Apparently today’s a really big day for some of my more politically active friends, and supposedly quite a number of strangers. Here’s how THE HILL’s Jared Gans spelled it out yesterday:
Nationwide protests are set to take place Saturday in opposition to the Trump administration and its allies, with leaders vowing to stand up to push back against the “most brazen power grab in modern history.”
The “Hands Off!” rallies are taking place in more than 1,000 cities across all 50 states, and nearly 400,000 people have signed up to attend them, according to the progressive organization Indivisible, which is one of the almost 200 groups partnering to organize the movement.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them,” the movement’s website states. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them. On Saturday, April 5th, we’re taking to the streets nationwide to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!”
I, for one, must send my regards and RSVP in the negative, as I have a conflict with work. In fact, today, as is every first Saturday of the month at my place of business, is a family arts and crafts event where we’re setting up special booths, supplying snacks, crayons and coloring books, so that we can potentially curry favor with the fraction of folks who actually might have a legitimate need for my company’s services, not to mention show our solidarity with the massive nationwide corporation that employs us. There will be close to 2000 such events being staged across my company’s outlets this morning.
That compares pretty favorably with the number of hot spots that will serve as uber-convenient gathering places for the HANDS OFF! team, especially when one drills into their website. Here’s how CBS Chicago reported the specifics of just that city alone:
Hundreds of “Hands Off” protests will be held around the country on Saturday, April 5, including protests in Chicago, dozens of suburbs, and across the state of Illinois. Dozens of Hands Off protests are planned in Chicago suburbs and around the state, including in Oak Park, Rockford, Evanston, Elgin, Arlington Heights, DeKalb, Palatine, Joliet, Lisle, Highland Park, Geneva and more. Protests are also planned in Northwest Indiana, including in Michigan City and Highland. There will also be a protest at the Illinois capital in Springfield.
I suppose that’s a step up from a virtual rally on Zoom, but if that’s the playbook they’re following, I sure hope they’re supplying crayons and snacks, too. Because that’s what they’re competing with in those kinds of neighborhoods, and these sure don’t sound like the kinds of rallies that made real impact back in a time when people were motivated and angry at the actions of a Republican administration. Here’s how Wikipedia chronicled some of the more seminal events of Vietnam war protesters at the outset of the Nixon administration:
1969
- Throughout the entire year, campus protests take place across the country.
- April 5–6. Anti-war demonstrations and parades in several cities, including New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and others.
- October 15. National Moratorium against the War demonstrations. Huge crowds in Washington, D.C. and Boston (100,000). Anti-war Senator George
- November 15. The Mobe‘s Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam mobilizes 500,000 in Washington, D.C. Preceded by “March against Death” on November 13 and 14
1970
- April 15, 1970: Nationwide marches and rallies across the country.
May 4: At Kent State University in Ohio, a protest is met with the Kent State Shootings, as the U.S. National Guard kill four young people during a demonstration. As a result, four million students go on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges. The best known cultural response to the deaths at Kent State was the protest song “Ohio“, written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.- May 9. Mobe sponsored “Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest, Washington, D.C.” between 75,000 and 100,000 demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the Kent State shootings and the Nixon administration‘s incursion into Cambodia. Even though the demonstration was quickly put together, protesters were still able to bring out thousands to march in the National Mall in front of the Capitol. It was an almost spontaneous response to the events of the previous week. Police ringed the White House with buses to block the demonstrators from getting too close to the executive mansion. Early in the morning before sunrise, U.S. President Richard Nixon walks to the Lincoln Memorial to meet with the protesters.
- August 29. At Chicano Moratorium. 20,000 to 30,000 Mexican-Americans participate in the largest anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles. Police are attacked with clubs and guns and kill three people, including Rubén Salazar, a TV news director, and a reporter for The Los Angeles Times.[43]\
THOSE were rallies. That forced people to travel a few miles to produce a size and impact significant enough to warrant attention from news media and, as noted, even the president himself. Aside from the fact that Fat Orange Jesus and Jumping Jerk Fascist couldn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone out of their circle of toadies thinks or opines, HANDS OFF! picked a weekend where the former is already preoccupied with his freaking Saudi-sponsored golf tournament hundreds of miles to the South and he won’t even be in town.
In fact, these little mini-rallies sound more in the line of the one I learned about after the fact that was held recently in West Hollywood, an area of Los Angeles with roughly 100,000 residents of disproportionate wealth and intelligence, not to mention Democracy-leaning philosophies. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked one of the attendees, a veteran journalist with dozens of employed friends in all aspects of media, for a few details:
— How many folks showed up? About 75.
— I missed coverage of this in the local papers and on TV. Well, we let them know about that morning.
— The organizers didn’t send out a press release in advance? You didn’t offer up your contacts? Er, no.
— Who spoke? A couple of the organizers.
Oh. And this person WAS alive during the Vietnam era as well.
Say what you will about the events of 2020 and January 6, 2021–and you’d be right to have a lot to say about both–but at least they were a lot better organized and did enough advance-planning than HANDS OFF! is. And even without today’s technology options like Reddit and 4Chan in roughly the same time frame the Vietnam-era activitsts were able to produce crowds that by all estimates will be several times larger than the number that will be in Washington, on a weekend where the source of their wrath was at least within shouting distance.
Look, I’m being more castigated than ever by my more radical and pissed-off colleagues for what to them is a negative nelly ‘tude about what means so much to them that they share literally dozens of statements a week from these movements and others on their social media sites, with the events of this past week igniting and lengthening their scholarly recaps of the damage tariffs and ostrich-like responses are already inflicting, let alone the increasingly alarming fears that it will only get far worse.
I’m not negative, I’m matter-of-fact. It pisses me off to no end that what to me is such low-hanging fruit as to timing and messaging seems to be pooh-poohed and dismissed by single-minded activists blinded by the degree of vitriol they feel about the morality of the current adminstration, let alone their rapidly declining bank accounts. Mine’s already depleted, and I know that’s not a good feeling.
But your parents and grandparents were just as concerned about the state of the planet and their lives a bit more than a half-century ago, and they did a far better job of making a significant enough impact to be heard than a lot of you are. And many of you should know better, or at least know how to Google the playbook of what did work.
Are any of you ensuring that at least some form of mainstream media cover today’s events. We know darn well a lot of them are politically kneecapped enough not to do so. Are you planning to livestream any of these more significant rallies–if nowhere else on your Instagram feeds? Who’s speaking at these events? Anyone worthy of even a shout-out on the HANDS OFF! site? When money was on the table, you could get Lady Gaga and Beyonce to show up. What, not even some emerging bands?
When my friend shruggingly rattled off the details of his recent activities, I quoted him a parable that often was used to measure how effective professional marketing campaigns I’ve worked on over the years were being measured:
If a Tree Falls in a Forest and Nobody is Around to Hear it, Does it Make a Sound?
According to the website FACT/MYTH, the answer isn’t quite as obvs as one might initially think:
According to physics, if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, it still makes a sound. Sound is a mechanical wave of pressure and displacement through a medium such as air or water. We don’t have to perceive a sound to know the laws of physics are in play.[1][2]
An Argument Against the above: With the above said, if one were to define sound as the reception of a sound wave, then it could be argued that no sound occurred based on the fact that no one was around to receive it. In this respect, one might argue the answer to the question is dependent on how we define “sound.”
Maybe it’s not quite as top-of-mind as what you deem as existential concerns, but every conversation needs an ice-breaker. And assuming enough of you actually show up at any of these thousands of venues to actually have them, consider this a well-intentioned suggestion for one that might get your balls rolling.
Along with this sage advice: Just don’t be a tree.
Until next time…