The Small Win

By Nadee Gunasena

Thunder beckoned her.

She traced a small crack in the kitchen table as she waited for her coffee to drip.

The quiet of this morning was unfamiliar. For two years now, she had lived her life in the spaces between protests, driven by equal parts optimism and outrage. But now, there were no longer any phone trees to manage, no details to follow up on, no venues to book.

Anger still boiled at her edges. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, attempting to will it away. After all, quiet did not mean failure.

Case in point - the small article on page 7 of the local newspaper, still laid out on the table in front of her.

She had bought a subscription to the Willamette Week in the middle of last year, driven by a frustration with national media coverage of her local protests. Even though her protests had ended and her signs now sat propped up on one wall of her bedroom, she still got her weekly copy and skimmed through a few pages, usually standing at the counter gulping her coffee.

But this weekend was different. Without the usual activity to propel her day, she had sat down, determined to enjoy the full paper over a leisurely morning. And then, in a small side column towards the back was an article with the headline, “City allocates funds for 24/7 counselors, new training for 911 dispatchers.”

Major change sometimes didn’t make the front page. Some battles could be successful in the spaces between, won without fanfare or glory.

Her coffee was done. She grabbed a mug from the cabinet, taking her time to enjoy the repetitive motions of adding milk and sugar. For the first time this morning, she leaned into the silence. She let herself savor the quiet certainty of progress.

Then she carefully folded the paper - making sure the small sidebar article was on top- and stepped outside to enjoy the morning.

This was not, as she had once feared, the last gasp of a revolutionary. No. This was the first win for a fighter.