Dorothy Lemmey
Ken and I stood shoulder to shoulder with over 1,300 people in Munn Park, a powerful sea of voices in our small town of Lakeland, FL, united as part of the global “No Kings” protest. We brought Sandy Moss with us and met Jane as we parked. Jane is 90 and wanted to make a difference. This movement spanned over 2,000 sites across the United States and the world—millions of people rising to say no to authoritarianism, no to control, no to the erasure of rights.
I wore my Handmaid’s Tale costume—a stark symbol of warning from fiction now brushing dangerously close to our reality. I had to hem the dress by over a foot and a half, and my bonnet, despite my best efforts with spray starch, refused to hold shape. It flopped around, and I had to clutch it so it wouldn’t fall. I felt silly for not testing it beforehand—but soon realized none of that mattered. Over a hundred women and men stopped me for photos, recognizing the powerful statement this costume made. We are not in Gilead yet—but we are too close for comfort.
A member of our church shared a poem that stirred our hearts. A homeless man I once met while handing out food sang How Great Thou Art—his voice rising above the noise, anchoring us in hope and shared humanity.
Ken and I had been watching The Handmaid’s Tale series from the library DVDs. It was chilling to see on screen what feels all too familiar in our news—punishment, control, silence. One scene showed a Handmaid, Ofhoward, having her eye gouged out for disobedience. That brutality is fiction—but the fear it instils is very real.
At the protest, Ken and I got separated during the march. I wandered through the crowd, past the office of Representative Scott Franklin, and finally reunited with Ken, Jane, and Sandy Moss after the demonstration. We were tired, sweaty, and overwhelmed by the 90-degree humidity. But we were also filled—with purpose, with pride, and with the sacred exhaustion that comes from standing up for something bigger than ourselves.
Back home, our familiar bean soup restored us. And as we folded into bed, I felt a quiet kind of victory. Because showing up matters. Speaking up matters. Costumes, sweat, floppy hats and all—we are the resistance. We are the story.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale may be a dystopian novel, but its warnings are no longer abstract. In Gilead, women are stripped of their rights, their names, their bodies. Today, we march to ensure that remains fiction—and never becomes our future.