“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” -Nelson Mandela.

Thomas Paine is one of my heroes, and he wrote that “independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” Mine, also.

Saturday, I’ve decided to join Maria, I will be walking with women on their March. We thought about going to New York City, or Washington, or Boston, to join one of the marches there, but in the end, we decided to walk in Glens Falls, N.Y., the funky gateway to the Adirondacks, about an hour from us.

In Washington, hundreds of thousands of women are expected to March, they are also predicting enormous crowds in Boston an New York and all over the country. It was not simple decision for me, over my lifetime I have been a watcher, not a marcher, an observer, not a joiner. Marches, however noble, are mobs in their own way, and mobs have always made me uncomfortable.

I saw that 150,000 women have registered to sign up in New York City, 20 are signed up for Glens Falls. It’s the right place for us. The town library will serve hot chocolate at the end of the March, it begins at Planned Parenthood.

Why am I marching? Partly, it’s personal. I march for Maria, for my daughter Emma, for my granddaughter Robin. I want them to be free and strong to make their own choices and decisions about their lives, to not be forced or coerced against their will to abandon their choices and principles or the sanctity of their bodies and voices.

And I love these women very much. I will always stand with them, anywhere they ask me to go, or anywhere they need me to go.

I want to walk with them, literally, spiritually, symbolically. I want to walk with all of the women heading to the streets to stand with one another in their truth and strength.

It is, in every way, a march for good.

There are other reasons, that are not personal.

We are not a country that is supposed to force our religious and cultural values onto others, it feels very wrong to me. I have trouble with all of these angry men (and some women)  telling women what they must or must not do with their bodies and lives and their most intimate and personal decisions.

Some things just feel wrong.

I hope Donald Trump is a successful president, but my faith in that is increasingly difficult. He has made it clear that he represents only some people, not everyone. And that he can never love or empathize with his enemies and critics. To me, that is the behavior of a King, not a leader, and I have to move my feet to walk with women against that

Women need to be represented and supported as they continue to make their own peaceful revolution in their own way. I know I am welcome there, but I also know I am there in support, not more than that. It is not my revolution. Thoreau said that disobedience is the true foundation of liberty, the obedient must be slaves.

I imagine that in Glens Falls, it is not as easy to walk that mile as it is in New York City or Boston. My daughter, who lives in Brooklyn, does not know a soul who would deny her freedom of choice, or any kind of freedom. In Glens Falls, it is perhaps easier to find people like that, so all the better to walk there.

I have this sense that in the future I will called upon to be disobedient, and I am ready to take that walk as well. My dandy silver heart pill case is full and ready to travel.

I want women to have the Liberty that our country was founded upon, that my grandmother came to America to find and did find, that has been so important to me in my own life, that I wish for everyone.

I have always embraced the struggle of women to be equal and to be free, it has always seemed fair and just to me. I have always lived among strong women, married and fathered them, worked and lived with them.

I have sadly and reluctantly come to accept that their freedom is in real peril. Sometimes, as one friend suggested to me, you simply have to show up, bear witness, participate in the world. It is not enough to watch.

I do not like political correctness much, but I think even women  forget how difficult it is to be  a man. We are the people who start wars, shoot and kill, are greedy for money and power, who abuse and diminish and conquer and denigrate others. Just look at what has happened to Washington, D.C.

I have tried to keep an open mind about Donald Trump, but to me, he embodies everything that is wrong with men, and is infecting our government with that awful  germ.

More than anyone, it has been women who have kept alive the spirit of our revolution, and who are lighting the flame still and now, are making their own revolution on behalf of their liberty. How could I not march for that?

I think what Jefferson said was true.  Freedom is not one revolution but many, you can never really stop protecting liberty and fighting for it. There are always people who wish to take it away.

Liberty is not simple, and it is not free. It is also not something, I have come to see, to take for granted or to leave to other people to protect. So on Saturday we are driving to our small town in upstate New York, to march a mile for freedom. It is the very least I can do.

Thomas Paine had a great genius for capturing the spirit of liberty, and he has always inspired me in that way. “Whatever is my right as a man,” he wrote, “is also the right of another, and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”

When and if the history of my life is ever told, I wish to be remembered to my granddaughter as a man who walked with women back then, whenever he could. I hope someone will say that about me.