Celebrating Memorial Day. With Zombies.

The biggest perk about living in a big city is that there are so many people around and so much going on so that at any given time all you need to do is wander around and you will inevitably meet up with at least one cool unexpected thing.

Today's cool unexpected thing was witnessing a zombie strike. Yes, a strike. Put on by zombies. Zombies that were striking for zombie rights. Their cheer: What do we want? BRAINS! When do we want it? BRAINS!

You gotta give them points for cleverness.

This is Jeremy. Jeremy is an articulate undead spokeszombie for the Zombie Rights Campaign (ZRC). In spite of the gaping wounds made by a broken record in his skull and chest, Jeremy stopped to talk with me about the march. He told me that they, the zombies, were marching down Boylston Street to raise awareness for zombie rights everywhere. The zombies weren't asking for much, he said. They just wanted the simple right to exist, and to maybe eat the brains of their children. Who was I to deny them that? Speaking with Jeremy made me realize, "Hey Em, why are you so anti-zombie? Sure, you don't want someone to eat your brains, but should that allow you to judge or dictate the pastimes of others, even if those others happen to be undead?" I think we can all agree that the Zombie Rights Campaign represents a powerful undercurrent of prejudice against the undead and maybe even backlash against the Twilight phenomena. And these modern-day teen wolves, too.

There were a surprising amount of people that marched for Zombie Rights, and they easily numbered into the hundreds. Marching side-by-side were the undead and, counter-intuitively, zombie hunters. (Many zombie hunters were equipped with plastic swords and nerf guns. Not what I'd want in a zombie raid, but to each their own.) The fact that they marched together down the main thoroughfare of bustling Boylston on a busy Saturday afternoon is nothing short of a grand gesture of unity. If the zombies and those who seek to kill them can put down the (literal) hatchet, why can't Republicans and Democrats become party-blind and reach across the aisle to collaborate on an end to America's precarious dependency on non-renewable energy sources?

Though a non-traditional way to acknowledge the Memorial Day weekend, America is founded on the basic rights for all of its citizens, be they black, white, gay, straight, dead, undead. God bless America.