Inauguration of the Resistance

I was in Washington DC on the historic dates of January 20 and 21, 2017. I attended various events, including the Women’s March and the Festival of Resistance.

At 12 noon on January 20, a cold rain began to fall.

In the afternoon, at McPherson Park, Michael Moore led the crowd in a chant of “Welcome to the shit show!” while the BOOM of flash bang grenades erupted from nearby streets. Haze from teargas filled the air. Confrontations were happening, between cops armed with weapons and protestors armed with the dream of a brighter future. The protestors engaged in civil disobedience to call out and resist the agenda of President Donald Trump. Their bravery earned them injuries from both cops and Trump supporters, who don’t share their commitment to non-violence. It also earned them time in kennels and jail cells, and bogus charges of felony riot, to be fought in court. Moore cheered on the resistance, and called for more.

At The Women's March, I found myself in an ocean of humanity. A crowd so dense that one was sure to lose their group unless they all held hands, and so expansive that only an aerial photo could hope to depict it. My pictures only show small fractions of the crowd, and yet it's still a sea of pink hats. Powerful women from Gloria Steinem to Mother Earth were present; and men who believe in equal rights were well-represented too. After I drove from West Virginia, rode a bus from Pittsburgh, slept on a church floor in DC, and walked and ran across DC (and once managed to ride a sardine-packed subway--public transit was limited and difficult to use in the chaotic weekend of protest), I thought that I had a good story about the challenges I underwent to attend this march. Then I met people who had come from New Mexico. A far longer journey! Three times as many people attended the Women's March as the Inauguration. Sister marches, similarly packed and overflowing, happened all over the United States and all over world. Marches happened in all seven continents (yes, Antarctica included.)

 

 

 

Welcome to the resistance. January 20 may have marked the beginning of the end of American democracy, and perhaps the end of civilization, whether by means of war or environmental degradation. However, one thing is clear: millions of Americans have committed to defending our values and our planet, and won’t go down quietly. In the courts and in the streets, the fight is on.

The funniest sign I saw all weekend was at the Women’s March. It said: “Trump approval rating: 32%. Paul Bart, Mall Cop: 33% - Rottentomatoes.com.”

Occupy, V, and The Supreme Law

Upon the shelves of Night Flight Comics in Salt Lake City, I spied a graphic anthology called Occupy Comics. It contained subversive political stories, about or related to the Occupy movement, by famous and rising cartoonists. It also contained the essay “Buster Brown and the Barricades” by Alan Moore. Not surprisingly, the best comic book writer in the world (whose avenging anti-hero V—co-created with David Lloyd—has become a world-recognized symbol of uprising and resistance) can also give us unique education about the history and sociology of the medium. Among many other insights, Alan revealed the origin of the word “cartoon:” In the politically volatile 17th-century Italy, muckrakers took to drawing satirical images of political figures on the sides of carboard boxes—which were called cartons. Soon the images were known by the same name as the containers which acted as the poor man's canvas. From early on, cartoons were a way to communicate revolutionary ideas to the masses. In the 18^th century, cheap paper became more widely available, and cartoons moved into broader distribution, and more refined art and writing techniques—but kept much of their incendiary spirit.

Inspired by this retrospective on the subversive art, and the new set of tales for the 99%, I brought forward an idea from my cerebral back-burner. A two-page story from a disillusioned fan of science fiction literature and Isaac Asimov's positronic robots, who recently saw Jeremy Scahill's provocative documentary film Dirty Wars. Perhaps the Fleischer brothers were there first—the “Mechanical Monsters” of this 1940s Superman animated cartoon bear an eerie resemblance to modern drones (and I must credit my mother for pointing this out when I showed her said cartoon.) Wendell Berry said: “FOR A NATION TO BE, in the truest sense, patriotic, its citizens must love their land with a knowing, intelligent,sustaining, and protective love.”... “And they must not allow their patriotism to be degraded to a mere loyalty to symbols or any present set of officials.” And so, in the patriotic spirit of July, I present “The Supreme Law.” 

Top: Reuters photo of protestors in Bangkok, Thailand, with homemade versions of the V mask, used here for educational purposes only. 

Protest in the Zeitgeist

In 2011, protest was in the zeitgeist. (Even a publication as mainstream as TIME took notice, in making the protester the person of the year.) Thus far, the trend does not seem to have slowed with the new year. I hope that it intensifies. I am thankful for the technological tools that help to make it all possible.

Effective protests happened in many parts of the world, including some good ones in my country, the USA. Being an environmentalist, I was particularly proud of the protest on Capitol Hill against the Keystone X-L pipeline (led by Bill McKibben.) And then, the Obama administration postponed their decision on the project. Another example (and perhaps under-reported one) of how protest CAN lead to changes in national policy.

And I am proud of all the brave folks at Occupy Wall Street—especially for their day of occupying bridges, to demand that governments create jobs by investing in the aging infrastructure. The real way out of our jobs crisis is to create useful government jobs, which put people back to work while improving everyone's quality of life. A win-win approach, successfully applied during the great depression, in form of the New Deal. Today, we still reap the benefits from the good work done by the WPA and CCC. And those jobs were not created by cutting taxes or curbing spending! In fact, they were the direct result of spending, and funded by taxes.

Evidently, the zeitgeist visited me, as well as my friends in Colorado. We had our own uprising against a local dictator. Although we ultimately lost, we made a mighty display of courage and moral conviction. Captain America would be proud.

Back in March 2011, I appeared at a public protest for the first time in years—a Wisconsin solidarity rally in downtown Seattle, in front of the fire station (organized by MoveOn). In opposition to Governor Scott Walker's “union-busting” bill, and in support of public workers. I should resolve to attend more protests in the future. Our leaders must be held accountable for their decisions. And while emails, letters, phone calls, and online petitions are useful and essential, they cannot match the power of live human beings at your doorstep, with a demand for change.

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I was introduced to political protest in my college Homestead days. I attended Denison University (Granville, Ohio) during turbulent political times. September 11th, 2001 occurred during my sophomore year. Everyone remembers where they were on that day, and I am no exception. I stopped to check my mail at Slayter Hall, and my friend Mike asked, “Did you hear what happened?” I said, “about Cassi?” (our mutual friend). “No, about the World Trade Center,” he said. I went down the stairs to the lower floor of Slayter, where the cafe with the televisions was located. What appeared to be the entire body of students and faculty at Denison were crowded around the televisions. I managed to find some standing room. And saw the towers fall.

9-11 was beyond horrific, but worse nightmares were to follow. George W. Bush and his cronies planned to use 9-11 as an excuse to drop bombs on innocent people in Iraq and secure some rich oil fields. Unless the American people could unite to stop them! In the Denison community, several of my Homestead friends emerged as leaders of the anti-war movement. My comrades Dave and Marko took the lead in moving an anti-war petition all over campus, gathering many hundreds of signatures from students, faculty, and staff, and mailing copies to every key member of the Bush Administration. Multiple Homesteaders were involved in staging an anti-war walkout on a Friday at noon, wherein students and faculty took turns making speeches—both planned and impromptu, and petitions circulated for ending the war and impeaching the president.

Every Thursday morning, I joined my Homestead friends for the protest on Main Street, Granville. We piled five-to-ten deep in the bed of our old beat up gray dodge pickup—the DURP truck—and drove through the icy wind of an Ohio winter, to Main Street, Granville. (Granville resembles a small new england town.) We joined other DU students, professors, and Granville townsfolk, armed, like us, in winter jackets and hats and gloves. We brandished signs with slogans like “Peace is patriotic” and “Support U.N. Weapons Inspections”. We stood on the sidewalk for an hour, and made ourselves as visible as possible to vehicles and pedestrians. Some pedestrians stopped to converse with us, and many simply smiled and waved in support. Once the war started, competition arrived on Main Street, with some war-supporters standing beside us (some of them veterans in uniform.) Their signs read “Support our troops.” Ours read “Support our troops: bring them home safely now.” I am glad that both sides could exercise their first amendment rights.

And we took the protest beyond Granville. We marched alongside thousands of other demonstrators, first in Washington D.C., then in New York City (Columbus as well, and D.C. again, although I missed those two.) In October 2002, a dozen or so Homesteaders and friends piled into a few cars and a rental van to go to the first big anti-war march in DC. We were a motley band of college boys and girls, diverse in size, skin-color, and hair-length. We brought sleeping bags, and white signs with red letters, the same signs which we would later use in Granville. (I liked “US oil consumption is a weapon of mass destruction.”) Mud spattered both our signs and ourselves. There is a lot of mud at the Homie, which tends to find its way onto one's person and belongings. Ol' Homesteader Matty made a unique sign: “Re-elect Carter.” After a long evening and night of driving and an arrival to D.C. in the wee hours, we slept the remainder of the night in a university auditorium (a friend let us in). The next morning, we answered multiple inquiries from fellow demonstrators and pedestrians as to who we were and where we came from that is so muddy. Then we joined the demonstration. We marched, in a wave of bodies and signs and artwork (and some costumed traveller's dressed like Bush and Cheney monsters.) Drums beat, and chants arose of “1-2-3-4 We don't want another war; 5-6-7-8 stop the racism stop the hate!” It was an honor to have been a tiny piece of this historic day, and the subsequent ones.

Despite our best efforts, the war still happened. And exceeded our worst nightmares in its level of violence. Nonetheless, the efforts led by my Homestead comrades were noble, and the experience was unforgettable. And it is another demonstration of the power of community. I would not have had the motivation to be so involved in the movement had I been operating alone. It is an honor to have marched next to friends.