My ancestors came to this land to get away from a king. When geography alone proved insufficient, they used their rifles to make clear that kings were not welcome here.
Yesterday was Presidents' Day, to mark the occasion hundreds braved floods, snow and subfreezing temperatures to gather at the Capitol in Frankfort, Kentucky to remind some folks that America has no kings.
Curiously enough, that was also the name of the protest. The Democrats may be dithering, but the people are organizing. The protest was part of a nationwide day of action, taking to the streets in all fifty state capitals and Washington DC, along with countless other places. It was organized by 50501, (website) a grassroots movement that seems to have sprung from a reddit post and spread via social media.
It was Presidents' Day but the current incumbent(s) of the Oval Office have been acting as if they need a reminder that they are not kings.
The media was largely absent, guess it didn't fit well with their "The resistance is tired" narrative. This was the second set of nationwide protests organized by 50501 this month but coverage has been conspicuously sparse.
Sooner or later they'll have to pay attention. With the steady stream of outrages and illegal acts of the Trump/Musk regime, the growth of the movement seems in no danger of slowing.
Once the scheduled speakers were finished it was something of an open mike event, with folks in the crowd taking turns speaking in between rounds of marching and chanting to stay warm.
One speaker took the microphone to remind everyone to keep talking to folks, that she had voted for Trump in 2016 but a friend had taken the time to talk to her and explain and that had brought her there.
Donald Trump was even there in effigy.
That's enough for now, but there'll be plenty more to come I reckon. Until then, in the words of Joe Hill, don't mourn, organize!
I have a certain distrust for folks suddenly protesting political overreach if 4 years ago they were condemning COVID dissent. I remember literal demands for concentration camps to imprison anyone who dared defy, disobey, and disrupt.
Most now seem to be mainly mad the government is peeling back unconstitutional bureaucracy. Trump was open about his plans for DOGE in his campaign, and complaining about unelected people doing stuff after the past century and more of Wilsonian bureaucracy bloat is a bit rich.
The Department of Education is barely older than I am, and has failed by every objective measure. There is no authorization for government to fund foreign aid, especially if it's cover for CIA operations. Science belongs in the universities, not government labs or through government grants. Revert the alphabet soup of agencies to the states or the people as required by the 9th and 10th amendment.
That said, there is also plenty of room to criticize Trump on what I see as legitimate moral and constitutional grounds. He is an ignorant and pompous blowhard with an authoritarian streak a mile wide. His loudest critics just don't seem to see those issues the way I do.
I wouldn't be in such a hurry to jump to conclusions about what they were doing 4-5 years ago, 50501 seems to be going the big tent route. Nonviolence and grievance with the government seemed to be the only requirements to be party to the protest.
I missed that part, going to chalk that up to the flashbangs and tear gas. Personally, I wasn't entirely comfortable with how statist many of the folks were but it was also a lot of people's first protest. Was nice to see folks taking the first baby steps to taking back their power, but there's still a lot of learning to be done.
That was kind of the essence of the protest, we didn't have to see eye to eye with one another , just had to have similar opinions of a couple billionaires.
Very well said, and conveyed better than I could! Lol
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This is heartening to see
It really was. Wasn't sure what I'd find when I got there with the short notice and the weather but I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone I know is beyond pissed, seemed strange that there wasn't more taking to the streets already.
Thank you🌟
Some people misinterpret the protest. They see it as a protest against Trump's political philosophy (I know he doesn't have one, but the people behind him do). It's that he does not observe the rule of law, basic Constitutional norms as he tries to execute his policy.
The problem may be that civics as a course is not taught in school anymore. The history of our country, the painful steps toward forming a representative government--this is not studied anymore.
Somewhere between my generation (post WWII) and the current generation the narrative of throwing off a monarch and fighting for freedom was lost.
People are willingly handing over their autonomy to one man (well, maybe two).
Sorry for the long response, but your blog, and those pictures inspired me.
While I am a Trump supporter, I strongly agree with you that American history should be taught more than it is. Too many people don't understand that freedom was only won after a long hard battle, and that it can easily be taken away. A lot of people don't even understand what a representative form of government even is. While I mostly support what Musk is doing, I also agree that Elon Musk could become a problem since he was not actually elected. Big corporate money in politics is usually not a good idea.
Nothing wrong with being a Trump supporter. We can't all agree and I never think I have a monopoly on truth. However, I thank you for seeing the value of representative government and for appreciating the struggle of our founders to get it. What many don't realize (and you do I think) is that this government was an experiment. It was new and inspired the establishment of other representative governments across the world.
I am fiercely patriotic, not to a leader or a party, but to the idea of our government, which is defined by the Constitution.
I know one thing, when I was a kid I always found American history class and to an even greater degree, American government, to be extremely boring. I think that is part of the reason it isn't taught anymore, but the solution is to make it more interesting than to stop teaching it. One way to make it more interesting for schoolchildren I think would be to have them imagine a life without freedom, where everything they do is tightly regulated by the government. If that is true that our government was an experiment, it would make sense to help the children to understand just how groundbreaking it was. We have made significant progress making certain events in the history of science more interesting, at least for those interested in science, by dramatizing and romanticizing Galileo and making it explicit just how novel and groundbreaking his ideas were at the time. The same is also done for Roman history, where Julius Caesar is portrayed as a military strategic genius. Perhaps the same should be done for American history.
I will confess: I taught history (global, American, government). There was so much noise in my classroom that we got complaints. Not rowdy students--a rowdy teacher. I rearranged the desks to drive the point home about the three branches. I wore costumes. Believe me, nobody was bored or fell asleep in my class.
I think the key is to love what you teach. I didn't teach for long, because it takes a lot of energy to bring that level of commitment.
As I said, I love the idea of my country.
I like that
If you have time, check out my post in the StemSocial community about how blockchain can transform science and tell me what you think of it in a comment. Your science related posts are actually my favorite and I hope you write about something scientific again soon.
I read it last night as I was going to sleep (I read on my iPad). See you over there.
Yeah, I think part of what makes it so galling is that with what is effectively control of all three branches of government, they could have went by the book and gotten away with much of it but they couldn't be bother to do even that.
Civics as in "this is how government works" or civics as in "we're all inhabiting the same piece of land, how do we do that without killing one another"? The former was still taught when I was in school (millennial here) but it's hard to tell that it did much good. I think something akin to the latter was taught in the early days of this country, or at least there was a much better understanding of that at the time that is noticeably absent these days.
Ever listen to Utah Phillips? There's a quote by him, "Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free...”
People never cease to amaze me...
Don't be sorry, glad you got something out of it :)
They are making a point. They don't have to obey. They are asserting that Trump has the power all by himself.
I like that very much 🌟
If civics aren't being taught, isn't that an another argument that the Dep't of Education has failed several generations of students? I hope DOGE actually pares down the number and size of agencies wildly exceeding the delegated authority of the Constitution. And that also gives us more autonomy. I don't have high hopes that will be the outcome, unfortunately.
It's so amazing ❤️
It was a sight for sore eyes for sure!
Absolutely true I really like it ❤️
That's looks like a large turnout for a cold day. I was a bit surprised to see Antifa symbology at a Kentucky protest.
It was, especially for Frankfort, which isn't an especially large city. Really, why is that? That was about the extent of it, which surprised me a bit. At the Breonna Taylor protests in Louisville back in 2020 antifascist symbols and slogans were fairly common.
I'm more accustomed to seeing it outside the "Bible Belt". Even in Hawaii back in 2020, at the height of some protests overt Antifa symbology or iconography was rare.
Ah, gotcha. Flashbangs, pepper balls and CS gas radicalized a lot of people here in 2020. There wasn't much early on but the longer it went on (there were 100+ consecutive days of protests) the more they proliferated.
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