CommentsMY TURN-Being a liberal activist is not only a personal choice, it is a passion. I always embraced the many people who would join the cause for equality and protecting the planet, and never really thought about those who chose to sit it out.
However, all of this changed during the Women’s March when I saw and talked to people who had never been to a protest and never been involved in any form of activism. These were people from all walks of life: Moms, Grandmoms, Dads, Brothers, Uncles, and even a retired Catholic Priest. Speaking with them I found out we shared one thing in common: We were objecting to the hate-filled rhetoric and actions of Donald Trump, his administration, and the spineless Republicans who were supporting him.
During our march, I continued to talk to many of my fellow protestors. One lady had a family that had been slaughtered in the holocaust and she said she recognized the same fascist regime that Germany had. Another man said that he had three daughters and didn’t want their future and their bodies decided and rule by chauvinists. The younger group that was represented reminded me that this will be their world and they wanted representation in the White House and government that understood that we are in a global community. Each person had their own reasons for being there, but it became obvious that the orange a$$hat had done one thing: radicalized every day Americans to stand up to the insanity.
As a member of a military family and someone who lived in an area steeped in history, there is a single message that was clearly spoken throughout my life. It is the responsibility of every American to speak out when we see that the government and our representatives have turned away from the Constitution and are making an attempt for a coup d’état. This condition is what has happened in our country.
Instead of a state of checks and balances, we see the blatant greed of one political party overturning every positive piece of legislation and greedily stealing everything they can.
However, one protest march can’t be the example of a statement, but two or more can. These ideologies continued with the Science March and then the march on Earth Day. At each and every turn I saw average Americans that were refusing to accept the racism, bigotry, sexism, and hate that trump and his knuckle-dragging supporters were bringing. Even though I live in a smaller community, I was proud to see that over 20,000 showed up to the Women’s March, 8,000 at our Science March. The numbers were astounding.
Our town has a social media page that is run by a conservative guy who likes to think of himself as a “reporter.” He showed up at each of these marches and did nothing but condemn with the usual right-wing wacko accusations that we were all being paid by George Soros, everyone needed to “get a job,” and that we were leaving trash everywhere. All were wrong, but the last point was so ridiculous because we had volunteers who scoured our beautiful Oceanside area to ensure that nothing was left behind. This guy also showed up during a protest meeting of the local “A Day without Latinos.” The representatives there gave some incredible speeches, but all this guy could say is that they “needed to speak better English.” This is an example of the kind of brainwashing rhetoric that sources such as Fox/Breitbart/Sinclair encourage and those who are filled with the same hate, can’t get enough.
People from All Walks of Life Have Had ENOUGH
Mainstream media should be given full blame for putting trump on a pedestal for ratings. During the 2016 Presidential campaign they gave him more air time than any other candidate. He was weird, strange, and incredibly excellent for their advertisers. It didn’t matter that the orange idiot kept escalating his hate rhetoric in interviews and especially during his rallies, to the media, he was pure gold. In the meantime, whenever Hillary Clinton came on the air, instead of listening to her plans and agenda, they beat the e-mail subject and accusations of her being “ill” to death. While I would love to just blame Fox, it happened on every single channel. They are responsible for “normalizing” the hate that he and his supporters spewed.
The entire situation was originally surreal but after the fallout, Americans started getting angry. We are angry that the right-wing political party has hijacked our country using gerrymandering and voter suppression. We are angry that our home, that has taken pride in our diversity of cultures, races, and religions, is being redirected to hold disdain for anyone who isn’t “white and so-called Christian.” While on the surface, mainstream media isn’t covering this topic because it isn’t good for ratings, behind the scenes, Americans are doing something about it.
In a NY Mag article entitled, Trump Has Turned Millions of Americans Into Activists:
“The reality that our instinctually authoritarian president is (unintentionally) bolstering civic engagement in America has been apparent for a while now. But thanks to a new poll from the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation, we finally have some hard data on the phenomenon.
The survey, which bills itself as “the most extensive study of rallygoers and protesters in more than a decade,” finds that one in five Americans has attended at least one protest or political rally since the beginning of 2016 — and that 19 percent of that group had never attended such an event before that year.
About half of those Americans who participated in political activism over the last two years did so at least partly in reaction to Trump. And in most cases, that reaction was a negative one: 70 percent of recently mobilized activists disapprove of the president.
The poll also suggests that anti-Trump activity is disproportionately concentrated among middle-aged, highly educated suburbanites: 44 percent of activists (broadly defined as Americans who’ve attended at least one protest or rally) were 50 or older; 46 percent earned more than $100,000 a year; and 50 percent were college graduates. These findings comport with previous sociological research from Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol, which suggested that the college-educated suburban women in Middle America represent the core of the anti-Trump resistance.”
If there is one thing that has happened, it is that many people of common sense, who want dignity and decorum brought back to the country, have decided to take a stand against a regime that resembles the fascism of the past. We are from diverse backgrounds and are of various ages and yet there is a kind of tribal membership that each of us share.
The Republicans and trump Know Their Time is at an end
Anyone who watched the political circus during Watergate knows that there are symptoms that occur when the party recognizes that they are going down. While the Republicans continued to support Nixon as he claimed that the investigation was a “witch hunt” and demanded that it be stopped, (sound familiar?), there was a tipping point that became painfully obvious when they knew that the Nixon tapes would be revealed to the public. It was at this time that Republicans started distancing themselves from Nixon. They knew that impeachment was pending, and they convinced him to step down rather than destroy their own careers. We have reached that moment, as Republicans are trying to quickly get their horrid agenda of destroying the country and people pushed through, while they also vote against trump.
Various states are passing laws that require the release of taxes from every candidate running for the office of President of the United States. Other states are rising up to incorporate laws that require that the results of the popular vote of a state be applied to the Electoral College vote, while others are moving forward to demolish the Electoral College. Gerrymandering in many of the states are being examined and overturned, and movements to suppress voting is being listed as unconstitutional.
The Republican Party has fewer members than the Democratic Party, and Independents have the largest numbers. Republicans have long known that the only way that they can win is to cheat, and when Mueller’s report is released, we will see exactly how far they went to win in 2016. It is no secret that Russians donated large volumes of money to the NRA and they, in turn, funneled it to the various Republican members running for office.
This time has been one of the darkest of our nation, but thanks to the many average, every day Americans who have become activists, we may be able to turn this around. It goes without saying that it will take generations as well as enactment of new guidelines and laws to get through this, and that we may never regain the trust of our allies and even the world.
(S. Novi is a journalist who worked in the media and continues to seek out truth and integrity. A liberal and one who is suspicious of cults and empty promises. She is a member of Medium.com and a contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
