December Action

I'm thinking about going to another protest.

There's one called "A March Against Trump to Demand Human Rights at Home and Abroad." It's happening this Saturday, December 10 at 1 pm (in Minneapolis at Nicollet & Lake again.) The only potential hassle is that it's also a day that Rosemary and Mason are going to a Harry Potter concert that starts at the same time. However, Rosemary's dad is doing the drop-off at the concert hall (I'm doing the pick-up.) So... it's still do-able. I imagine it's not going to last more than a couple of hours, if that. It could actually work out, actually, since I will already be in Minneapolis for the pick-up. I like these protests that are endorsed by various groups, because they are often the types of folks who did this sort of thing a lot and know what they're doing... even if the event still FEELS like herding cats, there is actually a decent structure underneath the chaos, if you know what I mean. (Like the last one I did? Also sponsored by a ton of people and there were medics and a police escort, etc.) This one has been endorsed by: Natives Lives Matter, Minnesota Neighbors for Justice, MN Peace Action Coalition, sds @ the U of MN, Veterans for Peace, Welfare Rights Committee, Women Against Military Madness, Women's Prison Book Project, and Young Muslim Collective. Also this also means that I might get to hear from a representative from each of these groups (which expands my list of resources for more of these types of events.) It's officially run by a group called The Anti-War Committee and is about human rights, because Saturday is apparently International Human Rights Day.

There is also a protest planned at the St. Paul capitol called "Fight for the Popular Vote" both Sunday, December 18 (from noon to 8 pm) AND Monday, December 19 (8 am to 5 pm). Even if Sunday doesn't work for me, I could totally attend the Monday one at some point during the day. That seems like another possible fit for me. This one seems to be organized (at least on Facebook) by *one person* and has no list of sponsors, which makes me slightly dubious. However, the fact that the hours are such a huge range, I feel like a person could drop by at any point during the day and stay for as long as they like. Which means, that this is the sort of protest I could potentially bring Eleanor to (she'd asked to be a protest buddy at Thanksgiving.)

This protest obviously meant as a rally for those of us angry about the Electoral College system, which... while, I'm not convinced that this is anything that's going to be changed anytime soon (and so the idea of protesting, really is just to protest, not expect change), I agree with the idea that 2.5 million voters should not be disenfranchised because of something invented by a bunch of guys who were not necessarily expecting their country to span an entire continent and beyond. There are not a lot of other countries in the world that use the electoral college system, Italy being the larger/well-known ones after us, along with Burundi, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Myanmar, Trinidad and Tobago, and Vanuatu. Britain uses a simple majority. I feel like maybe the time has come for us to adopt the same. It's one thing when Gore's margin of win was 825 votes. It's another thing entirely when it's close to 2.5 million votes.

At any rate, those are two actions up-coming for me in the month of December.

Stand up! Keep fighting!