About 200 hundred of us gathered in front of the West Palm Beach Library to protest the refusal of the senate to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald J Trump. Organized by Moveon.org it was one of several hundred across the country and quickly widened to reject his acquittal. With chants of “Vote them out” and cars honking approval people held up elaborate signs and placards expressing their anger and dismay at the state of our union.

It’s been a long time since I was at a political rally. My first was at Brandeis protesting nuclear proliferation on the streets of Boston. That was a long time ago and I think it was on the second day of Sukkot and as we marched through some of the Jewish sections of town, we were yelled at for desecrating a holiday. But that’s ancient history. Nobody yelled at us last night and the pro-Trump truck they thought might be circling the block to intimidate us never showed. So, it was a genteel and civilized rally with lots of police presence who hung out with us and made sure we kept the sidewalk clear. It definitely was good to have them there.

But I felt funny being there. Not that I disagreed with any of the sentiments expressed. I yelled “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Donald Trump’s got to go” with the best of them. But I’m not a placard kind of guy. I sort of walked around the crowd observing that it seemed to me to skew older, female and white. I looked for people I know and was surprised to find some from my building. But I played it too cool. With no criticism of the organizers or participants intended I felt it and I were missing a kind of passion. If we are going to make our voices heard in November in an effective way, we are going to need to hook into an emotional component that will animate our actions. Resignation will not motivate us. We need both a candidate that can inspire us and a simple emotional laden message that will unify us.

This is what my participation taught me. We have work to do to take back the values of an honest, inclusive, just America we believe in. I’m glad I was at the rally and if it did nothing else it showed me that I need to do more. And I guess the message of this blog is: We all do. It is time to take back our country.