EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re still uploading and downloading photos and video from across the county – over 1,500 people attended No Kings rallies in Tillamook County (that about 6% of the population) – from Manzanita with 750, the steadfast Nehalem group with a dozen, Tillamook stood strong with 550, Cloverdale counted 80 and Pacific City saw 75 folks. All armed with signs and smiles, sharing cookies and common ground declaring their desire to see changes in how our government is currently operating. We’ll have full coverage with photos, videos and statements coming soon.
By Butch Freedman
I’m a skeptical kind of guy. It’s in my Eastern European DNA—the Cossacks are never far from the door. And that old glass half-empty or half-full characterization never made any sense to me. All I see is a glass of water. I ain’t measuring it. Now get out of my face, man. I bring this up, not as confession, but as prelude to what I felt at Saturday’s No Kings protest that I attended in Tillamook with my wife and many friends. And, I admit it, over the course of those few hours my skepticism vanished. I felt renewed, like I could take a deep breath again. And despite, or maybe because of all the insanely clever posters and get-ups, I didn’t worry for one minute about the megalomaniacal prez or his cohorts. They all became simply cause for a joke. So very many of us were on the same page. And we were out there declaring our righteous opposition. You don’t get to do that in Russia or North Korea or in Nazi Germany. To name it further, we all were feeling free and happy.
Now that may all sound a bit Polly-Annish. And today we have to return to the sad realities of the existential chaos that this regime has brought upon us. But at least we know that there are many, many millions of us out there saying this has to stop. Of course, there has to be a continuing outcry, and continuing action beyond protests. I remember back a million years ago in 2016 when Hillary lost to the evil one. Everyone was shocked, and there was immediately another protest then, with millions of women and men showing up, carrying signs and wearing pussy hats. But it was too late. And when a survey was taken it turned out that over a third of those marchers hadn’t bothered to vote. “Well, you know,” they said, “Hillary wasn’t really my cup of tea.”
So yeah, my skepticism is well-founded. We can’t only protest, we have to walk the walk and talk the talk. There has to be ongoing resistance and action. At times it feels overwhelming. A world-wide war is raging, started by one man. (And I use the word man loosely.) The economy is in shambles. The environment may be beyond repair. And who is there to stop the madness?
It’s on us. We have to make change a reality. There’s only one way that can happen. And that’s by replacing as many cowardly republicans and trump tools from the congress as possible. Within our crumbling election system, now under attack, we hopefully can still prevail.
I do feel uplifted by my participation in these protests, and my skepticism has abated, though it hasn’t disappeared. But, dare I say it, I do feel more optimistic. There’s no point in looking back. We can’t re-write all of the damage that’s been done, but we can impact the present—and the future.