And on second day of Trump’s regime, marchers rose up, as Americans should
To some, patriotism is a flag pin, a vow of country first, a dutiful acceptance of a fairly elected leader.
To the tens of thousands who marched in Houston on Saturday — the women, white, brown and black, in ball caps and hijabs, grandmas on motor scooters, moms pulling Radio Flyer wagons, and the men, husbands in solidarity with wives, bearded dads donning baby carriers — patriotism was dissent.
It was the act of registering everything from fear to utter incredulity in the first days of a Trump administration.
“Hatred’s greatest weapon is complacency,” read a sign
penned by Claudia Zapata LaBry, a 50-year-old from La Porte who swayed and waved an American flag as she sang “The StarSpangled Banner” with the muggy mass of humanity gathered in tight around City Hall.
“I’m accepting the fact that he was elected. It is what it is. Peaceful transition, I’m all for it,” said LaBry, who says she emigrated with her Mexican parents at age 9. “But I’m not going to stand by and let him destroy this amazing country. I’m a legal immigrant to this country. I love the United States of America. My heart, as I watch this, this is what America is all about. And to have that man and his cronies destroy our country? It’s appalling.
“Yesterday,” she said, referring to Trump’s inauguration, “was one of the longest days of my life.”
LaBry said she’d stayed up until 2:30 a.m. to finish decorating signs and to sew pink fleece hats and white suffrage-style sashes, complete with the date of the march, for the nieces and sister-in-law who accompanied her.
“I was thinking we should do this every week,” she said. “But not just march, act. Vote, send letters, talk to the representatives, the senators, everyone. I’m all in.”
I asked her what she does for a living.
“I knew you were going to ask me,” she laughed. “I’m a pharmaceutical rep. Go figure.” Peaceful crowd
They called it the Women’s March, and there were plenty of clever signs declaring women’s rights were not “up for grabs,” that “we are not ovary acting” and depicting uteruses with the popular warning: “don’t tread on me.” Despite the fierceness of the messages, it was a peaceful crowd that occasionally shouted thank yous to police officers monitoring on horseback.
Other signs, T-shirts and hats registered concern about everything from climate change to gay rights. “Too many yuuge issues for one sign,” read one. “Too worried to be funny,” read another.
“Are you a journalist?” one woman called out to me from the procession. “We’re doctors, and we support health care.”
“And science,” her fellow doctor added, as though it needed to be said.
And maybe, today, in 2017, it still does. ‘I fear Trump’
Missy Van Winkle’s sign on brown cardboard was simple: “I fear Trump.”
The 56-year-old property manager told me she is a sexual assault survivor and relies on Obamacare for health insurance. But Trump wasn’t the only subject of her protest.
“It’s not just the lies that he said, but the people who heard it and said, ‘I’m still going to vote for him,’ ” she said.
I told her about a Trump supporter I met a day earlier who had dismissed Trump’s foul rhetoric the way she had her grandfather’s. Van Winkle acknowledged she’d once had an uncle who said offensive things.
“My uncle was not asking to be the leader of America by manipulation, by bombast and by lies,” she added. “Sometimes, you have to be willing to not put up with that.”
The marchers some- times chanted as they walked down Memorial, buoyed by honking passersby.
Lindsay Rachuneck used one hand to maneuver a stroller and the other to hoist a sign referring to her 2-year-old son: “Bad hombre being raised by nasty woman.”
The 33-year-old legal assistant said the turnout — which Police Chief Art Acevedo suggested was the biggest Houston had ever seen — made her proud.
“It makes me feel less alone,” she said. From rhetoric to reality
Wendy Covey-Scott drew me in with a sign that said “Now you’ve pissed off Grandma.” The 53-year-old later came clean that she wasn’t actually a grandma yet, only hoping that her two daughters and one son would soon make it so.
Covey-Scott, a health and safety manager, said she feels like everything progressives have fought for over the past eight years is being reversed. She fears Trump’s rhetoric is becoming real now that he has appointed cabinet members “who don’t believe in government.”
Her opposition of Trump has strained her relationship with her elderly parents, who support him.
“I can’t have a real conversation with them,” she said. “It breaks my heart.”
After Barack Obama was elected, she said her parents, who are “smart people” but have fallen under the spell of Fox News, were so afraid, they bought a bunker.
I asked her if she ever compares that overreaction with the fear she’s feeling now. She nodded.
“I do. I try to balance that,” she told me. “But it’s like, OK, that was just a black man. That’s all that was. This guy has admitted to sexually assaulting people and admitted that ‘greed is my credo.’ It’s just not the same damn thing.” Uncharted territory
She’s right. If Obama had said or done half the things Trump has gotten away with, he wouldn’t have made it through the primary. No, this is different. It’s uncharted territory. And it’s clearly unsettling.
There’s a line somewhere, a place at which Americans would be justified in rejecting the results of a democratic election.
Where is that line? Many Americans believe Trump has already crossed it, not just with his rhetoric, but with his actions since November: Maligning everybody from the national intelligence community to a revered civil rights leader. Nominating as attorney general, the nation’s chief defender of justice, a man who has called the 1965 Voting Rights Act “intrusive legislation.” Even little things send a big message: his first day on the job, the civil rights page was deleted from the White House website.
The concerns of the marchers are real, they’re valid and they deserve to be heard.
The American flag still flies over the courthouse, and I hope it still means what Bruce Springsteen so eloquently sang:
That certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t
For the multitudes who marched across the nation Saturday, and for all of us, it’s gonna be a long walk home.