Not everyone is able to show up in person to protest. The will is there—along with the outrage, the idealism, and all of it—but physical circumstances and disabilities can make it difficult and dangerous to go to marches and rallies, or even to appear at a senator’s or congressperson’s field office.
There are other ways to protest, resist, and build community, and these individual, creative efforts are constructive steps in the right direction. You might think your talents are small, or that your contribution won’t make a difference. But every act is another seed scattered and sown.
For my part, I’ve been knitting pussyhats. I am not particularly speedy with my needles, and pain slows me further. There are days I make little or no progress. But I have a ton of scrap yarn, and rage-knitting is something I’m occasionally capable of when I can’t do much else.
Few of these hats are pink. There’s been one pink hat with a green stripe. Two blue hats. One green hat with yellow stripes (Go Pack Go!). One green with a pink top. One white. I’m currently back to blue again. There may be interesting color combinations as (if) my stash runs low. I’m knitting in the round, using a pattern I found on Ravelry and doing a three-needle bind-off.
It can take a couple of days up to a week or more to make each of these hats, depending on my health and pain levels.
While I’ve given these hats to loved ones, they’re also intended to be distributed more widely. My current rule: When I have a spare hat available, I carry it in my bag and offer it to the first person who volunteers something positive about the pussyhat on my head. Most recently, I gave away a blue hat to a stranger in an OHSU parking garage as I was on the way in for a medical procedure.
Slow-knitting hats might not seem like an effective act of political resistance, but I am determined to do my part. And for now, my part is rage-knitting.