Last Sunday, the Boston Public Library lobby was filled with an overflow of people trying to get a seat in Greater Boston’s #WritersResist event, just one of the 50 counter-inaugural events of its kind happening at public libraries in cities across the United States and the world. Writers read their own work, and the work of others, all with the same theme: Reaffirming the value of free expression and civil rights and establishing a coordinated resistance effort to an incoming administration that purports to endanger those rights. It was also, fittingly, the day before our holiday to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Less than a week later, there will be a Women’s March on Boston Saturday in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington. Marches like it will be taking place in cities across the globe, as far away as the Cayman Islands and Tel Aviv. I will be on Boston Common Saturday morning with thousands of my fellow Bostonians.

I have never been a politically active person. I enthusiastically cast my vote in 2012 and 2016, but I assumed that politics was the arena of someone else—someone better informed or someone it impacted more. The results of this election changed that for me, as well as for many of my friends. Many of us thought we were living in a post-history era, under a president whose policies could be debated but whose decency could not. We were wrong.

History is being written as we speak.

I can’t speak for the women and men who will take to the streets on Saturday as a monolith. If any group is homogeneous, it will not be that one. For me, this march is not contesting the legitimacy of the president-elect. Regardless of Russian hacking or the efficacy of the Electoral College, Donald J. Trump will be the next president. This march is not about dethroning him, nor is it really about him as an individual man. The rumblings of resurgent hatred in this country, and the rights that they threaten, are far bigger than he is. So much bigger, the world is taking notice.

This Saturday, we declare: Every American deserves to feel safe walking down the street, regardless of skin color or gender expression. Every American deserves the right to marry the person they love. Every American deserves health care and an education. Every woman deserves a choice over what happens to her own body. Every human being deserves a planet that is not ravaged by the greed of a few.

No American deserves to be kicked out of the country they call home for any reason.

My father always tells me that too many people disapprove of what’s happening right now, so nothing bad is going to happen. That might be true if this administration was concerned with plummeting approval ratings. That might be true if we had a president-elect who didn’t undo decades of bipartisan foreign policy and undermine our press and intelligence community with a single tweet. That might be true if we had a Congress that wasn’t meeting in the dark of night to take legislative action that will leave millions without health care. Never mind what’s going to happen—look at what is already happening. This is not normal politics. This is—as we’ve heard many times since Nov. 8—unprecedented.

It doesn’t matter how many people disapprove if nobody stands up and says so. No, maybe sitting in an auditorium and being moved by the words of others won’t change legislation. Saturday’s marches, no matter how many millions take to the streets, may not change the policies of our elected officials. But our voices will be heard. We will be counted. And our government will be under illusions as to the opinions of the people who they claim to serve.

On Friday, we will swear in the next President of the United States. On Saturday, millions will take to the streets in affirmation of our rights. But the work truly begins on the days that follow.

Call your representatives. Write down the truth. Vote in every election, no matter how large. Stand up for your family and friends and strangers on the subway. Stand up and be counted. If there was ever a time to realize that there is no benefit to being apolitical, it is now.

We must not stand idly by while the rights of the American people are taken away. Not on our watch.

– Lauren Smith is a senior English major.

Photo courtesy mal3k, Creative Commons