking about a memoir, of course, means reliving previous events, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the day’s echoes of the past.
On that sunny day, Katherine and I set off for Gaithersburg library, the site where we held many Indivisible Montgomery meetings during my tenure as Executive Director. As we found our way to the meeting room, I staggered as I walked in. The last time I was here was February 2020 — the last meeting I led where we met in person. In that tightly packed room six years ago, not one of the 80 attendees wore a mask. There were only three confirmed cases of COVID in Montgomery County, and we barely talked about it. Rather, I spent much of the meeting speaking to the members’ concerns about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ near lock on the Democratic presidential nomination. Little did we know that 12 hours later Joe Biden would romp in South Carolina and all but lock up the nomination.
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Back in the present, I recovered and fell into a familiar pattern of greeting old friends and meeting new attendees. The people we knew came up to us first, excited Katherine came with me to the event and disappointed my kids were visiting family in St. Louis.
I gradually made my way to the front of the room as the invited guest. Indivisible Montgomery had chosen my book for their discussion, and I was there to answer questions about the content and the process of crafting a memoir. For the discussion, I was flanked by Steve Pressman, who took over Indivisible Montgomery once I stepped down, and Dee Clarkin, the current leader of the group. It was the first time the three of us had led an event together. After a brief introduction and reading, we opened the discussion up for questions.
Nina Liakos and Betty Dooley, two of Indivisible Montgomery’s longest and most consistent members, had the first questions asking how the events recounted in my book related to our current state of affairs. We had a fruitful back-and-forth connecting the dots between the foundations of resistance we laid years ago to activities happening now.
And then the conversation took a predictable turn. All of the Indivisible Montgomery meetings I ran would, at some point, diverge from the main discussion topics by someone asking, “Why aren’t we doing more about topic X?” or “I’m frustrated with the slow pace of change. What new thing can we do to speed things along?” or “How can we improve the group’s collaborations/diversity/structure?”
On this day, all of these questions came out in turn, almost as though the fates wanted me to relive all the hits. At first, I was disappointed. I wanted to talk about my book! But I also saw the silver lining: these questions reflected the concern, energy, and urge to do something positive for our community and country that was still alive and well in these people.
As the conversation wound down, I left the attendees with a final thought that was an echo of my constant message when I led the group: The best way to make positive change is to do the little things — attend meetings, help our neighbors, donate to candidates, and more. These are the foundation for bigger events like marches and winning elections. It all matters. And we shouldn’t lose hope. It worked before. It’s working now. And it is how we pull our country out of the mess it’s in to chart a brighter future.
You can find out more about Chris Pickett and The People United at ChrisPickettAuthor.com. Get your copy of The People United in print or ebook at Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.
