This coming Saturday, March 8, at 3PM at B.A. Clark Park at the corner of Division and Lacrosse. Bring signs, meet friendly like-minded people:
Yesterday (Tuesday) I attended the 50501 Movement (50 protests, 50 states, one protest) rally held just east of City Hall along Spokane Falls Blvd from 3 to 6PM. In spite of the clouds and later rain, attendance (personally counted) ranged from 150-200 over the hour and a half I was there. This morning, the Spokesman, in typical fashion, only offered a photo on page A8 and a caption noting a “small cohort” of “About fifty people”. The encouraging thing: many I spoke with were new to protesting. There would have been more people in attendance if there hadn’t conflicting times and placing had not circulated.
The “Tesla Tuesday Protest” from 4:30-6PM at the Tesla facility near the interchange at Liberty Lake yesterday afternoon drew about eighty this week—in spite of the weather.
I expect these protests will grow over the coming weeks and months as the economy deteriorates and prices rise. I encourage my readers to attend.
While on the road last evening I listened to the first hour of the ninety minutes of Trump’s cult rally with Congressional Republicans at the Capitol. His firehose of falsehood began—and the tone was set— with the bald-faced lie that his November election win was “bigger than the world has ever seen” (or some such Trumpian inanity). Ironically, Trump’s speech carried on KPBX-FM interrupted the 6PM program “Marketplace”—which cut off the announcement that the DOW Jones Industrial Average had plummeted another 600 points over the day in response to Trump’s tariffs and the anticipation of chaos in the manufacturing sector of the economy. Of course, Trump failed to mention that inconvenient fact.
Having grown up in Wisconsin, Trump’s performance reminded me of Dick the Bruiser (1929-1991), a former Green Bay Packer’s football player who made a name for himself in the stage show atmosphere of “Big Time Wrestling,” a forerunner of the current World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with which Trump has multiple connections. As Trump’s torrent of lies rolled out I was reminded “kayfabe” in professional wrestling, the seamless weaving of fantasy, stage production, and a small dose of reality—to the point where the audience is left unable to discern fact from fiction. Note: Donald Trump is, for good reason, one of the inductees to WWE’s Hall of Fame, along folks like Hulk Hogan and Mike Tyson. That such a man as Trump now “leads the free world” is a disturbing embarrassment. No bread, only circus.
Today’s Spokesman’s front page coverage of Trump’s address to his cult characteristically offered minimal fact checking—so those who did not listen or watch are left with the general idea that this was in some way a normal presidential speech. I toured the FM dial and found KPBX was the only station broadcasting the event, suggesting that many citizens were elsewhere occupied. I don’t blame them, but hearing or seeing the event itself was instructive.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry