Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We went downtown for the Boston part of today's nationwide "hands off" protests. We arrived as people were walking from the Common toward Government Center, so we joined them there.

There were a lot of different signs, most of which looked home-made, a mix of general things like "Nobody elected Elon" and signs talking about a specific thing. Adrian made three signs: a simple "NO," "Peace, Love Freedom and a Hard-boiled egg"and one that said "Which Side Are They On?" [2] Some people were carrying or waving flags, mostly Pride (I saw both rainbow flags and Progress Pride flags) and American and Ukrainian flags.

There was enough organizing energy to do things like arrange for speakers and to use the big plaza near City Hall, and a somewhat chaotic mixture of chants and singing as we marched, including one verse of "We Shall Overcome." We left fairly early, while Sen. Markey was speaking; we were too far back to make out a lot of what he was saying."

I started running low on energy while Markey was speaking, so we left while other people were still arriving, but we were there long enough to be seen and help make the crowd larger. I timed it right, meaning I didn't run out of energy before we got home.

Yesterday I was guessing I wouldn't be able to go, because of either joint or GI issues, but I took pills before we left and crossed my fingers, and it worked.

I did most of this masked. I took my mask off when we got out of the T at Park Street, then put it back on because it ws dense crowd and not much breeze. I was pleasantly surprised to see some other people masking at the rally.

When I said I was tired of almost all my outings being medical, I was thinking about museums or seeing friends, but this is what needs doing.

[1] "Reasonably priced love" wouldn't work in this context.
[2] The union song that's based on asks "Which Side Are You On?"

I'd known for a while that some white supremacists/alt-right people were having a "straight pride" march in Boston today, but didn't know what if any counter-protests were planned.

This morning, adrian_turtle texted me at about 8:30 this morning, and said that she was considering going into Boston. I asked why, she described a pair of counter-protests--one at City Hall Plaza before the fascists were expected, and a more confrontational one at the Public Garden, intended to be there while the bad guys marched past. We talked a little, she said she was going to the first protest; I showered, took my morning meds (and an NSAID) and decided to go downtown.

We met at Harvard T station and went to City Hall Plaza, getting there part-way through the event. There were speeches and music and even some dancing. Adrian and I left shortly before noon, and stopped at Caffe Nero for a cup of tea and to use their bathroom. While we were there, cattitude texted to tell me he was going to the more in-their-face event, and Adrian and I decided to walk back to the Common and try to join him.

Adrian and I were going to stand back from the police barricades when the fascists walked past. Then they turned the corner onto Tremont Street, and I saw that some of them were waving Israeli flags. That upset me enough that I moved forward to the edge of the sidewalk and started shouting "Nazis out!" loudly. (I am fairly sure that I was photographed by both reporters and at least one of the right-wing marchers.)

When that was over (five minutes or so?) Adrian and I went home, and Cattitude headed up Tremont Street toward City Hall Plaza to shout at the right-wingers some more.

Sign I liked, held by someone in front of a church on Tremont Street: "We're Allies, not Axis" (with the X as a crossed-out swastika).

Moment that surprised me: we were listening to a speaker at City Hall Plaza, saying radical things I agreed with, and lots of us were cheering. Then she said something and my immediate reaction was a clenched fist in the air. (I wish I remembered what exactly prompted that.)

It's 2017, and I was just protesting on Boston Common, chanting "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" [That is a quote from 1973, at the time referring to Nixon and Watergate, and a different stolen election.]

One of the speakers read us part of the Justice Department rules about prosecutors/staff members recusing themselves from investigations, to back the point that Sessions should not be involved in investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

This rally was a few hundred people, and the only elected official was a Democratic state committeewoman* who was the first openly transgender elected official in the state. She was a very good speaker, as was the 16-year-old student activist; we also heard from the director of Common Cause**, who is promoting a law that would make voter registration automatic; from a law professor who had a lot of good if often ahistorical bits but badly needed an editor to stitch them together into something more coherent; and a few other people.

The people who were there were quite enthusiastic. The rally mostly focused on this one issue, but speakers did talk about other problems with Trump and his cronies, especially racism.

The organizers handed out postcards for us to write to the governor, demanding that he be one of the first Republicans to call for a special prosecutor, and drop them in a basket for hand delivery tomorrow. I included my name and address, on the theory that it might help and can't hurt.

(I heard about this rally about 10:00 last night, from adrian_turtle, who happened to notice it on Facebook, and who met me there. The organizers said there were other actions they want people to take over the next week, go to their Facebook page for more info; I really don't like Facebook, but needs must.)


*there's a reason you probably haven't heard of this office; it's internal party organization, not legislative, executive, or judicial branch.

**People sometimes sneer at them, they're a "good government" group that, as part of promoting democracy and voter involvement, does things like organize debates.

cattitude and I went to a rally this afternoon in Copley Square to protest Trump's executive order banning visitors from several majority-Islamic countries and suspending admissions of all refugees. The rally was put together by CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) on about 24 hours' notice; there were at least 20,000 people there, per Elizabeth Warren's tweet.*

Copley Square was packed (though the crowd thinned out near the edges); as with the women's march on the Common last weekend, we could make out only tiny bits of what the speakers said. I know that Warren, and Boston mayor Mary Walsh, spoke, and before and after that, the crowd was chanting "Where's Governor Baker?" (Baker is a Republican.) Much of the time, there were different chants in different areas of the crowd; I don't know whether a better sound system would have helped with that, but it might have let us hear the speakers. However, from what anne reports, CAIR barely had time to get the permits for this rally, and sound equipment costs money and might not be available on that kind of notice even if the money was there. The main thing was to be there, to be seen and counted.

As we were making our way from the red line to the green line at Park Street, we ran into someone who, like us, had gotten out on the wrong side of the train,** and said something like "I'm following you." I suggested this might not be a great idea because we were lost, but we sorted that out, exchanged names, and decided to stick together for a bit. She moved to Boston more recently than we did, also from Seattle (she didn't grow up there either) and is still figuring out the T. (I mostly have the T figured out, but Park Street is complicated, and in slightly different ways than the complications I grew up with in New York.) We got onto the green line together, rode two stops, and talked while we were walking over to Copley Square. (She was asking if I knew good places to find out about rallies, and I made a couple of suggestions, and handed her the business cards I almost never use, saying "this is also a business card, but it has my contact information.")

Like last weekend, we left the rally early because we ran out of stamina for standing around, though we were there for most of it. Also like last weekend, we took the train all the way to Alewife and walked, this time because I suddenly didn't want to even think about getting on a bus. It looked as though they were running extra trains on the red line before the march; the nearest green line station to the rally, Copley, was closed because of the crowd, but they announced that on the train, and we took their suggestion of getting off at Arlington. The green line stations are very close together in that part of town.

Next time, I'm taking iced tea instead of (or in addition to) water, and making sure I have cough drops. I don't have the stamina for standing around at rallies that I used to, and I don't know if I can rebuild that, but even if we can't stay for the entire event, being there is useful. I should also bring a sign next time; even if I don't get around to getting the nice white cardboard that's made for this, and a good set of markers, we have empty cardboard boxes and a Sharpie, which will do for something basic.

* I followed my senator's twitter account this morning along with replying to a previous tweet, to thank her for going to Logan last night to protest this. I would have left a voicemail message, but the mailbox was full.

** The red line has a center platform at Park Street that serves trains in both directions, the train doors open on both sides ("for elevator service exit from the left side of the train"), and I don't know if there was a stairway from there that would have put us on the correct green line platform.