Keeping retirement weird. My mother never asked permission to protest. | Fred Klonsky

Keeping retirement weird. My mother never asked permission to protest. | Fred Klonsky:

Keeping retirement weird. My mother never asked permission to protest.

The March on Washington, 1963. Women Strike for Peace at the White House, 1961.

I can hear my mother’s voice across decades, sitting across the table from her good friend Millie.

“I don’t ask permission to march,” mom would probably say to Millie when she heard that the National Park Service won’t let women march the day after Trump’s inauguration. “I don’t need a permit to protest.”

And Millie would agree, get up to pour another cup of strong coffee from the percolator sitting on the stove, come back and both she and mom would light up another Pall Mall.

And, oh my god. I wouldn’t even post what mom would have said about Trump.

In those days, before the term “sexist pig” came into popular use, mom would call a guy like Trump a male supremacist.

And some other choice words.

When I was 13, I had a job after school delivering the afternoon newspaper to offices along Beverly Boulevard between La Cienega and Fairfax in Los Angeles. When I was Keeping retirement weird. My mother never asked permission to protest. | Fred Klonsky: