The Joy of Resistance

christinadowney
Jun 29
4 min read

Hoosier participation in Pride and protests show how human connection trumps hatred

Hamilton County Party Chair Josh Lowry and fellow HamCo Democrats members march in IndyPride on June 14, 2025.

HamCo Dems are showing up and showing out in the spaces that matter.

Recently, we proved our energy and welcoming spirit by participating in a number of high-profile events that align with our party values. On June 14, County Party Chair Josh Lowry led a contingent of enthusiastic marchers in the annual IndyPride parade on Mass Ave in downtown Indianapolis (photo above). Later that day, Pride attendees convened with thousands of fellow democracy-loving Hoosiers at the Statehouse for the 50501 No Kings protest.

June 14 No Kings protest in Indianapolis.

No Kings events were not only held in Indy, but also in Noblesville at the Hamilton County Courthouse and at dozens of other locations around our state.

Protestors gather at the Hamilton County Courthouse for No Kings on June 14.

Fishers Democrats at the Indy No Kings protest.

On June 15, Noblesville was again a locus of protest for the Dads for Democracy march, a peaceful demonstration affirming positive values of fatherhood focused on responsibility, empathy, and presence for one's children and community.

Dads for Democracy Protest on Father's Day, 2025, by the Hamilton County Courthouse.

We HamCo Dems are thrilled and proud of the exciting engagement we're seeing all over our county.

But - do protests still matter?

In this age of social media virality and artificially intelligent meme-ing, it's a fair question to ask why parades and protests still matter. Didn't fresh new face Barack Obama win his presidency largely on the strength of compelling imagery and trending retweets? Did the Woman's March on January 21, 2017 accomplish anything that lasted longer than it took the pink pussy hats to dry out after the drizzle? And isn't Donald Trump himself proof that a media universe dumping "alternative facts" into people's living rooms and social media feeds, can create an all-too-real election result that seemed impossible on January 6, 2021?

Parades and protests absolutely matter, in more ways than one blog post can address adequately. As a clinical psychologist by training, I want to comment briefly on the deep-seated neurobiological and evolutionary forces that make active, physical engagement in mass movements the most powerful - and joyful - activity for social change we have invented as a species.

Why we're built for collective social action

Humans were shaped by thousands of years of evolution to survive this cruel world not through excessive body size (we're not that big), unusual strength (pound for pound we're pretty weak), impressive speed (25 mph tops, the species equivalent of a tricycle), or special deadly tricks (no fangs, claws, or venom here). No, what we have are three advantages that turn out to be such superpowers that they have enabled us to conquer the planet within the virtual blink of an evolutionary eye (250,000 years or so since our long lost grandmama showed up on the African continent):

An absolutely enormous brain relative to our body size: The number and interconnectedness of the neurons in our brains blows the competition away. Fully 2% of our body weight is made up of our brain (compared to .1% in elephants, for example) and it is so constantly active that it requires an incredible 25% of our daily consumed calories to function healthfully. Our frontal lobes are especially amazing in size and circuitry, allowing us to interpret highly complex information and use it to control our environment.
Remarkable physical and mental stamina: We aren't the fastest critters around, but when we set our minds to a goal our endurance outlasts the competition. Early anthropological evidence suggests that tribal humans regularly were able to bring down much larger and stronger beasts not only because we could outsmart them, but also because we were able to doggedly pursue them to the point of their exhaustion. When the mammoth or the whale finally became too fatigued to keep resisting, we had the energy reserve remaining to go in for the kill.
The ability to make deep social ties beyond one's own family unit: Many animals find safety and comfort in packs or pods, and in most cases these basically correspond to one's own family members. Humans, by contrast, evolved to extend those ties to larger tribes and cultures - that is, we find grounds to identify deeply with other people beyond shared bloodlines.

So what does this have to do with the joy of resistance?

I would argue, everything.

Protest represents a complex, rule-governed collective decision that something critical in the social environment is Just. Not. Right. It is a mass analysis of complicated environmental trends where thousands of individuals come to the same conclusion, and decide to act together to try to change that circumstance. It requires persistence, patience, endurance, and the ability to see a long-off horizon where things are better because our goal is achieved. Because we feel in our deep evolutionary bones that others can be influenced by the sight of an advancing horde, protest allows us to combine efforts and force other people to pay attention to what is going on.

And, because humans find physical and psychological safety in numbers, we feel comfort and joy in the collective action protest enables. We find hope. We find solidarity. We find community and meaning in the simple act of standing next to others whose hearts and minds align with our own.