People were lined up on both sides of our main street carrying signs, with cars honking their support as they drove by. Many cars. Many more than is normal for a Saturday afternoon. I walked down the street trying to find a place to set up shop and display my sign that I had manufactured the night before. It was the first protest sign I had ever made. It held up quite well in the wind, I must say. I had struggled to decide what to say. There was so much I could have said. But I stuck to a more general plea, “Hands Off Our Future” read one side and “Stagflation Affects Everyone” on the other. My intent was to send a message, even if it fell on deaf ears, to the Trumpers that I figured would show up. They don’t seem to care about our democracy, but maybe they would care about their wallets and their children’s future.
There were the usual signs, “Dump Trump”, “Hands off *insert favorite issue here*, but also one apologizing to Canada, one alluding to the fact that while Trump has raised tariffs on many of our allies, he has not put any on Russia. One of my favorites said, “It’s so bad even the introverts are here”. I saw one Ukrainian flag walking around, and went up to that person to thank her for bringing it. She said many people didn’t know what it was. I showed her my shirt, which had the Ukrainian trident symbol on it. There was a Canadian flag and a penguin walking around. The meaning of the penguin didn’t dawn on me until the next day when I was watching a CNN news show talking about the tariffs Trump put on the island occupied only by penguins. Very clever.
I moved around a bit taking pictures to send to friends who couldn’t attend. I eventually migrated to the main rally point and stood behind a couple, holding my sign above their heads. As I mentioned cars would drive by, honking if they supported us, or giving us the finger if they didn’t. There were quite a few of the supporters in cars who had signs of their own plastered to their windows and many waved. I think there were some who just got caught up in the protest without realizing it was there. They were just going somewhere. Those people just ignored us. The couple in front of me left, so I moved forward. There was a feisty little lady to my left who was waving two signs. She must have been in her seventies, maybe a child of the sixties, used to protests. Anyway, there were at least 3 rather large trucks of Trumpers, tricked out with Trump banners or flags that drove up and down, revving their engines and burning rubber, literally. This lady would scream at them as they went by “cowards”! I just flashed my “Stagflation” sign at them. It probably won’t do any good, but when the economy tanks and we slide into stagflation, maybe they will remember my sign.
What I found at the protest were people who are just as concerned as I am about the survival of our democracy and the health of our country’s economy. They worry about the gutting of so many of our critical agencies. You may have noticed that we were nowhere to be found in Myanmar. I read that while we still have some response teams, Trump had eliminated funding for travel.
Protests:
Protests in Chicago:
