We March

January 21^st, 2017

Trumptrocities of Note

* The Spanish language version of the White House website is taken down.  Why not?  Why limit yourself to that concrete wall when you can put up a communications wall?

* Donald Trump speaks to the CIA in front of the memorial wall that honors CIA officers killed in the line of duty.  Most of his speech veers off topic to the crowd size at his inauguration.  His fictitious account claims up to 1.5 million people even though the actual estimates hovered around 250,000.  In the same speech, Trump vilifies journalists as “among the most dishonest people on Earth.” The remark drew laughs; apparently from the studio audience that Trump hired to be at the speech. 

* Former CIA director John Brennan later criticizes Trump for disrespecting the fallen agents.

* Later in the day Sean Spicer lambastes the press for dishonest reporting about the inaugural crowd size.  His rant includes some statements that are easily revealed as lies.  Spicer ends by threatening to “hold the press accountable.” 

First Amendment? We don’t got to show you no stinkin’ First Amendment.

We March

Walnut Creek is a small middle class town in the shadow of Mount Diablo in the East Bay region of The San Francisco Bay Area.  It’s where you go in the East Bay if you want go shopping for the elegant, the frou frou and the overpriced and then head to a chic little bistro for some sort of ‘tini drink.  

The weatherman said that there would be a break in the storms on Saturday morning; perfect timing for the Women’s March that would kick off at 10:30 with a rally at Civic Park.  So of course on the way it rained like, as my dear old dad used to say, a bastard.  I’m not sure how a bastard rains but it can’t be good.

By the time my wife and I arrived at Civic Park a larger than expected crowd had already gathered – larger than I expected and larger than the organizers expected.  The park’s lawns were a muddy soup.  A swamp if you will.  You know swamp?  It’s the word we haven’t heard from Trump since, oh let me think – November 8^th.  Amazing how the swamp thing’s been forgotten.  The crowd was too large for us to get close enough to hear the speakers.  Must have been a million or a million and a half people.  Wait, I’m sorry, wrong crowd estimation.  There’s been a rash of exaggerated crowd estimations going around these days.

As marches went that day it was small but no less important than the marches in nearby Oakland and San Francisco.  On the day after Trump’s inauguration when spirits were as soggy as the saturated turf it was the inspiring therapy that we all needed.  There was solidarity and hope that gave off a warmth on that chill afternoon.  And while Donald Trump was the inglorious inspiration for this and all the other marches the emptiness and abject desolation were absent for a few precious hours. 

Walnut Creek isn’t used to these sorts of events.  Controversy comes to Walnut Creek in the forms of the lack of parking at Christmas or the shuttering of the local sports bar.  My wife and I walked on the edge of the column and I’d wondered if some yahoo in a jacked up pickup was going to flip us the bird and invite us to buy a one way ticket to Iraq.  There was none of that.  Even the motorists trapped at intersections for God knows how long looked on and honked in support.  Onlookers sitting outside at the coffee houses and cafés clapped.  I glanced up at a building housing a second floor gym to see half dozen women jumping up and down and cheering us on.  There was the woman in her car, hopelessly trapped in the flow of the march who was weeping uncontrollably.  And no, it wasn’t because she was late to an appointment.  There was a place in the march where we crested a small rise and I looked back to see a column that had no end.  I could swear that at some point I saw tears welling in my wife’s eyes. Walnut Creek was one of the little sisters of the day but it did itself proud. 

At work the following Monday a co-worker expressed her “disappointment” at the Women’s Marches.  “I would rather be a woman in America, than any other country in the world,” she said.  “Look at how they treat women in the Middle East.”

“Oh,” I countered.  “Then let’s have Saudia Arabia be the benchmark.  American women have it so great that there’s no need to protest.  That march; just a big waste of time and resources. There’s no glass ceiling, no pay inequity, no misogyny and our President is a paragon of chivalry and respect.” 

“It’s a joke,” she said.  “A bunch of soccer moms in Walnut Creek.” 

“Were you there,” I asked.  “Were you there so that you could say that it was just a bunch of soccer moms? 

Oh yeah, soccer moms there.  Soccer dads too.  And I imagine baseball moms and football moms and basketball moms and any number of different moms - and dads.  And people who weren't moms or dads and didn't care to be either. There was the middle school teacher and I.T technician who I talked to.  There were the women in wheelchairs.  There was the 80 year old grandmother who lives in Rio Vista who would drive the 40 miles to Martinez on Monday mornings to take care of her granddaughter so the little girl’s single mom could work.  On Friday evening the woman drove back home to Rio Vista for the weekend and then start it all over two days later. They didn't have time for soccer. They just got by as best they could.

You know what; maybe what we need more of is soccer moms from tony little towns marching for rights and dignity.  Maybe it’s a good thing that so called soccer moms and dads get out of their Lexus SUVs and march for the marginalized.  Politicians pay attention to soccer moms.  Certainly more so than they do some single mom in a poor section of Richmond CA; the woman of color who’s struggling at two menial jobs while trying to make sure the rent’s been paid, bread’s on the table and the kids are walking the straight and narrow.  They have no voice and a billionaire President and his billionaire cronies aren’t going to give a shit about her or her kids.  

I’m a 63 year old white guy with a good paying, job living in upper middle class suburbia, driving a 60,000 dollar car.   It’s my fucking moral obligation to be out there marching for women, for people of color and for the poor and the marginalized whose voices will only become faint whispers over the course of the next four years.    

The next four years.  Unfortunately it looks like we’re going to be needing a lot more marches over the next four years.  I went through this in the 60’s and 70’s.  The marches started small and as the years and the impatience passed the numbers swelled.  Yeah, as the months and years progress and more people realize that they’re getting bent over and the Vaseline is running out the marches are going to get bigger and meaner.  Now if you’ll pardon me I’m going to buy some stock in Vasque or some other hiking shoe company.