I took a train to Washington D.C. on March 3 to protest what this administration is doing to our government systems. The President was to speak to Congress on March 4, and one of the national organizing groups suggested people head to D.C. The event got a bit watered down after Elon tweeted out something about this effort, and the organizing group said instead to protest at your state capitol. But I had already decided to go and the trip would also let me see for the first time my brother’s headstone in Arlington.

The protests were…fine. It felt anemic compared to the last time I was in D.C. for a protest, which was the women’s march in 2017. It felt very much Business As Usual with all the bros in their suits, talking on their phones and carrying their briefcases. I’m sick of seeing power-hungry men in suits after the comment during the Zelenskyy press conference.

There was not a lot of cohesion for the protests. One was to support Ukraine. One was to fight fascism. One was to March Forth for Democracy. I’d say a total of around 500 people for all of them? We were on a street across from the Capitol, but the police closed the street at 5pm, so the group had to move into the park located behind us, and that’s where the Refuse Fascism event was taking place. They had music and speakers, but it all felt like it was falling short of the moment. It felt like we’re using the methods of the 1960s in a 21st-century situation, where technology/social media is being wielded like an absolute sword, and one side has mastered it.

It seemed like life in D.C. was all normal. I was able to get assistance at Arlington Cemetery from an employee there, and people were visiting the monuments. Lots of supporters for the president. (I joined a solitary protester who was making a scene with a bullhorn during the noon hour right in front of the Capitol. This woman had a spine of steel. I unfurled my sign and stood as her backdrop. We were heckled by a few of his supporters, but they were difficult to hear over the bullhorn (lol).) I don’t know how one snaps out of their day-to-day life when the threat to democracy can feel so abstract, or as happening to Those People, but Not to Me. I think we all take for granted clean water, freedom of the press, freedom to protest, getting mail in a timely fashion, getting safe flu shots, getting our medicine at a pharmacy, making family planning decisions for ourselves. We are now learning that republicans are not speaking out against what’s happening (if they disagree) because they are scared for their safety. Then this is already not a democracy. Fear of political violence shouldn’t happen in a fair and secure representative democracy.

When I read about protests in other countries, people come together en masse to fuck up the systems. They stop trains. The slowdown highway traffic. They flood into their capital and fill the streets with angry bodies (thinking of South Korea when the president declared martial law). Mass disruption to the systems that are allowing us, right now, to just keep on keeping on. Our country is so big, and it’s so easy to feel that something happening eight hours away is not happening to me, even though we are in the same country, experiencing the same government. (And, of course, many are thrilled with seeing all the destruction.)

I read this poem on my way home after the protest and it captured my mood. Particularly the lines:

No blackouts, no rolling of tanks,
but yup, we’ll take your democracy. Thanks.

I don’t know how the protests will continue to go in the face of what’s happening. But I have made one decision for myself and that is to basically do an economic blackout all the time as much as possible (not aiming for purity, but making my best effort). Buying groceries from a regionally-owned grocery store. Buying used. No Amazon. No Target. No Facebook. No Meta. No Google. No shopping, generally (to be honest, it’s really lost its appeal these days). Avoiding food chains. I truly think the only thing that these clowns will respond to is a weak market. This is my small way of kicking sand in the gears of this monstrous machine. I won’t make a difference alone (I’m only a grain!), but maybe if enough of us do it, it will be noticeable.

Who really needs to buy more shit anyway?