By Jim Heffernan
I’ve been thinking a lot about a spectacle I saw in the center of Tillamook on April 5. It was the “Hands Off” demonstration. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in Tillamook.
I planned on going to the “Hands Off” event as soon as I heard of it. I was totally surprised when my wife said she wanted to go with me. She takes a dim view of my political activism and she’s never before gone to single meeting with me.
I was expecting 50 to 100 people to show up, so we decided to leave 35 minutes early so we could find a nearby parking spot. We ended up at parking place 4 blocks away. The grassy area across from Burden’s was packed with people and they were still streaming in.
When it was noon, we filed away and there were enough people to line both sides of highway 101 for a distance of 3 blocks and both edges of the median divider. Most of us felt like there must have been 500 people lining the road.
We were all of different ages. Some of us were drawn by Indivisible, some by SEIU, some by Move On, and a few TillCoDems. Many were not attached to any group at all. We told ourselves we were there to protest the reckless actions of the Trump administration, but I think most of us were really there to feed and nourish our own sense of belonging, belonging to a robust group of like-minded people who were not willing to surrender our republic to a new era of oligarchy.
My wife said the gathering gave her hope for the first time since November.
Saturday showed what’s possible. We’re just getting started.
All this hope and solidarity could evaporate if we fail to vote every chance we get.
