At first disillusioned, I was wrong about protesting

The Hands Off protests was a show of unified strength, but the social media discourse on protesting proved that we aren’t exactly united either.

Crowd swells and a roaring rumble of voices is not a sensory experience that I enjoy. I may have fed off that energy once, but everything changed in the political landscape of COVID, Black Lives Matter, and Anti-Asian Hate. Not to mention age. Vulnerability and anxiety are two unwanted companions that are hitching a free ride on this wild odyssey that is menopause and aging. And yet, I found myself making my way to Bryant Park on Saturday afternoon, riding a city bus up 6th Ave and getting off at 42nd Street, enveloped by a swarm of New Yorkers milling about with signs, trying to self organize.

Back in November when I wrote this post-election newsletter, I questioned the effectiveness of protesting. My gut reaction in that raw moment was to sit them out this time around. Many women on social media, specifically women of color and Black women in particular, shared the same sentiment. We were shocked and numb after the 2016 election, but last November’s outcome was marked by disillusionment and disgust. Protesting at that moment felt pointless, ineffective, and performative, and for many of us, it also didn’t feel safe.

Eighty days into this presidency and I’ve changed my mind. Growing more exasperated, not only with the reckless and cruel policies of this administration, but also of the capitulation of law firms, universities, and the media, I’ve become restless to do something other than call my senators. Events leading up to the protest may have also added more fire as it came right on the heels of Cory Booker’s record-breaking filibuster and a self-inflicted, totally nonsensical two day rout of the stock market.

Why aren’t there any protests???
I see this question posed from people outside the U.S. on social media all the time.

Americans are protesting, but news media isn’t reporting it. Additionally, the U.S. is so geographically large that our protests aren’t going to have the same optics as millions of people out in the streets in, say, Belgrade or Paris.

Apathy, and there’s plenty of it, is one thing, but helplessness gnaws at your soul like watching someone drown when you don’t know how to swim. Hopelessness is that feeling of sinking, unabated. Many of us are feeling both right now. We’re examining for ourselves what our own individual activism looks like while we try and determine our personal thresholds of what and how much we can tolerate. Sure, joy is resistance, but that is more about self-preservation—it’s not going to spark actual change.

Neither will protests, many will argue. I don’t necessarily believe it will either, not in the same way a nation like South Korea can mobilize a very unified, very focused and sustained demand of impeachment of their presidents. Martial law and an autocracy is very much in the living memory of its citizens. In the U.S., our efforts are more fragmented and the partisan gridlock is impenetrable.

But this particular march wasn’t really about enacting change; nobody was under the illusion that we could achieve that by standing in a park waving a sign or that these rallies would lead people directly to polls. Many of us went because we wanted to feel something other than fear and anger. What we got from that day was community, humanity, and hope. We showed the world and gave them hope that Americans aren’t just sitting by and letting this administration destroy our democracy and isolate ourselves from the rest of the world.

In NYC, the weather didn’t cooperate. It was cold, it was raining, and my feet were already wet from an earlier downpour, a deluge of rain that was not in the morning forecast. But I stood next to two elderly women who looked to be in their 80s, queuing up on 42nd street in their raincoats and plastic rain bonnets, clutching their signs ready to walk. That was the first time I teared up.

The second was when we marched down 5th Ave, past the New York Public Library guarded by Patience and Fortitude, the pair of majestic marble lions that sit at the library entrance. The lions were named by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s after two qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to get through the Great Depression.

I’ve been protesting since my teens, but I don’t remember ever tearing up before, not like this, and certainly not at the smaller protest I had attended a few weekends before. But then it occurred to me that what I was feeling was very much a cathartic release. All that pent up frustration, fear, and anger of the past few months, taking in the assaults to our rights, to the gutting of federal agencies, detaining and revoking student visas without due process, the erasure of women and people of color from websites, the war against DEI, and the threats to academic freedom at our universities—just ALL OF IT! And suddenly, my vision got blurred from a well of tears and I became a blubbering, hormonal weirdo crying at a protest.

There is a lot of grief right now for our country. Things feel really dark in a way that many of us have never felt before. Some are mourning the America they thought they knew, but others are waking up to the fact that this country really never was great for many of their fellow Americans. For this reason alone, the protests were a powerful collective statement and a much-needed affirmation that we are not alone in our grief. That energy was transformative to many Americans who came out to protest for the first time in their lives.

It was hard to tell how large this protest was on the ground. But overhead images showed crowds of about 100,000 in NYC stretching for 25+ blocks.

By the time I came home and jumped on social media, however, most of the good energy vibes dissipated.

My feed on Threads was initially filled with celebratory posts and reposts of images from protests all over the country. People are encouraged to share with a mission to amplify what the news will not. But as the day went on, it devolved into a feed filled with hot takes and opinions on how to protest, how not to protest, and debates on what a protest actually is. There were whole threads questioning the absence of certain demographics that were notably missing at the rallies, posts criticizing parents for bringing their children to something that could have turned violent on a dime, and others berating participants for uploading videos and not protecting protestor identity (fair).

Experienced activists argued that the Hands Off movement weren’t really protests because it didn’t disrupt anything. Some claimed that Palestinian support was intentionally suppressed. Others declared that protests aren’t meant to be joyous, but to make specific demands, which the Hands Off movement lacked (true). The lack of police presence was proof to Black Americans that the protests were peaceful with no arrests or agitators because of who showed up and who didn’t. It sent a clear message of hypocrisy on a double standard that they already know exists.

Everything got supercharged to ridiculous levels when a post went viral and all of Threads dogpiled on this one woman for her (unfortunately vapid) first-time protest observations. When she double downed on her remarks, the gloves were off. The initial judgement and criticism was deserved, but digital mob mentality creates an emotionally charged online environment that can often derail the core message.

But two issues kept surfacing and is worth a mention:

“Why were the protesters predominantly older and white?”
“Where is Gen Z?”

These aren’t easy questions to answer and there’s a lot of nuance that may get glossed over here without diving deep. It deserves deeper conversations though because it’s absolutely true that protests since he took office have largely been attended by older, white Americans. The optics are palpable. Some of the messaging on social media suggest that People of Color, and especially Black Americans should sit them out due to safety and ICE concerns. Others express that protesting is a fight white Americans need to take on this time around since the election was lost largely due to the majority white vote.

College students are also reeling from seeing their fellow classmates get snatched up by ICE agents or suspended from school because of activities from last year’s campus protests. I also suspect there’s a level of apathy at play because this version of America is the only America young people know. The visuals of mostly Boomer and Gen X at these protests aren’t exactly helping to inspire young people to join.

I have no idea where Asian Americans stand. None of my Asian friends made any plans to go in the same way we organized back in 2017, but instead choose to engage in other forms of activism. I didn’t see too many at the NYC march either. I’m also seeing references to “pale” Americans on social media and I’m scratching my head wondering if this is referring to people like me, which admittedly, is off-putting.

I think it’s remarkable that for many Americans, the Hands Off protests were their first. But the bigger issue exposed from the reactionary online discourse is that the movement is a microcosmic mirror of how divided the Democrats and the left are. We aren’t alone, but we aren’t exactly united either.

American individualism continues to influence our politics and we already know that the two party system is broken. The long work ahead not only involves courage to resist the threats and bullying tactics of this current administration, but we also need to find a way to work collectively to fight the oppression. We should have a goal to get vulnerable Congressional Republicans nervous about midterm elections. I’m starting to believe the protests will help if sustained demonstrations continue to grow in numbers. Regardless of who shows up, last Saturday sparked hope and solidarity. That is a priceless thing.

Lastly, there’s this that I posted on notes.

Hang tight, friends, -JP

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Related reading

Stand by or stand up. Decide who you are.

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A roundup of links

To read:

• You Can Stop Asking Where the Mass Opposition Is. It’s Everywhere (Mother Jones)
  “That Saturday’s protests happened at all is notable. After Trump’s inauguration was not met with massive demonstrations, as it had been in 2017, a New York Times story declared the “Resistance” era over.”

• Chinese woman detained by US border patrol in Arizona dies by suicide (The Guardian)
  The administration is aiming to spend $45 Billion to Expand Immigrant Detention. Look, people are scared and for good reason. Tragic stories like this one is likely to be swept under the rug.

• 'Every day, every single customer': Tariffs hit close to home inside Asian grocers (NPR)
  They are coming for our food and way of life!

• De-extinction company announces that the dire wolf is back (Ars Technica)
  You’ve likely heard about this story of a biotech company claiming to have brought back dire wolves from extinction, but it’s not technically true. Still, pretty wild stuff.

• 3D-printed ‘skin’ could make testing cosmetics on animals obsolete Researchers made a bioengineered hydrogel composite filled with living human cells. (Popular Science)
  Hey, look at that! Science research is useful!

• DRIFT on its robotic, softly swaying installation for AUDI at portrait milano (Designboom)
  I’ve long admired the work of Drift, the artist duo of Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, and was lucky enough to catch an immersive installation a few years back that made a huge impression. Here is their latest work at Milan Design Week.

To make and eat:

• Arroz con Pollo with Brown Rice (Mahatma)
  We’ve been looking for variations of chicken & rice that uses brown rice and this recipe was quite good. Tomatoes and green olives here are key.

To watch:

• Rachel Maddow dedicated 20 minutes of her show to cover the protests, making her one of the only journalists to give it more than a cursory mention on a mainstream network. She also reposted every Bluesky post on the protests that she was tagged in.