Just showing up to No Kings
Yesterday my mom mentioned that there were No Kings protests happening this weekend. That was the first I'd heard of it, and I saw that there was a big gathering in a local park later that day.
As I walked up, I wondered what I'd say if confronted by a counter-protestor. It's so easy to get lost in the haze of outrage that one doesn't have an answer for the basic question of "but what specifically did Trump do wrong?", so I pulled up my list of Things That Trump Did That Merit Impeachment Whether Or Not He Also Did Some Things You Like (eg. deploying troops to democratic cities, not investigating the agents who killed Pretti, knowingly defying court orders eg. with deportation flights). Though - spoiler alert - I didn't encounter any counter protesters.
The theme was "drag out the vote" and they had a mix of speakers and drag performances. The speakers were pretty mixed - a lot of it was internal messaging to keep people fired up but that didn't carry a lot of informational value. There were a couple active politicians there and some of them said valuable stuff about upcoming bills and votes to keep an eye on. There was also a memorable talk from a military veteran who works with afghan immigrants and who talked about how many of them are now dealing with overt racism more and the environment of fear generated by ICE's rush to meet metrics and lack of accountability for incorrect arrests.
I heard multiple people say that everyone should vote via dropboxes rather than mailing in, since the administration may try to discredit/delay mailed ballots. On one hand, that's a valid concern. On the other, this seems to be something like accepting a shift of the overton window. If fewer people do mail-in voting then there's a stronger case to do away with it altogether.
There were also announcements to join "rapid response" messaging threads to share information about voter interference, so people can show up on-site quickly. I think that preventing voter interference is extremely important, but I also suspect that there will be a signal-to-noise problem in these messaging threads, and that fired up people showing up en-masse to a voting location without complete information could lead to a lot of trouble.
The big risk I see in the upcoming election is that we, as people in a modern democracy, have given the government a monopoly on violence, and in return we get a vote in how the government uses that violence. This isn't like some ancient valley where the local Deadliest Group Of People punishes perceived criminals as they see fit and everyone only agrees that's OK because If You Don't Agree They'll Punish You Too. Instead in a modern democracy we all agree that we won't gather up friends and weapons and try to establish local DGOPs to enforce our own view of laws, and in return we get a vote in one really kickass national DGOP.
But if there's widespread perception that we don't actually get a vote in the laws enforced by the national DGOP, people will start to realize that having local laws that they find just and fair will require forming a different DGOP. And when multiple DGOPs try to exist in the same place it is very very bad.
So I think the "rapid response" teams for voter interference are a net good, and if ICE or some other federal force is at polling stations that is very bad and unacceptable. But I'm also concerned that people don't realize what they're getting into - that the voting process is part of the bedrock contract that legitimizes our our trade of individual violence for a vote - and that lots of fired up people showing up to voting places without clear plans or coordination is like touching the high voltage power conduits of society without protection. At best, Fox News will have a field day. At worst, "rapid responders" interfering with the operation of a polling place will be a substantial thread to the national DGOP.
This isn't to put the blame for anything that happens on rapid responders. The root problem isn't them, it's that the administration is playing will-I-or-wont-I with voter disenfranchisement. But fundamentally, rapid responders will be in a very serious situation, and their actions in the heat of the moment will be very consequential.
One guy was handing out detailed flyers about his idea to elect the DOJ (https://www.elect-the-doj.org/). I'm not sure that this protest was the place to gain traction for such a technical idea, but it made me really happy to see that he'd spent his own time to research the topic and was putting forward a specific positive idea.
I checked my local subreddit before I went to see if there was more info. As I'm typing the URL, I always acknowledge that reading reddit leaves me feeling miserable. I still do it, partially for local information but probably partially because I'm addicted to outrage, which is bad. The comments on reddit were asking "why bother to go?" "what do you hope to accomplish?". There is massive cynicism about these protests online, and while I think reddit is mostly bots now, I recognized that - bot or not - they're valid questions. In the end, I realized that just attending and talking to people makes me feel better and less cynical for months.
So I kinda ignored the talks and performances after a while. I went to the back of the audience and struck up conversations with people. Some folks were nervous and spoke entirely in mic-drop one liners and I thanked them for coming out and moved on. But there were cool folks too. One lady who had been a paralegal downtown, and we talked about how the city had changed and how my committee might be able to build relationships with the city attorney to help improve enforcement of small crimes that deteriorate street-level conditions. Another woman had grown up in SD, then moved around the country, and had now retired back to SD. We talked about politics (of course) but also how kids used to be able to walk to school, and how we could start encouraging that again (and how, while it's a net good that high schoolers are increasingly taking buses/light rail, they're really bad at sharing the space!)
I had to part ways as the gathering turned into a (scheduled) march, but it felt great to spend time among positive, kind people who have the strength to overcome cynicism and just Show Up.