It felt like 8℉ as we stood outside the White Plains Federal Courthouse. Everyone was chilled to the bone, and my gloves weren’t warm enough to allow me to keep holding up my protest sign. Eventually, I folded up my sign and kept my hands in my pockets for warmth.
Nevertheless, a fair crowd had turned up for Tuesday’s Free America Walkout demonstration—if Minnesotans could tolerate the cold, so could we. It was one of 800+ demonstrations taking place nationwide that day. The speakers included ministers, representatives from the Hispanic community, Indivisible, the ACLU, and Common Cause, and local city, county and state officer holders. Federal agents emerged from the courthouse every now and then to make sure we stayed off the courthouse steps but otherwise did not interfere.
Our local federal courthouse does not house ICE agents like the one south of us in NYC. It was chosen as the demonstration venue merely because it was the nearest symbol of the federal government. ICE is planning to build a detention facility 45 miles north of White Plains— yet another outpost of the new American Gulag Archipelago being built by for-profit prison companies like CoreCivic and the GEO Group and being financed by banks like Citizens Bank. Nine national banks have promised to have nothing to do with ICE, but Citizens Bank is going full speed ahead with the project. Next Saturday, people all over the Northeast will boycott and demonstrate at their local Citizens Bank offices. The recent successful boycotts of Avelo Airlines and Spotify have shown how effective economic pressure can be.
It’s small actions like these—demonstrations, boycotts, Minnesotans blowing their whistles and filming with their cellphones, Portlanders taking to the streets in frog costumes—that will eventually defeat Trump’s Neo-Royalist regime. The vast majority of Americans detest ICE’s Gestapo tactics and oppose Trump’s threatened Anschluss of Greenland. They are horrified by the murder of Renee Nicole Good.
If we continue to stand up, protest, witness, and peacefully resist at every opportunity and by every means at our disposal, we will eventually prevail. Armed with only our moral compasses and our dogged persistence, we will generate a national groundswell of revulsion that will sweep Trump and his enablers out of office. Only 286 days remain until the midterms when we retake the House of Representatives and establish our first beachhead in the struggle against Trump’s Reign of Awfulness.
The important thing is not to get weary or disheartened along the way. We still have many miles to go, and Trump still has more aces up his sleeve. He will try to frighten and intimidate us. But if we continue to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, we have nothing to fear. We will have boundless hearts ready to endure what we must and prepared to go the distance.
Maintain open eyes and hearts, keep strong backs, and keep the faith!