The energy and public support were high at Saturday's weekly Howe at Arden anti-ICE protest. The number of people protesting keeps increasing, week over week. I made two counts, of 122 and 114, so roughly 120 people were present and loudly showing their displeasure towards ICE. Last week, we had about 100, the week before, 80, and the week before that, 50.
We are riding an exponential upswing in protest participation. Nothing is harder to sustain than exponential growth, especially with something so morally-serious as protesting, but here we are! We aren't even the fastest-growing protest group. Apparently the group at Sunrise and Greenback in Citrus Heights had 112 participants on Saturday. The week before, they had 50. That's explosive growth!
I also visited the brand-new protest group at the Fulton Target, at Fulton and Alta Arden. Maybe 15 participants at first outing.
New groups are nucleating across California and the country, and finding their own success. I'm curious about the Sunrise Gold River group. A new group, an offshoot from our Howe at Arden group, starts protesting in Santa Rosa tomorrow.
I'm sorry I missed the big student protest at the State Capitol and at the John Moss Federal Building on Friday. This protest was amazing, the pinnacle of coordinated success, with more than a thousand student participants (according to the Sacramento Bee), from dozens of schools, and apparently arriving on light rail in two large waves.
It is difficult to arrange large protests, especially with young people, who have to consciously-step outside their bubbles of conventional thinking. The students execute joint action with their peers and they do not readily forget what they did. The anti-ICE students join previous generations of protesters, such as Civil Rights, Vietnam, Iraq, and Occupy protesters, We all fight together in common cause.
No comments:
Post a Comment