OCCUPY SOMETHING — ANYTHING: They’re protesting President-elect Donald Trump this Saturday, in the nation’s capital and all over America, including as many as 14 communities in Alaska. Or is it 16? We’ve lost count.
Perhaps they’re not protesting Donald Trump. Not exactly.
The Women’s March has morphed into a Protest Everything event: It’s Black Lives Matter. It’s Occupy Wall Street. It’s immigration. Sexual violence. Abortion on demand. LGBTQ. Proper gender pronouns. Bathrooms. Climate change.
All liberal grievances are welcome on Saturday.
“No matter what your cause, there is something we can all agree on and it’s open to everyone,” one march organizer and interviewee said from Fairbanks on APRN’s Talk of Alaska radio show earlier this week.
But, not exactly every cause is welcome. When a pro-life women’s group tried to join in the merriment, they were quickly uninvited from the official line-up of sanctioned groups. Planned Parenthood, after all, is the main organization behind the march in most communities, including in Alaska, since they have money and experience to organize a nationwide day of rage.
At least in Washington, D.C. there will also be a protest of the protest as pro-life groups are organizing, although they’ll be outnumbered and likely shouted down.
In Alaska, protests are planned for Ketchikan, Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Homer, Palmer, Kotzebue, and little Gustavus, population 430 people. Organizers say there are eight other communities, so consider yourself warned.
PUSSY HATS AND PATRIARCH-BASHING: Women who voted for Hillary Clinton, and a few men, we are told, will be the main ones out in force to begin the steady drumbeat of opposition to the Trump agenda.
Many of them will sport pink “pussy hats,” which is the latest version of the “Nasty Woman” t-shirt that was fashionable before the election, and the Pantsuit Nation that was popular last year. We’ve come a long way, baby, since pant suits. We’re now into pussy hats.
You’ll be seeing those pink hats in the Alaska protests, because it definitely won’t be t-shirt weather. The 49th state is experiencing the coldest winter in recent years, and Anchorage may get as warm as 11 degrees but it will be -21 in Fairbanks. Those gals will need more than one pussy hat.
On social media, Alaska women’s march enthusiasts are using hashtags to indicate their particular brand of indignation: #MalePrivilege, #WhitePrivilege, #WomensMarch, #equalpay, #fighttheman, #WhyIMarch.
Singer/songwriter Fiona Apple released a song in advance of the march with this chant embedded in it: “We don’t want your tiny hands anywhere near our underpants.” If you’re out and about in Alaska on Saturday, you might catch a whiff of that chant, a sequel to Ms. Apple’s song, “Trump’s Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” which came out in December.
Some in the media are helping advance the cause. On Talk of Alaska, host Lori Townsend interviewed some of the Alaska organizers of the protests. Listen to the first four minutes to hear one of the organizers break down in tears at the thought of a Trump presidency.
One Juneau conservative quipped that there’s a demonstrated need for counseling among some who didn’t like the election outcome.
Host Townsend, perhaps swept up in the moment, prompted the organizers to continue the movement after the marches are over: “You raise an important issue that there’s pain and anger and division and the only way to overcome that is for people to try to see beyond their anger and come out and share their concerns for the future if they really want to have impact and effect change.”
Organizers of the Anchorage march expressed their feelings this way, as they raised money to pay for associated march costs, such as hand warmers:
Our country is in turmoil after the 2016 political campaign. We in Anchorage host the most diverse communities in the entire United States. Many of us in our country are afraid for our children and ourselves. We are dismayed at the fear mongering. Minority children are afraid in schools. Victims of sexual violence and intimidation are feeling re-victimized. Many of us are afraid of losing our hard fought rights as Americans. We have so much fear and anxiety, and need to organize.
After the march is over, and when Monday starts the first week of a new president, those still wanting more can refer to an online guide to resistance, written by Democrats who were once congressional staffers, who are now teaching people how to resist a “Trump Agenda.”
The authors of the guide write in detail about how to harass members of Congress, or MOCs, as they call them, with sit-ins, social media bombardment, and much, much more.
It’s good, clean family entertainment, pussy hats, “Trump’s nuts roasting” chants, notwithstanding. Be sure to honk on Saturday if you protest, well, anything. Anything at all.
Now here would be a worthy protest if you were sincerely worried about your children/ grandchidren… how bout protesting the guy and his Mrs who just left D.C. for one last vacation on US. He added nine trillion dollars to the national debt (9,000,000,000,000). He had approximately 3,000 days in office. That works out to three billion (3,000,000,000) dollars PER DAY!!! Now there’s something to protest. That should cause “fear and anxiety.”
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