What's happening in America right now is scary and I've been trying to find the right words to do justice to what I've been feeling. In 2011 I deployed to Iraq and spent 6 months in a combat zone. I had to worry every day if I was going to have a bomb dropped on my head as we took mortars or if the pile of trash on the side of the road was going to send shrapnel through my legs and leave me disabled or worse.

On January 10, 2026, I attended my first ever protest. It was a cold, rainy day, and the event had only been set up a couple of days prior in one of the most conservative parts of Ohio, so I didn't expect to see more than 5 or 10 people there...