"These are the times that try men's souls."Thomas Paine, "The Crisis," December, 1776"Now is the winter of our discontent."Gloucester in Shakespeare's Richard III
Many Democrats are feeling discouraged in the aftermath of the election. One response is to cocoon.
Another is to join with friends and resist. Let your voice be heard. Do it with high spirits and a smile.
College classmate Jane Collins lives in one of this country's other Medfords, the Medford that is the close-in suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Jane wrote up a first-person report on an anti-abortion demonstration by a group of men on Boston Common. She joined a much larger counter-protest that advocated reproductive rights. It was noteworthy to me because of the element of joy and high spirits within the counter protest. That was missing in the 2020 post-George Floyd protests, and this event was better for it. Clown outfits send a different implied message than does tactical gear and helmets. There were black-clad antifa people in the crowd, but they didn't take over or set the tone.
Jane Collins shares her thoughts at an upbeat positive blog: http://www.alicet4.com
Guest Post by Jane Collins
On November 16, around 150 people, nearly all white men, marched against abortion in Boston. I was proud of our city. The counter-protest was about ten times larger than the march. Approximately one in ten counter-protesters came dressed as clowns. There were a few Antifa people in black and a few communists with pamphlets and a bullhorn, whom everybody ignored.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm for the season. My son and I arrived late to the planned rally at the bandstand in the Boston Common. We thought we might have missed the whole thing. Then we saw a couple of cute young female clowns coming up the path. They told us the march was delayed but should be arriving any minute. Some student journalists from Emerson College, intrigued by his Veteran Healing sweatshirt, interviewed my son. Their questions boiled down to, Why are you here? His answer was, To fight fascism.
According to news reports, police had earlier arrested 17 people, including Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark’s daughter, for trying to block the permitted “National Men’s March to Abolish Abortion and Rally for Personhood”. The NBC report’s headline called it “a large anti-abortion march”, even though the only large crowd was the one that came out to oppose it. All the news reports I’ve seen feature many photos of the stern-looking men in black suits or priests’ clerical robes, and few photos of the much more colorful and numerous counter-protesters. There were almost as many police as marchers, some in full riot gear; the photographers liked them too.
The counter-protesters carried handmade signs: “Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you! He believed in the separation of church and state.” “Wealthiest Nation with highest Maternal Mortality.” “Life begins at ejaculation/ Mandate vasectomies.” “Letting men decide about women’s healthcare is like letting your dog make decisions about your car because he likes to ride in it sometimes.” And my favorite: “He who hath not a uterus should shut the fucketh up; Fallopians 19:73.”
Trying to drown out the speakers, people blew whistles and horns, rang cowbells, and shouted slogans like “Racists, sexists, anti-gay/ All you fascists, go away!” “Pray! You’ll need it! Your cause will be defeated!” “Pro life? That’s a lie/ You don’t care if people die.” Pleasanter noise came from the Clown Band, about two dozen musicians, heavy on the brass. When the Men Against Abortion entered the cordoned-off bandstand, the band greeted them with the Imperial March from Star Wars.
Some of the police looked ready to attack the clown-inflected protest crowd. Two cops, though, stood right in front of the anti-abortion folks’ worst sign. It was a huge blow-up of a dismembered full-term fetus, which if it was real at all must have been from the delivery of a stillborn child in a last-ditch effort to save the mother’s life. Maybe those cops didn’t mean anything by blocking that sign for a few minutes. Or maybe they were wishing they had taken a sick day.
When the rally was over, and the marchers left the Common behind walls of police and metal barricades, clowns and friends lined their route with middle finger salutes. Most of the men in black marched on with jutting chins, looking straight ahead, and the few male children with them seemed to share the smug arrogance of their fathers. But I saw two boys, probably eight and ten years old, who hung their heads and looked completely miserable. Those poor little ones might already have been wondering which marchers were the real clowns.
11 comments:
Back then, we still had people in power who had a sense of honor and respected the Constitution. Trump has made no secret of his plans to use the military to quash protests and deport immigrants, and he’s already lining up the appointees willing to carry out his whims unencumbered by conscience. Resistance for the next few years may not take the form of such a sunny, pleasant protest, but that shouldn’t deter us. We need to remember what happened to the Weimar Republic:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
Ox/Gored Department:
"Let your voice be heard".
But use whistles, cowbells and brass instruments to drown out voices with which one disagrees.
"Letting men decide about women's healthcare...."; "He who hath not a uterus should shut the f****** up".
To include women like Lia Thomas and Admiral Rachel Levine? And trans men with uteruses?
Demonstrations tend to be more demonstrative than informative, so there isn’t much to drown out. At least this one was peaceful, and I’m sure there were very fine people on both sides. Nothing drowns out voices with which one disagrees like driving a car into them.
Trump‘s abortion policy is to leave it to the states. Bright blue Massachusetts, I am sure, has an abortion policy that Jane Collins and her fellow demonstrators agree with.
So I am left wondering what was the point of this demonstration? Who was the target and what was the goal?
If the energy was anti-Trump, this counter-demonstration seems like a poor and misdirected use of that energy. I suppose it felt good ridiculing and disrupting a small and ineffective group of anti-abortion protesters, but self-therapy is not necessarily equivalent to political effectiveness
Jane Collins’ description of this event is a perfect fit for this familiar lyric:
“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.”
And, as usual, here I am, stuck in the middle…
The problem with only blue states allowing abortion is that red states has women who will need them too.
How sadly typical: some guy ridiculing women for wanting their healthcare to be between them and their doctor, rather than arbitrarily dictated by state legislatures. It will come as no surprise to anyone who remains informed that abortion bans have resulted in serious negative health outcomes for some women.
I disagree.
That’s what you want to disagree with? 😮🤷♂️
Description is not ridicule. They were dressed as clowns.
"So I am left wondering what was the point of this demonstration?"
That's pretty ridiculous. The point is to protest the Republican male mantra: YOUR BODY; MY CHOICE.
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