Politics

Ever since the Magna Carta, people have had the right to petition their government for redress of their grievances. The Bill of Rights also guarantees the right of peaceable assembly to be heard.

The first event I attended was in Redwood City the same day as the main Women’s marches around the country the day after the inauguration. The event was billed as a “non-partisan, multigenerational gathering” to affirm the community values under attack by the new administration. Here’s a picture of the crowd. Between the tenor of the campaign rhetoric and the direction taken during the transition, it was clear from what people were saying and what they had on their signs what things were on people’s minds: women’s issues, the secret involvement by Russia in the election, threats to foreign residents, protection of the environment, the financial entanglements of a sitting President, and above all the growing credibility gap between the public statements coming from Washington and what the public is willing to believe. We listened to speeches from local politicians and community leaders and listened to various musicians including Joan Baez.

Among other songs, she led the crowd in singing a Spanish version of “We Shall Not Moved” which the largely (but not exclusively) Anglo crowd did gamely.

Apocalypse When?

Some people I know are convinced we all have only months to live, certain that the kind of rhetoric being hurled around means that nuclear annihilation or maybe biological catastrophe will take most of us by surprise. The rules of society in the US have changed so completely we can no longer count upon collective good will to get us through tough times and that we’re due for either anarchy or brutal repression. That it’s self-delusion to fail to recognize the warnings on our screens. As in a big budget film, survivors of the shock will be thrown into a world where every choice might decide whether more will live or die, where any shred of the old social order will be lost.