Step in now to the pastoral of protest, the rich text of which spreads itself like a banquet cloth across every available public surface, restoring as though from memory the suppressed fact of the public’s existence and most sacred qualities. In my town’s central square a holiday atmosphere, a sober jubilation of white, black, queer, Asian, disabled, Middle Eastern. The voices of speakers rise and fall, none louder than the sound of the crowd itself—the sound of listening, the sound of long-stokes rage, the sound of trust rediscovered, risk of trust. For a moment with my daughter, I believe everything.