I’ve encountered many who say that protesting is meaningless. “Why stand in the Florida heat with a sign you made at home?” “It’s not doing anything.” “You aren’t making a difference.”

My response is this: Our government officials may not notice our protest, our signs waving, the sweat pouring down our faces. I don’t have any illusions that our government leaders are eagerly watching for local news coverage of our event.

Christine Calareso Bleecker is the founder of Joyful Resistance South Florida. (courtesy, Christine Calareso Bleecker)

But our community notices. Our neighbors notice. Our families notice. Our local leaders notice. Our police notice. Our children and grandchildren notice. And perhaps for the first time, we notice each other and actually meet our neighbors. We connect in person. We have real conversations with new people — people we may otherwise not have met, people whose stories are as unique as they are powerful.

At each protest event, it has been my privilege and delight to meet so many people: students, veterans, moms, dads, children, grandparents, teachers, religious leaders, scientists, lawyers, artists, filmmakers, influencers, trauma counselors, extroverts and introverts, one of whose signs read: “It’s so bad, even the introverts are here.”

Who is joining us? People from every age, race, ethnicity, marital status, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, identity and religion — or lack thereof. At our protest, Muslims, Christians, Jews and atheists can stand side by side and come together for democracy, for compassion and for justice. It’s real community. The issues that people care deeply about are as varied as the signs.

Some protestors are concerned about the cruelly named “Alligator Alcatraz,” the inhumane conditions, the lack of due process for those inside. Some are concerned at the astonishingly fast rollback of civil rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. For some, it’s the lack of attention to climate change or gun safety laws. For others, it’s the dismantling of USAID and the anti-trafficking department, as well as numerous other critically important and effective departments. They are protesting the shutdowns of vital scientific and medical research, the recently passed budget bill that will harm those already among the most vulnerable of us, the lack of transparency about the Jeffrey Epstein files, the lack of diplomacy and lack of support for the people of Ukraine and Gaza. The list is endless, enraging, heartbreaking and exhausting.

I’ve met those who protested in the 1960s and every decade since, and those for whom that day’s protest is their very first. I have met a variety of immigrants, from those who arrived in the U.S. recently, often fleeing countries like Haiti, Cuba or Venezuela, to those whose families immigrated on the Mayflower, to those whose families were forcefully enslaved and taken here, to those whose families perished at Auschwitz.

Despite our differences, when we come together, we embody community. We laugh as we brave the heat. We remind ourselves that we are not alone, that courage is contagious. That all of us can do something. That our joy is a form of resistance. That we need each other.

We act. We keep showing up. We keep making signs. We write our elected officials. We make calls. We vote. But more importantly, we support our local community. We give back. We donate to food pantries, needy students and animal shelters. We sell T-shirts with our logo and donate all of the profits to legal challenges to Alligator Alcatraz.

Isolation and burnout will cause the end of hope and the end of a movement. Conversely, friendships, care, creativity and the collective will sustain a movement. Our collective gathering is medicine.

As a community member meeting my neighbors, hearing their stories, passing out water when it’s hot, participating in our right to protest and engaging in our civic duty, I couldn’t have more hope, and yes, even joy.

Christine Calareso Bleecker is the founder of Joyful Resistance South Florida (joyfulresistancesouthflorida.com), a local grassroots group planning protests primarily in Coral Springs and serving the local community through in-kind donations from members. It is a local chapter of Indivisible (indivisible.org), an umbrella group fighting for progressive policies that claims more than a million members. The next event held by Joyful Resistance South Florida will be on Sept. 1, 2025, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the corner of North University Drive and West Sample Road in Coral Springs. To sign up, visit mobilize.us/mayday/event/824477.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/08/28/why-we-protest-opinion/