Yesterday I was in Trader Joe’s (so busy on Sundays) and after telling my cashier about how sick I was this weekend (so sick), the conversation moved away from me (sad) to protests (but good). My cashier was understandably woke, because she works at Trader Joe’s and had bleached blonde hair/dark roots, and we talked about how promising it was that protests were popping up organically.
“The Women’s March was planned months in advance,” she said, “but the protests at the airport were totally random.”
And as I was waiting for the T, I rolled that around in my head. All around the country, people gathered over the weekend at airports to protest President Trump’s new immigration ban. And on Sunday, a protest gathered in Boston’s Copley Square. Every news station is covering these protests (with varying degrees of veracity) but it’s still striking to see cardboard signs covered in snow in Anchorage, Alaska and small towns in the Midwest.
It’s striking to see how this spirit, this undefinable, amorphous rebellious spirit, seems to be untouched by the Trump administration. And it’s striking to see how the separations that allowed his campaign to thrive are not getting in the way of organic resistances.
At the Women’s March, I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I was not alone. Since Nov. 8, it’s felt like an “every man for himself” attitude. Our political leaders didn’t voice their opinions immediately. People were in shock. But ever since Trump was elected into the highest office in the land, something has shifted. People have woken up.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order to suspend the U.S. refugee program for four months and put into place a 90-day ban on nationals coming from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The result was immediate chaos as the ban was immediately rolled out, leading to unlawful detainments of green card holders, international students and employees. Late Saturday, a federal judge in New York issued a temporary injunction that halted the immediate deportation of those detained, and late Sunday the new Department of Homeland Security chief issued a statement that green card holders, lawful permanent residents of the U.S., would not be affected by the ban.
But in the space of a weekend, people rose up to fight back. Rather than be cowed by the authority of the White House or the fear of retribution, people took their anger into their own hands and protested.
As both a member of the media and a millennial, it’s an interesting line to be straddling. The media seems to be confused as to how to go forward. Some have called for a ban on White House higher-ups appearing on television (like Kellyanne Conway), others have struggled to retain the usual order. There is no precedent for how to proceed, so the media is having to deal with tradition versus ethics; the two are very much at odds right now.
But as a millennial and a citizen, it’s heartening to see that there is no such hesitation amongst my peers. We are angry, rightfully so, and we are unafraid to protest. And where the media is faltering, the people are pushing forward. Because that’s something the White House can’t stop. They can cut off access to the media and demean reporters and call for their firings, but the White House can’t stop the tide of people entirely. People are smart and angry and powerful.
In the span of more than a week, the White House has gone from the residence of the Obamas and a pillar of integrity to something shadowy and dark and scary. It has become something that reporters have to work around, have to balance how much truth they can tell versus how much access they can get. But instead of cowering in our homes and sticking our heads in the sand, people are taking the opposite approach.
