Reflections of a Housekeeper, by Angela Burnes, week 28

Mobs frighten me. Maybe the Klan left bruises on my ancestral memories, I don't know... stories passed down by the older people in my family, molding my mind when I was a child. Sitting on my great-aunt's lap, playing with the edges of her tatting while she told me stories of bottles being thrown at the house by night, windows smashing, and cars roaring away; one of the family dogs being killed and thrown onto the porch.

It doesn't really matter what people are rallying for. As soon as they start doing it together in a large enough group, my instincts tell me to get away. I think it's because of the division that groups imply. As soon as a group forms, there're people who belong inside the group and people who are kept outside. Sooner or later, that division always means conflict.

So until we can form a group that's as large as the whole of humanity, I'm afraid I will never join any of them.