This Saturday's Protest

You never know exactly what you are going to get in a protest. It can be tedious at times. Still, there are some things that are a given. This Saturday at the intersection of Howe and Arden in Sacramento, I got four; maybe five, middle fingers thrown my way. Probably not enough. I should try harder to rile folks up. The Sacramento crowd in general is quite supportive of our anti-ICE protests. It makes me smile. These days, the fuck-your-feelings crowd has hurt fee-fees, and is beginning to be afraid of looking uncool. We're beginning to drive the Trump pestilence back under rocks, where it belongs. 

There were three notable encounters today. The first was earnest discussion with a man who described himself as a political independent. He stressed the need for compromise between opposing factions. It was hard to find much fault with anything he was saying. He hadn't heard of ICE's use of the John Moss Building on the Capitol Mall in Sacramento as a makeshift detention center. It puzzled him. He is a contractor for providing water-related chemicals to several prisons and is familiar with the needs of prisons. An improvised prison simply didn't compute with him. How does that work? 

The second encounter was with a couple in their fifties idling in the left turn lane who objected to the sign I was carrying saying "Don't Idolize Charlie Kirk - He Was a BAD Man!" The woman said, "How dare you insult the memory of a dead man!" In the absence of traffic I walked into the street to talk more with them. She said, "Get out of the street! You're such a dumbass you're going to get hit!" I replied, "Charlie Kirk was an EVIL man!" The woman's husband replied "Charlie Kirk was a good Christian." I replied, "NOPE! Evil!" Traffic began moving, so I couldn't provide examples of Kirk's evil to them. 

The third encounter was fairly alarming. Waiting for the light to change, a man jumped out of his vehicle's passenger door and shouted that I must have an incredibly-small penis. Apparently this encounter wasn't about the signs I was carrying. Then he raced up to me in the right-turn lane in a highly-aggressive way, stuck his middle finger an inch in front of my nose, and dared me to touch him. "No way I'm touching this guy," I thought to myself. Clearly he wanted the excuse of an assault in order to hit me. I sized him up. Dyed, curly, short blonde hair. Taller than me; fairly muscular. A beach bum look. Looked a bit like Barbie's Ken, but on drugs. Probably doesn't have a penis at all, but a plastic lump in its place. So, we had a shouting match right there in the right turn lane, just inches apart from one another. In the driver's seat of their vehicle, his wife seemed embarrassed and kept calling for him to return to the vehicle. This was all performative bullshit. No way was I backing down against Mr. Perfect-Teeth-In-Need-of-a-Gap. Fellow protesters began to react. A woman I hadn't seen before came into the street to warn him away. Eventually the traffic light changed, so the guy got back in his vehicle and they left. 

Just another day in service of the truth at the protest.