Halloween march to end the trump horror show

(Speech given by Misty Rowan at the demo on 11/31/2020)

 

Where to begin? Where have these last four years gone? I remember the protest that we had on the day of his inauguration. Resist from day one is what we called it, and resist we have. And in four years we basically haven’t had a moment’s rest. This administration seems to take a ghoulish pleasure in making everything worse.  They’ve hit us with bad news every single day. Lies, scandals, corruption, nepotism, hate speech, hate-policy, and a gross mishandling of this pandemic along with everything else. Trump has lined the pockets of his family and his rich friends while selling this country out like the con man he is. I remember when he first got into office, his supporters were like “Come on, give him a chance”, and how they laughed at us when people expressed real fear for what would come next. We’ve seen what he has done with that chance now, and we’ve seen many of those fears were vindicated. In fact, his actions turned out to be even worse than we feared, which is saying a lot.

 

There’s a lot of scary movies you could go home tonight and watch, but I can’t think of anything scarier than the nightmare we’re living in or the election around the corner. Even the best case scenario is only slightly better than a kick in the teeth, and the worst case is, well, this. A continuation of this. And at this point we anticipate turmoil regardless of who wins. And yeah, this election is yet again a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, but trump is evil in such a dangerously infectious way that it’s clear which of them is worse. It’s clear trump and his lies must go. 

 

Among other things he’s lied about, trump has recently had the audacity to call himself the anti-war candidate, and just no. Trump is a lot of things, he is two-faced and thin-skinned and opportunistic, but hell no he is not anti-war! We’re talking about a man who has dropped more bombs than any other president, including the “Mother of all bombs” in 2017, which in terms of its size and capacity to do damage is just shy of a nuclear weapon. He’s talked flippantly about using nukes on Korea, and even his own staff have expressed fear that he is unstable enough to do it. He’s making arms deals with human rights abusers, which should surprise no one considering his track record on human rights abuses here at home. And worst of all, he continues to use fear-mongering and hate speech to whip his supporters up into a violent ferver. The damage he has done is playing out in workplaces and schoolyards all over the country, and bullying and hate crimes have seen an uptick in every city he visits after one of his cult rallies takes place there.Surely the only thing scarier than the trump presidency is the prospect of another four years! 

 

That said, biden isn’t exactly the answer to our prayers. Here is a man who promised that if elected “nothing fundamentally will change”. Talk about a guy who can’t read the room! Here we are clamoring for change, we’re desperate for it, insistent on it. In fact, we are changing! We are changing with or without the permission of the powers that be! And it is not our job to slow down and wait for these old men to catch up. It is not our job to smooth down the ruffled feathers of the owner class here in Minneapolis, nervous about the next flare up in this struggle for justice against police brutality. They fear further disruption of businesses as usual, and frankly, they should. The murder of George Floyd may have been the catalyst for change, but the reckoning with racial injustice in this country has been a long time coming. That’s not going away with a changing of the guard. Not when both parties represent the interests of the 1% and none of them represent the people. 

 

So what can we do? What can we expect from an election between two evils-one blatant and boastful, the other more insidious and condescending? The answer is obvious. The answer is right here. We gotta keep fighting. We gotta keep organizing, keep educating, keep uniting despite our differences. Divide and conquer is their game. We must unite and overcome! And the fact that we have done so here so successfully this summer has the whole world taking notice. We must continue to do so even as they try everything they can think of to stop us.

 

The people should not be afraid of their government, it is the government who should be afraid of the people. When our government responds to our cries for justice with tear gas, it’s time to rise up. When they take preemptive actions like Walz calling in the National Guard “just in case”,  it is because they have seen what we the people are capable of when we come together. And so I urge you to be brave and press onward. We cannot be silent and we cannot go back to the way it was. The way it was is why we are in this mess in the first place.

 

So it really doesn’t matter what happens on Nov 3rd, either way we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone who is here today where change comes from, real change has only ever come from raising our voices and hitting the streets. People power is greater than president power. Always has been and always will be. So by all means get out and vote, but don’t stop there, there is too much work to be done. There is too much at stake to sit around and wait for someone else to do it, least of all the president of the United States.

 

 

So when our civil rights are under attack, what did we do?

Stand up, fight back!

That’s right! All power to the people!

Happy fucking Halloween!