More Good Trouble

As Elvis Costello sang, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

Made a little good trouble in downtown Santa Rosa, Calif. today. Others in my family had commitments so I did my best to represent us all. Crowd size is hard to estimate when you're in it but I'd guess 2000 to 3000. 

One of the defining characteristics of these anti-Trump, anti-ICE, anti-fascism, anti-whatever-all-this-is rallies is the evident kindness and decency of the people who attend. They obey traffic signals. They deposit their trash in the bin. They say "Excuse me" and "Thanks." For a lunatic mob of Antifa agitators, they are very well-mannered. 

One guy ran up and down the street waving an "Americans Love Trump" banner, obviously hoping to provoke a reaction. Must have really stung when he was totally ignored.

Demonstrators filled Courthouse Square in the center of town, with lines of them facing traffic on opposites sides. Got a lot of supportive honks from passing cars.

Lots of folks in these vests around. Indivisible.org does a lot of the legwork and planning to pull these things off, including teams of trained monitors who look for trouble, keep people out of traffic, supply first aid, and provide a general calming presence.

I expect to get a few "Ha Ha" reactions from bots and trolls, mocking the futility of it all. So what's the point? Unity: knowing you're part of a community that feels the same. You're not alone, you're not crazy, we're in this together. The value of being a pebble in an avalanche, a snowflake in a blizzard. The small courage of standing up in public for a righteous cause, then putting your name behind it on social media. 

As Vietnam War protestor A.J. Muste said, "Oh, I don't do this to change the country. I do it so the country won't change me."

A common MAGA slander is that anyone opposed to them must be a paid protestor, bussed in for the day by George Soros. I liked this response.

Simple, direct, says it all.

I liked this collision of worlds. One thing that strikes me as funny about MAGA followers is that they always think of themselves as the plucky rebels instead of the oppressive empire. There's even a joke about it in the new "Knives Out" movie. I guess everybody is the hero of their own story, but the cognitive dissonance must be unbearable.

My favorite protestor of the day.