‘I feel sorry for you’; ‘I feel sorry for you, too’
By Lonna Bernard
Reader Contributor
“Protester” — hardly the occupational pronoun I was looking to add in my retirement, but here we are.
I have answered the call: made my signs, guilted friends and family, flooded my social media to spread awareness, dropped Hulu, Paramount+, Spotify — all the things. But let’s be clear: I. Don’t. Like. This.
I am exhausted, I don’t want to cheer, make and wave signs and continually monitor the news for the next daily assault on our democracy. I don’t want to go out in the freezing cold, on another Saturday, in the middle of the darn day. But the alternative is worse and I am haunted by the following encounter:
The day is Oct. 18, 2025. Somewhere near the corner of Cedar and Main. I was riding the bubble of relief that “our protest was over” and the prospect of meeting up for a cold beverage at Idaho Pour Authority to congratulate ourselves for at least showing up. I was broken from my walking reverie by an attractive, well-dressed woman getting out of her car to approach me.
An important fact about me to understand is that I have a mild case of social anxiety, and one of my coping skills for getting through uncomfortable situations is to dress up — basically replacing myself with a character of myself who is totally cool in the situation that she’s in.
For this day, I had dressed in a costume that I thought both supported my community and also would be perceived as threatening to no one. (Rainbow Pride skirt and sporting a giant doll on my head.) In light of our current times, some might say I was looking for trouble.
“Excuse me, excuse me. I don’t understand why you are doing this,” the well-dressed woman said to me.
“I am here for our democracy and for the 170 U.S. citizens who have been unlawfully detained,” I said.
She responded that that wasn’t true; and, “If anything, you should be out here for Charlie Kirk.” Well that certainly caught me off guard. My words in response weren’t my finest — not the ones I have honed and redelivered a dozen times in my head since then. Regrouping, I managed to blurt out something like:
“My family isn’t welcome in Charlie Kirk’s America. My family has brown people, gay people and most of us are women. In fact, only my husband would be considered on sight as ‘worthy’ of all the constitutional rights and freedoms our country provides. Our son’s skin color would be cause for pause if they were airplane pilots. Our love isn’t considered as good or as worthy.”
At that point, her co-traveler — a young woman who appeared to be in her early 20s, perhaps her daughter? — told her they had to go. The older woman began walking toward a handsome-looking SUV but continued to speak (with a slight accent of some sort), telling me she was from South America. Her last words as she slid into her seat: “I feel sorry for you.”
“I feel sorry for you, too,” I replied.
Looking back now, oh how I wish I could have rattled off the sins of this regime like an Amy Siskind list: the tariffs; DOGE; Palm Beach Gaza; ballrooms and gold Visas; attacking Canada, Mexico, NATO and most of our other allies; Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Qatar jets; climate change; Ukraine and Putin; Amendments 1, 2, 4, 5, 10 and 14; attacking our trans community; pardoning white-collar crime; internal law violations; murder; oligarchy; the Epstein files!
That day, I was shocked and a little shaken by the encounter. These months later, it still holds real estate in my head and my heart. My expression of sympathy that day was for her ignorance and (admittedly) laced with cynicism. Today, when I think of her, I am sorry and fear that she and her family may not be safe.
Lonna Bernard is a Sandpoint resident.
