I was in New York City for a couple of days visiting family, took a bus back Sunday. Unfortunately I didn’t make it to The March because of prior commitments (and I feel horribly guilty about this!), although I saw a bajillion of the marchers with their… uh, kitty hats wandering around Saturday afternoon/evening, and I caught some of the speeches on the Internet, so I was kinda slightly there. And I was extremely proud to feel solidarity with it all.
I was running late Sunday morning so I cabbed it to the bus. My driver was an African immigrant, and as usual I struck up a conversation. I said that I’d bet driving a cab yesterday with Midtown shut down was challenging, and he said it was indeed quite a chore – but that it was a happy chore, because he was very glad for the protest.
The cabbie went on to say that it’s important the protests keep happening, otherwise the pressure will be off the politicians and they’ll be able to do the awful stuff that they’re planning. He also spoke of how incredibly lucky we are to be able to protest like that – in his country of birth, protesters are slaughtered, “used for target practice by the military” he said.
This smacked me in the head – in the US, the right to protest against the government is so firmly established that I take it for granted, I think that most of us do. I know it’s in vogue in some quarters to consider the US to be the worst country on Earth, and it’s tough to deny that we have some huge problems and that many things are going in the wrong direction. But here’s the thing: we still have the right to fix the problems.
A number of years back I studied the formation of the US, from the pre-Revolutionary period through the writing of the Constitution. It fascinates me that the Founders absolutely knew that they could not create a country that wouldn’t fall into chaos at some point in the future. Benjamin Franklin said it well in his closing speech to the Constitutional Convention:
“there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
And so the Founders worked to give Americans the tools needed to fix things with minimal bloodshed when all went to @#$%, as it would inevitably do. The very first amendment to the Constitution articulates the rights to free speech, a free press, and the freedom of peaceful assembly, all the cornerstones of Saturday’s action. The right to vote is a little murkier in the original document, but four later amendments clarify it, all stating alike that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged”
All of this was imperfect at the Constitution’s inception, of course (unless you were a white male property-owner.) But it was a step forward in paving the way for non-violent revolution.
There is no doubt that these rights are now under attack by Republicans, through ill-intentioned laws and quite likely by ballot-rigging. And these rights are ill-defended by most elected Democrats. But, by-and-large, We The People still have ’em, and seeing some of them used on Saturday was a wonderful sight. And we need to keep using them, good and hard, to make the necessary changes in government before the government takes these rights away – which they will, if we let ’em.
Many countries have no such rights, of course, and not just African countries. For example, in Russia, the right to meaningfully protest was largely eliminated in 2014. Even a protest by a single person can end in a multi-year prison sentence.
I certainly hope that the participants in the Woman’s March have great success in what essentially is an effort to achieve equality and respect for all people. And I hope that they, and the rest of us, take a moment to appreciate that which protects the crowds, the marches, the speeches, and the signs. I’m not so sure that the Founders (yes, a bunch of well-off white guys) would think highly of pussy hats (well, maybe Dr. Franklin would). But they would fight – they did fight – for the right of millions of pussy hats and their owners to flip off the President of our country, along with his political bedfellows.
I feel very fortunate to be born into a time and place where we have the right to assemble en masse to publicly flip off any politician that we please, and the right to vote to make things better. To date, I’ve did nothing to gain this right (other than showing up in a hospital in the Bronx). But my ancestors, my cabbie that morning, and many others were not so fortunate, and had to relocate here to gain those freedoms that we do have.
During the period of testing that has begun – the dénouement of decades of hard work by sick and/or stupid people to destroy what’s good and decent in our country – I only hope that I’m able to do my part to maintain and improve things, so that when all turns to @#$% again in another 80 or so years, our progeny can fight to keep these freedoms, too.
On Saturday, millions across America and many more supporters around the globe did their part, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
[Cross-posted to Jackpine Radicals]