On Saturday, my city of Columbia, SC joined a vast multitude of other cities across the nation in "Hands Off" mass rallies and protests. Folks were expressing their anger at various actions of the Trump Administration including illegal deportations, tanking the economy via brainless tariffs against our allies, allowing billionaire Elon Musk to gut government agencies, attacks against African-Americans, the LGBTQ community, and other non-white communities, etc etc.
For me not to feel like a hypocrite in posting the following pictures, I admit that I was reticent about these mass protests. A lot of African-Americans feel the same and some of us made the point to say we were staying out of it.
I'm not trying to speak for everyone, but a lot of us feel a general sense of betrayal due to the election. We showed up and did what we were supposed to, but some folks and groups who should have known better (particularly members of the Muslim and Latino communities and progressives) deliberately failed to do their duty on election day. They either did not vote at all, voted for Trump, or voted third party (hello Jill Stein) under the delusions that they were somehow "punishing" the Democratic party for certain offenses or that Trump could be trusted.
These people know who they are, and I know that a large number of them took place in Saturday's protests without any self-realization (or maybe with full self-realization) that if they weren't so damn stubborn, Trump wouldn't be perched in the Oval Office now like some vulgarly orange vulture.
Having said all of that, Saturday's mass protests was a good step in the positive direction. But it remains to be seen whether folks will keep up the anger AND FOCUS when it's time to vote again.
