Students walk out of Des Moines high school to protest Trump
Anti-Trump protests erupt in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco Thousands of protesters around the country took to the
streets Wednesday to condemn the election of Donald Trump as president.
The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, authorities said. In Chicago,
several thousand people marched through the Loop and gathered outside
Trump Tower, chanting "Not my president!"
3 comments:
The remarkable thing about all these spontaneous protests is the uniformity and quality of the signs seen carried by various protesters. Sophisticated graphics, multi-color printing, attached to the very same type and style of stick, of uniform size, with identical imagery on signs that simultaneously appear in New York City and three thousand miles away in Seattle, Washington. What explains that?
Clearly these protests had to have been organized well in advance by entity or entities with access to significant funding. If one had to venture a guess, it might go along the lines that the banking/Wall Street interests took a big hit Nov. 8 when the public rejected their candidate despite their onslaught of hyperbolic attacks declaring Trump the second coming of the anti-Christ, Satan, and Adolf Hitler combined. The public may not have been enamored of Trump, but they weren't this stuff as it was more than clear that Hillary, too, is at least all that and more. Nevertheless, it appears the money is now bound and determined to do everything possible to make sure this presidency is a failure that they may install one of their own in four years, possibly earlier if they can finagle it.
Not My President shirts and stickers were made available for sale at MoveOn's online store prior to the fact. Funny how that works, eh? If nothing else it ought to call into question the word 'erupts' in that headline. To the best of my knowledge it's a rare for an 'eruption' to happen while fully accessorized before the fact.
Word is this is all part of a plan to collect petitions to be presented before the delegates of the Electoral College urging them to vote for Hillary and thus deny Trump the presidency. We'll see how that works out for them.
I understand the emotional needs that make people feel that "protests" against Trump's election are useful. But really. Other than allowing for some emotional release and venting, what is it that people expect to accomplish by hitting the streets yet again? Does anyone seriously think that even a huge protest will have any affect whatsoever on the rabid and destructive acts which Trump and the Republican Congress are about to unleash? (Keeping in mind that the only thing restraining people in Congress who make Trump look as mild as Martin O'Malley was Obama's veto pen, and that pen is gone.)
I shudder to think of the tens of millions of dollars that people are going to spend coming to whatever "big" marches might take place in DC, like the proposed post-Inauguration one. We need to be spending our time investing in building the infrastructure, social/policial/economic, to resist Trump. The problems are structural. In 2003, 10 million people marched worldwide to stop the Iraq War. Nada. We are in the same position today. Telling people that marching and street protests are going to accomplish anything will only further disillusion people when they see how ineffective such actions are.
I have read many analyses and recommendations of how to fight back. Here is one that is the most incisive out there, by Rob Hopkins, the founded of the Transition Towns movement. I was an admirer of the TTM before, but this piece by Hopkins shows that he has learned a great deal since the first Transition Town began, learning on the order of the wisdom we find in Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
https://transitionnetwork.org/blogs/rob-hopkins/2016-11/president-trump-fetch-wood-carry-water-after-president-trump-fetch-wood-ca
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