Old Folks are Fired Up!

Sue and I believe it is imperative on each of us to turn out and speak up if we are to save our democracy, so we attend organized protests whenever we can. We have attended rallies in our hometown of Charleston, S.C., but also in Columbia and Beaufort. And all of them share some important, even crucial, traits. The crowds are always large, happy, enthusiastic, purposeful, prepared, loud, together, peaceful, old and white.

It’s those last two words, old and white, that bother me. I don’t know what it’s like at other rallies, but every rally I’ve attended has been composed mostly of old white people. There have been scatterings of young people, very few Black people, and absolutely no Brown people.

Hundreds of us old folks (I’m 86) line up along both sides of busy throughways. Most of us stand, but some sit in lawn chairs or wheelchairs. We wave our signs at the passing traffic, signs that carry such slogans as “No More Kings” or “ICE Is Trump’s Gestapo.” We get a steady blast of horn honks from supportive drivers and many more thumbs up than middle fingers up (and remember, this is ruby-red South Carolina).

We know what we’re doing is paying off. Politicians in Washington, most of whom will be up for re-election in November, are hearing us. They are looking out their windows and seeing millions of us upset enough to get out of our homes and participate. And they are responding. Support for Trump continues to plummet. Democrats’ chances of winning the midterm elections seem better than ever and improving. Trump sees it, too. He has mentioned the prospect of losing both the House and the Senate in November and being impeached – again.

But why are the crowds composed mainly of old white people? We have the least of anyone to gain; after all, most of us won’t be around long enough to experience the long-term results of what happens today, at this major turning point in American and world history. Black people and Brown people, and young people of any color, stand to lose the most. Trump wants to eject from the country any Brown-skinned people he can find, hold Black people down as much as possible, and keep white people in strong command of the nation’s future

So, again the question: Black, Brown and young people have enormous amounts to lose if Trump goes on, so why aren’t greater numbers of them joining in the rallies? And why are we old people, who have comparatively little to gain, turning out with gusto by the millions?

I can understand why Brown people are not turning out. These days, being Brown is all that’s needed to be arrested and deported – although Brown people couldn’t find a more supportive group of people to be around than us should ICE attempt anything at a rally.

I can also, to a lesser extent, understand why more Black people don’t turn out. I read an article not long ago that was written by a Black woman who said Black people have done enough and so she is going to sit this one out.

I can understand that because, as a reporter for The Associated Press in the 1960s, I covered the Martin Luther King-led protests in Birmingham, where Black people, with scant help from any whites, risked their lives to be granted the right to sit at a lunch counter. But they did, and in doing so they overcame the powerful opposition of Gov. George Wallace, Public Safety Director Bull Conner, the Birmingham Police Department and the Ku Klux Klan.

So yes, I agree with the Black lady who says Black people deserve to sit this one out. I just hope they won’t. All Americans need them and they need us, and this time, unlike the ‘60s, we’re on their side.

I think the reason that old people are participating so hard has to do with history. None of us fought in World War II, but our parents did, so the war against fascism is in our direct rear-view mirror. The Hitler-led murders of 6 million Jews and a half-million Gypsies remains as real to us as yesterday’s football game. Words like Hitler, fascist, dictator, authoritarian, Gestapo and Nazi make our skin crawl because they describe a time that we feel rather than just intellectually understand. All these words unerringly point to what Trump is doing, so when we see Trump aiming those concepts at us like a runaway freight train, it scares hell out of us.

I was 6 years old when the war ended, and I remember my uncles and my friends’ daddies coming home from the war (my father was a minister and therefore exempt), some with lifelong physical handicaps that included missing limbs. Some of my friends’ daddies didn’t come home at all.

Today – for me, 80 years later – we see it coming at us again, at full speed, the main difference being that Trump is in control now instead of Hitler, but Trump is following Hitler’s playbook to the T. We see it, we feel it, and we know we must stop it or history will repeat itself. If we fail, surviving Americans will live in a land where the neo-Nazi dictator Trump and Trump alone rules, and it will become a crime to oppose him. It will be a crime to be Brown, Black, transgender, gay, or whatever else the American Fuhrer says is a crime.

Please don’t let it happen. Brown and Black and young and old and white, we’re all in this together and we must resist together now, loudly and peacefully, or it will be too late. Turn out and speak up. Join a rally.

Call your U.S. representative (202-225-3121) and, for example, say: “My name is {state your name} and I live at {give your address} , so I am your constituent, and I beseech you to impeach Donald Trump immediately. Not only is he wrecking our democracy, but now he is supporting his ICE agents who have shot several Americans and murdered at least one. We cannot have a president who supports the murder of his own people, and we cannot wait until November’s election because by then he will have done too much damage to our country. Even if the Senate fails to convict him, it will at least put those senators who support him on record as supporting a murderer for president and will make our job that much easier in November.”

Then call your Republican senator (202-224-3121), and, again for example, say: “My name is {state your name} and I live at {give your address} , so I am your constituent, and I demand that you openly support the immediate impeachment of Donald Trump. He is destroying our democracy and trying to install himself as our dictator, and now he is supporting his ICE agents who shoot and, in at least one case, murder an American citizen. Twenty-two Republican senators are all that’s needed to eject Trump and I expect you to be one of them. Otherwise, you are openly supporting the murderer of Americans to be our president, and that is unthinkable.”

But please do something today, anything, no matter how small, to make yourself known. Whatever you do will help. And remember: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

We must win, we can win and we will win – if we turn out, speak up, vote, and never, never give up.

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