The streets still belong to the people

“There’s something happening here…” Buffalo Springfield, 1966

There’s nothing like a good protest to make me feel like a teenager again.

Folks were out in force Saturday. “Singin’ songs and carryin’ signs” … just like the song says … it was the sixties meet the two-twenties and “Something’s happening here…what it is ain’t exactly clear...”

Right here in Winona’s Windom Park, in cities and towns New York to LA and from the embattled Canadian border to the Gulf of Whatchamacallit, people were expressing their displeasure. It was the Spirit of ’68 infused with the Spirit of ’76 –sign after sign recalling the last time American’s had enough and gave King George his comeuppance, with the clear message, if we did it once, we can do it again…

And, like we used to tell our playground antagonists, “that’s not a threat, that’s a promise.” It strikes me that The Current Resident might well take a few moments off the golf course to contemplate the post landslide (genuine in their case) trajectories of Messrs. R. Nixon and L. Johnson. Especially since his much beleaguered predecessors faced streetfuls of constituents primarily aggrieved by a single issue – Vietnam, whereas on Saturday folks were unhappy with plunging portfolios, draconian deportations, Elon’s Musk-rats, slashed budgets, arbitrary layoffs, Putin-philic policymaking, and all manner of bungling buffoonery. The message was unmistakable – there’s a lot to dislike

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So, will the message get through? Through to who is the real question. Not the Convict-in-Chief, judging from his past misbehavior we can be pretty sure of that. But there are a bunch of Republican Senators, Representatives, governors, legislators, and politician wanna-be’s who might be starting to count noses and wondering if placating the unhappy landlord from Queens is still the best of all career moves. Corporate folks and people with money in the market are already looking askance at dwindling riches and doubtless wondering how much more of this winning their bottom lines can stand. And all the rest of the folks, who voted for lower gas prices, cheaper groceries, lower interest rates, better farm prices and all the other goodies that don’t look so good as of late may be feeling at least the first twinges of buyer’s remorse and seriously beginning to wonder if their future wellbeing is really dependent upon the acquisition of Greenland.

One robin doesn’t make a spring and one demonstration doesn’t move a nation, but a parkful of people on a Saturday afternoon is good testimony that democracy ain’t dead yet … a little weak in the knees, perhaps, but more than a match for

So sing it with me, “You better stop…Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look, what’s going down…”