I ran my first marathon in 2014 to help me make sense of the process of writing my first book. I like physical practices that help me work though other parts of my life. Marathon running, to me, is a durational public performance practice that involves putting my body on the line. Each time I run a marathon, I'm never sure how it's going to turn out. It seems like an impossible task, foolish even, but I set out to do it anyway. I train for it. Along the way, I develop hopes (and fears) about how it will turn out. But I know in the end the only thing to do is to keep moving, to stay in it. In most marathons, there are thousands of other runners in it with you, a crowd cheering you all on, and volunteers making sure you stay on course, hydrated, and safe. I'll be running the Virtual 2020 TCS New York City Marathon Saturday physically alone, but knowing that 25,000 other runners around the world are running with me.
This marathon, though, is not about a personal project for me. It's about the collective struggle to push back fascism and imagine into being the world we want to live in. We're in truly crucial and frightening political times that require all of us to put ourselves on the line, to risk more than we've been willing to risk before, to do things we are not sure we are capable of (from each according to their ability, as it were), and to trust that there are others doing the work alongside us even if we can't always see them. Honestly it's going to take a lot more than voting. It's going to take a mass movement of people in the streets. And it's not going to be over November 4, no matter who wins. I'm conceiving my run Saturday as a performative gesture of taking to the streets. Since there are no number bibs in virtual races, I've made my own bibs to wear that declare #StopTrump and #TrumpPenceOutNow.
I invite you to join me in the streets as you're able. Before the election AND after the election. We have to keep moving, even if it seems we'll never make it.
#neveragainisnow
