The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
Elie Wiesel
March to stop hunting dog abuse in Spain, February in Sevilla
Mississippi women don't protest. I don't mean in the Shakespearean "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" kind of protest. Mississippi women aren't supposed to raise a ruckus. At least when I grew up in the 1980s and 90s, we rarely, if ever, did march, carry signs, scream, chant, sing, whatever. If we went to the Capitol, it was to sightsee or picnic or something else civilized. The Jackson Capitol lawn was rarely, if ever, littered with protestors in all the times I passed it as a child. As a first year teacher in Meridian, I learned what "Right-to-Work" really means. You don't strike or you lose your teacher's license (and job). Then I moved to Washington, and it sort of rocked my world.
"Are you going to the protest?" a colleague asked me as I ran into her at Home Depot early one Saturday morning. She was buying supplies to make large signs. I was too embarrassed to ask her, "What the hell are you talking about?" so I made some lame excuse.
Ends up, somehow I missed the memo that teachers were marching on the capitol for. . . something (I don't remember what. Probably education reform, or education funding). But skip forward to the next year. I had a new baby in a carrier, and I marched for the first time for. . . something (again, education reform or funding).
It doesn't even matter WHAT I marched for. What matters is I realized in my 20s that being part of a democracy means you need to speak up to be heard. Sometimes that means voting, Sometimes that means writing letters to law makers. And sometimes that means going to march.
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In Texas, I went to several teacher rallies, and even took both my kids. I marched with librarians (they are a rowdy bunch, those seemingly mild-mannered librarians). I moved to Cuba, where I read and wrote about women who protested every single Sunday in a nearby town. I supported my friends in Texas marching for women's rights and for education. And when we moved to Spain, boy, did I hit the jackpot.
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| March 2011, @ Austin State Capitol |
And rightfully so.
Very briefest of histories: between 1939 and 1975, Spain was ruled by a fascist dictator named Francisco Franco. Under the Francoist regime, unions were outlawed, as were protests. Today, Spain is a member of the EU and currently has a democratically elected (socialist) president. Unions are alive and well, as are legal protests now.
On International Women's Day in March, Spanish women march (and don't go to work). Many ladies (including some of my neighbors) hang aprons outside their windows.
Our entire family managed to pop out of a Madrid metro stop and smack dab in the middle of thousands of protesters during our first trip to the city in November of 2017. Thousands came out to protest violence against women--a problem getting more and more publicity, and even in our little town of 30,000 there have been yearly events and marches to gain publicity for the same cause.
Every Wednesday morning for the last two and a half years, I've driven from town onto the base, and right at the gate, I see a large group of people protesting the contract breakdown between one of the government contractors and the base. They protest for worker's rights and benefits and for the jobs of those laid off from the contractor. Several months back this year, I was driving in to work on a Wednesday and they were not there. It was eery. I was used to the same people, sipping their coffee, holding signs, and talking to each other (it's a very civilized type of protest--no screaming, no blocking traffic, just a group of folks making themselves seen so nobody forgets about them). I asked several people at work, "What day is today?" It couldn't be Wednesday---where did the 2-3 dozen people go?
The next morning I found out. Around 7:30, as I was headed to the gate to work, traffic was at a standstill. I called my husband and he couldn't find anything online. After about 15 minutes, I turned around and headed to another road leading to my work. Again, deadlocked traffic. By this time, I called work to tell them that I was going to be late. Ends up, the gate was closed because of protestors---dozens and dozens of protesters, all bused in to make a ruckus, block traffic, and get a little more attention than usual. I ended up driving several miles to the next gate and was over an hour late to work.
Was I annoyed? Inconvenienced? No, not really. . . the fact that the same people and/or their parents could not have safely protested anything until post-Franco makes me think about many things, including how thankful I am to be from a highly dysfunctional, at times, but mostly effective democracy.
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My oldest son, a college senior in Madrid, joined thousands of people, including Greta Thunberg, in a march against climate change in December.
Almost every time I go to Seville, there is a protest near the United States consulate. One of the biggest protests was olive farmers protesting tariffs, making exporting olives, the backbone of agriculture here in Andalusia, cost prohibitive and adversely affecting their livelihoods.
And on Superbowl Sunday (which actually happens in the middle of the night here in Spain), Boy 2, the husband, the dog and I drove to Seville, where we marched to support animal rights for hunting dogs in Spain.
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Back in the way, way back years, in Colorado, my husband and I adopted a retired racing greyhound from a now thankfully-closed racing park in the Springs. She was a love, our second child (my college dog was our first), and lived a happy and healthy life of retirement until the ripe age of 13. Her death broke our hearts, as did the plight of racing greyhounds.
We adopted a podenco breed dog here in Spain knowing, in part, that it was one of two breeds of dogs highly abused in Spain. Here most dogs are protected by animal cruelty laws unless they are recognized hunting breeds. Podencos are a smaller breed of dog that resemble Pharoah hounds or Ibizan hounds, and come in several hair textures, colors, and sizes. The Podenco Andalus is common in our area, and our dog is both a sighthound and a scenthound. The breed runs fast and works well in tandem with galgos, another hunting dog breed that resembles a greyhound.
Podencos flush out hares from their hiding places and greyhounds run them down and catch them.
And after the few weeks of hunting season, galgueros, or those who breed and hunt with these dogs, abandon, starve, shoot, torture, hang, or kill thousands of these two breeds of dogs in Spain instead of paying to feed, board, and care for them until the next hare hunting season. And it's prefectly legal because hunting dogs are "tools" for hunters and not pets, under Spanish law.
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We loaded up our dog for his longest road trip yet (he handled it like a champ) and our little guy, along with dozens and dozens of dogs from many breeds and their humans, marched through Seville for a couple of hours, chanting "No a la caza" (No to the hunt). There were political groups, animal rights activists, people who volunteer with groups to rehabilitate and adopt out abandoned galgos and podencos.
The city temporarily stopped the tram service so protesters could safely walk in the pedestrian-only portion of the city, and cops stopped traffic for us to safely cross streets.
And in the most Spanish of all Spanish things, our protest was interrupted because. . . another protest march was coming in the opposite direction. This protest was for better conditions in hospitals.
The two groups were headed straight for each other. The dog group, much smaller than the healthcare group, stepped aside, and the dog group marched on once they passed.
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I hope when our son looks back on his time in Spain, he will remember the Sunday that we took him to march. I hope he will know that what Americans take for granted--freedom of speech, assembly, and the right to protest---is a new concept or even prohibited in many parts of the world. I hope he will raise children to believe that protesting and marching is as normal as voting (and much more cathartic than, say, starting an argument with someone online).
If you are interested in Podencos and Galgos in Spain, please follow these Instagram accounts---they do good work to rehabilitate and rehome as many of these breeds as they can.
Hope for Podencos
Galgos del Sol
SOS Podenco Rescue
Yo Galgo
Fundación Benjamín Mehnert
Galgos 112
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