âSixty women knelt in Pennsylvania Avenue, stopping traffic for over an hour that day. It seemed to us that every policeperson in the District rushed to the scene in police cars, on motorcycles, on horses. Two vans of barking dogs arrived - part of the intimidation program - and a couple of officers handed out billy clubs to all the rest. Finally, the police lined up in formation in front of us, feet apart, arms in front with the billy clubs conspicuously at center, faces set and staring straight ahead. During all this exercise in bullying, even more women joined us, until we had two rows of bodies across the street, all kneeling and holding hands. By this time the sun was shining. Crowds gathered on both sides of the street and joined us in singing and chanting. The officer in charge gave us the standard warning: âIf you donât leave the street in five minutes, you will be arrested.â In ten minutes, he warned us again. Fifteen minutes later, he barked at us: âThis is absolutely your last warning; if youâre not out of the street in five minutes, weâll have to arrest you.â Ten minutes later, he shouted, âNow, ladies, this is positively, absolutely your last warning!â
So we decided to wait as long as we dared and then, just as the arrests were really about to begin, direct everyone up and out of the street. Which, much to the relief of the police, is what we did. Safely back on the sidewalk, many of the women who had been in the street wanted some kind of closure on the experience. They didnât want just to wander off home without any acknowledgment or discussion of what weâd just done, so we formed a circle and began to take turns telling how we had been affected by what had happened.Â
Every woman was euphoric, high with admiration for herself. I remember one woman particularly. âDo you know who I am?â she demanded, as she stepped into the circle. âIâm just a housewife from Maryland. But I knelt in that street for over an hour. I could have been arrested. I would have been arrested. And I did it for women! I didnât know I had the courage to do anything like that!â She paused, then turned to me and asked, âWhen are we going to do it again?â Many women expressed similar excitement at discovering how much they cared about themselves and other women, how deep their longings for justice and dignity went. They all felt bigger and nobler, capable of so much more than they had thought. Each had caught a glimpse of her true stature and was ready to grow into it as fast as possible.
Any capacity that civil disobedience has to change the system, I thought, must come from its ability to profoundly change womenâs concepts of ourselves and to alter our ways of being in the world. It not only tells others that we know our own worth, but, by providing a stage upon which we can act out our larger selves, it testifies to us, too, that we are worthy. In telling others that we are serious, we realize-often to our own surprise -how very deeply serious we are. And after this, we find it easier to take ourselves and one another seriously, an incredible feat for any woman. More worthy and more serious, more everything good and strong than we dream we can be, we see how much we have to gain and how little we have to lose, and we slough off our fearful skins.â
Going out of our minds, Sonia Johnson