25 Honks Per Minute

Amber - 150 Bridge Brigades from Duluth MN to Dallas TX

What you are about to read is an excerpt from WOMN, a collaborative effort of the women of Minnesota who kept showing up during Operation Metro Surge, holding the grief, the rage, the tenderness, and the fierce love that women know so well.

If you see yourself in these pages,

Pass it to the woman next to you.

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A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.” — Will Rogers

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“Is this your first bridge brigade?” Amber says to the older gentleman standing next to her on the County Rd B2 bridge overpass going over 35W and HWY 280 in Minneapolis.

He looked like a man who had been sent on a mission that he didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah. I’ve never done anything like this before. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing.” He had thick hunting gloves, a bushy beard, an ear-flapped hat, and a simple NO KINGS sign written in thick black marker on the back of a poster for an unrelated event.

“Well, you look like you know what you’re doing. You at least dressed for the weather and the part.” Amber smiled warmly.

“My wife sent me. She says it’s important we be here, but it’s too cold for her.”

“Your wife is right. It is important…”

Before Amber could finish her sentence, three cars passed underneath them honking loudly, and the crowd cheered.

Over 150 bridge brigades from Duluth, Minnesota to Dallas, Texas participated in the #NOKINGSHighway Bridge Action during rush hour on Thursday, March 26, 2026. Organizers called I-35 “the spine of the Midwest” and wanted to connect the country as a warm-up for the massive No Kings rally planned for the following Saturday.

Amber was the reason the County Rd B2 bridge was on the map for the event. She’d posted the location on the official Democracy Bridge Minneapolis website, promoted it, and invited everyone she knew.

But she didn’t know this little old man, and he looked like he didn’t know anyone there.

Amber was there with her adult-daughter Sasha, and her disabled son, Seth. Protest events had become a couple times a week family outing for them in recent weeks.

Seth stood like a statue in the wind with his LOVE CONQUERS HATE sign, too shy to speak to anyone except his sister and his mom, but displaying a smile that said he was proud to be there with everyone.

Protestors fanned out along both sides of the bridge so they could reach commuters heading in each direction. The day before had been seventy degrees and sunny, a classic Minnesota false spring, and now it was back to wet-chill cold. The wind held the protest signs flat against the fence, which meant the protesters just had to stand there and be present. Apparently Minnesota weather got Amber’s invitation and decided it was important to contribute.

The honks came in waves. Each one saying, I see you up there, and I’m with you, roughly twenty-five honks per minute. Someone counted, and calculated. That’s fifteen hundred in an hour. There was also an occasional middle finger stuck out a car window. Someone else counted those, about four total.

And then there were the semi trucks.

If you’ve ever been a child in the backseat of a car, you know the gesture: the arm-pump, the universal signal to truck drivers that means please, please honk your big beautiful horn. When a US Postal Service semi truck came onto the overpass, a kid started pumping his arm before any adult even registered what was happening.

The driver obliged.

A long, low, glorious HOOOOOONK bounced off every surface. The rumble vibrated the whole bridge, and a hundred people squealed like children and jumped up and down waving their signs, including the old man next to Amber.

“It’s almost like we are so warm that we’re melting the ice,” she says once the truck is gone and her voice could be heard.

The stoic old man smiled back at her.

“I’m glad I came.”

This is an excerpt from WOMN- a book about the women of Minnesota and what Operation Metro Surge made of us.

It’s a mutual aid effort — written by us, for us, moving hand to hand the way love does when it’s real. New excerpts will be released as I write them, every Tuesday, here on Fierce Love. When the manuscript is complete, I plan to release it the grassroots way. Self-published, and supported by grief at grounding community gathering events and independent bookstores.

If this chapter found you, it found you for a reason.

If you want to support this effort, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers will receive full chapters (not just excerpts) with my author’s commentary about my process and experience at least once a month.

Please add your voice by sharing in the comments. I’m listening. We all are.

That’s how this works.

That’s how we work.

I love you fiercely,

TeriLeigh 💜