Americans are experiencing shock and awe.
Candidate Donald Trump promised to dismantle institutions and traditional norms of presidential power, and he is doing so as president.People in opposition to Trump, Musk, DOGE, and MAGA turned out at back-to-back demonstrations in Medford on Saturday.
One, organized around the theme of "Hands off" lined Jackson Street along Hawthorne Park to Biddle Road. It started at 10 a.m. It was organized by ORD2 Indivisible and Women's March Southern Oregon. A second demonstration, organized by 50501, started at noon and centered on Vogel Plaza in downtown Medford. I estimate 3,000 people took part.
The MAGA movement has Trump as a single focus and leader. Resistance to Trump is more diffuse, so people opposed to Trump don't see equivalent numbers, energy, and motivation. People at the rallies told me it felt great to see that they were part of something bigger than themselves. There were like-minded people.
A theme of the protests were hand-made signs.
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3 comments:
Conspicuous for its absence was any police presence – it wasn’t needed, in spite of the thousands of demonstrators. Among the crowd lining the north side of Jackson, I noticed one lone sign that said abortion is murder. I’m happy to say that no-one attacked him with pepper spray or a flag pole. That’s a MAGA thing.
And besides the signs, there were a lot of American flags. It’s time we reclaim it from the Trump lovers. Trump likes to grab and smooch the flag (non-consensually) but if he gave a rip about what it stands for, he wouldn’t have turned the U.S. into a pariah nation.
My sign said:
TrumpGPT
Hallucinated
A Tariff Policy
I was delighted to see public demonstrations across MAGA counties that voted for Trump. The actual effect of policy-cutting services is now apparent. Trump admits Americans are about to experience economic pain as the world reacts to egregious tariffs. The first test will occurr in deep red Harney county when they learn FEMA has abandoned helping States experiencing natural disasters like floods and wildfire.
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