Why don’t we march in Fall River?
All over the country, all the time, people are out in the street, marching for women’s rights, marching for gun control, marching for gay rights. #MeToo. March for Our Lives.
In Fall River, we’re watching the Pats game, or the Celtics game, or the Red Sox game, or whatever stupid, artificial competition we can find to fill the time between working for low wages and dying.
And, lest you think I’m “mouthing the liberal narrative,” let me make it clear that I’d be OK with a march against abortion, or against gun control, or for the victims of liberal propaganda.
I just want a little action, and not because I’m a reporter, either. There is, and always will be, plenty of things to write about in Fall River.
A cop kills a Hispanic kid up in the Industrial Park. The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office issues a report that says the kid should have been shot. All over the United States, that kind of thing gets people out in the street.
Not here. We don’t want to miss the new episode of “Roseanne.”
Oh, we have officially sponsored, dull-as-dirt outdoor commemorations of things, and I cover them, and 15 people show up, and half of them are politicians. They’re good events for good causes, but they do not draw a crowd. Even at the height of the Mayor Will Flanagan recall hysteria, you were lucky to get 30 people to show up outside Government Center with signs, and 20 percent of them were from out of town, and maybe 50 percent of them were people who hold signs for everything and everybody.
I think part of the reason Fall River doesn’t have marches is that Boston does. They have the March for Our Lives and, if you’re from Fall River, you take the bus up there and get in on the outraged fun. When it’s over, you come back to Fall River, and no one knows you stood up for anything, which is the safest way to stand up for something. It’s like going to a Red Sox game, but cheaper, and you will come back with a T-shirt that says, “The Future is Female” instead of “The Green Monstah.”
When this area has a demonstration, it’s some guy in an American flag shirt burning a buncha Patriots jerseys. Am I the only person enough who remembers when people believed it was disrespectful to wear the American flag as clothing? The rest of the state is still laughing over Swansea’s squeak of anger at black men kneeling.
If there’s any group of people who ought to be out in the street with signs and chants, it’s us, here in Fall River. Our kids fight the senseless wars that always end in draws. Our kids die of overdoses. We endure substandard education, substandard wages and substandard lives. If it weren’t for money the state shovels into Fall River, there’d be grass growing in the streets. As it is, there’s just potholes growing in the streets.
But Fall River does not embarrass the people in power. We may be poor, but we have the good manners to be poor quietly, and to die before we collect much more than 10 years of Social Security. There is a hard core of political activists in Fall River, but the rest of us think they’re just whiners. Still, that group of the proudly unhappy soldiers on while the rest of us are concerned with people who say bad things about Tom Brady.
You ever go to a Portuguese procession in Fall River, maybe the big one during The Great Feast of The Holy Ghost? I’ve been to that a couple dozen times as a reporter.
Thousands of people march in that procession. It’s a nice thing to have in the city.
Now imagine we had a big march called “I’m Sick of Being Poor,” and people came from all over the country, and from other countries, to march. Instead of me being alone on the sidewalk with my notebook, you wouldn’t be able to swing a chourico without hitting a reporter.
I don’t know if it would do any good, but I’d like to see it. I’d like to hear Fall River really holler for once, instead of suffering in grumbly silence and dying unheard.