I FOUND A NATION DIVIDED
I set out to learn about the protests across America.
“I knew from my previous westward travels that America is so diverse that regions can feel like different countries. The differences feel bigger now, and it goes deeper than culture. Driving across the country,
I encountered different realities.”
After visiting the site where George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers, my 20-year-old brother and I crossed into South Dakota. It was a couple of days after Donald Trump’s Fourth of July speech at Mt. Rushmore. We were cruising down a deserted stretch of rural highway when a state trooper pulled us over for speeding.
“Where are you coming from?” the officer asked.
“New England,” I said. “Connecticut.”
“What are you boys doing way out here?” he asked, surprised.
I hesitated. As a third-year law student at the University of Connecticut, I knew the value of discretion, especially when questioned by law enforcement. In truth, I was on a cross country trek to see and experience the way the country was responding to police brutality protests. At that moment, we were heading to Standing Rock Nation in search of the Camp of Sacred Stones, where four years ago tribal members were blasted with water cannons for protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Back in Minneapolis at the newly renamed George Floyd Square, we had seen a yurt, operating as a first aid station, with a plywood sign reading: “This yurt came from Standing Rock to heal. RIP G.F.” It was a reminder of the parallel injustices suffered by indigenous and Black people in America.
The trooper didn’t need to know all this, however.
“We’re on our way to Seattle,” I told him.
The trooper maintained a funny look, as though we were a species of people he’d never seen before.
I suspect this was due to the liberal stickers plastered on my
Jeep since November 2016. Most support policies like the Green
New Deal, but a provocative one reads “Dump Trump.” The trooper let us go without further questioning, but I wondered how differently things might have gone if we weren’t white.
The stickers proved to be an unintentional social experiment and led to a variety of encounters. For instance, on the highway in Idaho, a man driving a red pickup rolled down his window to flip me off as he passed.
Another time, in a Walmart parking lot in Rapid City, South Dakota, another man in a pickup stopped to yell obscenities at me. I had planned on sleeping in my Jeep that night, but that encounter made me feel vulnerable. Yet sleeping in a motel was out to the question: South Dakota wasn’t taking COVID-19 seriously, evidenced by the hundreds of motorcyclists I’d seen heading to Sturgis. I stayed in my Jeep, but I kept a canister of pepper spray nearby. I imagined waking to a posse of locals ready to teach the anti-American a lesson.
I have traveled around Europe and through eastern China. But I never felt more like a foreigner than I did passing through the middle of America this summer. It wasn’t just because of my conspicuous Jeep, either.
On our way west, my brother and I stopped at a fast food chain in Billings, Mont. The inside was packed with patrons, but other than the staff, we were the only people wearing masks. The masks identified us as outsiders just as effectively as the stickers. Particularly memorable were two men in their 20s wearing trucker caps and large belt buckles. Their eyes never left us. Feeling like pariahs, we avoided eye contact with them and the other customers.
Tellingly, my only violent encounter occurred in a liberal city, in a liberal state, at the hands of police. I attended a protest in Seattle objecting to the presence of federal agents in Portland, Ore. Our show of solidarity was swarmed by a squadron of local police. By indiscriminately firing tear gas, flash-bangs and blunt impact projectiles, the police escalated the protest into urban warfare. For the first time, I feared I could suffer a severe injury — or death — due to police aggression.
But every action has its equal and opposite reaction. As police skirmished with us, I knew other protesters would do whatever they could to help me, as I would do for them. By treating us as the enemy, the police united us. Despite the intensity of the situation, the camaraderie was inspiring.
I left Washington reluctantly days after the
protest. After weeks of feeling like an outsider on the road, I felt at home in Washington. It was hard to leave after finding likeminded people. I didn’t expect to encounter others once I left. I was wrong.
I was repacking the
Jeep in Canon Beach, Ore., [JUMP]when a woman my age pulled up and asked if she could take my parking spot, adding, “I love your stickers, by the way. My sister actually works for Senator Ed Markey on the Green New Deal.” I was so surprised, I struggled to speak.
I didn’t think anything could surpass meeting someone with a connection to home, but in Escanaba,
Mich., a middle-aged man knocked on my car window and motioned towards the anti-Trump sticker. Bracing for the worst, I cracked the window and asked, “Can I help you?” It turned out he wanted to thank me for the sticker; he was an ardent Democrat. After 10 minutes of chatting about politics, he bid me farewell, saying “Dump Trump — I love it! I wish you could plaster that sticker all over town.”
Later, as I thought about the man in Escanaba, my mind returned to the beginning of summer, when I planned my journey at home, overlooking Long Island Sound. I had expected and looked forward to seeing culturally diverse parts of America. I knew from my previous westward travels that America is so diverse that regions can feel like different countries.
The differences feel bigger now, and it goes deeper than culture. Driving across the country, I encountered different realities. While parts of the country battle COVID19 and the repercussions of systemic racism, other regions stubbornly insist nothing is amiss. With items such as masks identifying which reality you subscribe to, it’s hard to feel as though the country is united in any meaningful way.
Perhaps America has always contained alternative realities, but the dual crises have torn away the vestiges of whatever common understanding remained.