My small town protest

 
    I live in Ashland, Ky, which is a medium sized city in Kentucky (pop: 21,154) but surrounded by smaller towns like Russell (pop: 4000). Ours is a deep Red state but people who hate tyranny and the abuses of power going on in our country do exists. I'm a crazy leftist so I could be here all day saying what I hate about Trump but let's say I dislike deportations without trial to countries where we're paying to hold people indefinitely, the Medicaid cuts to pay for rich tax cuts, the cuts to foreign aid, and those damn tariffs.

    The "No Kings" protest is one of those things that are trying to show America that Donald J. Trump is someone who does not have a mandate to do the things he does. Only together all at once can you make a loud enough noise to actually make a difference. The fact it would happen on his birthday during his expensive parade misusing money that could be used to help Americans during these times of cuts was especially symbolic.

    Well the story begins with the fact that I wanted to attend this protest because, well, if I didn't attend this protest then any political beliefs I profess are just so much talk. You can't really claim to be an anarchist or progressive if all you do is talk smack on the internet. That's not activism, that's just being a troll. Everyone can complain on the internet but it takes the absolute BARE MINIMUM of effort to show up to a protest.

    I had multiple choices of places to go for my protest and considered Huntington because it was where I went to college. It would be a thirty or forty minute, which is nothing except for the fact that I am terrified of highways. Much to my surprise, though, there was one that was in my own city (okay, Russell) and I believed that I could do that one and if no one was there then I would go to the one in Huntington. I was annoyed it wasn't at my college, though, I shouldn't have been surprised since that isn't the kind of liberal activist school that loves progress but instead money.

    Unfortunately, the internet site that said where it was going to happen was rather frustrating in its directions and just said "outside the IHOP." I knew where this was because, again, I was going to the local one but it was weird they didn't say something more concrete. Still, I showed up and hoped there would be a modest crowd.

    Aiding me in this agenda was my nieces, all three of them from my wife's side (I have a niece from my late brother as well but she lives in Colorado). I have very little craft skill so they took the poster board I bought and made some very good signs. Notably, I wanted "NO KINGS, NO MASTERS" and "TRUMP IS A VILLAIN" for simplicity. They went a little further with their own that they wrote on the back including, "TRUMP IS A RA_IST" that isn't really my bag. They couldn't attend because their mother would kill them and also had made plans that couldn't be rescheduled due to not knowing about the protest.

    There was no one, which was not a good sign. Still, I decided to stay and hoped someone would show up. The stated protest time for this was only two hours and the worst I could do was simply display my niece's homemade sign for the good folk there to gawk at. I also debated going to Huntington anyway for what I hoped would be a larger gathering.

    One thing I did get as a benefit, though, was that I got a sense of how other Kentuckians who weren't as terminally online as myself were feeling about Trump. In this case, they had decided to join the protest because while they'd never been fond of Trump, it was the fact he was going after migrant workers they knew and businesses that employed them. The cruelty and pettiness of the administration was straight in their faces. Still, seeing only the three of us show up was something deeply deflating and they were debating going over into Ohio to another larger city (Ironton, population: 10,104). Given these numbers, you probably think that Appalachia is inhabited like Fallout's America with only a general store and some burnt out building frames. You'd be half-right.

    At this time in other cities, there were crowds of eighty thousand or more so I wondered if it was really worth it but saw, to my surprise, another couple arrive to join my one-man protest. They were from a neighboring church to mine and disappointed in the crowd side just like mine. We were a bit early but didn't have much faith things would change. 

    They did, though!

    While we were waiting for nothing to happen, much to our surprise, we started to hear a chant and discovered that the protest was going on! We just were at the IHOP itself and it was at the roadside where all the cars were passing. We were not alone! There were actually hundreds of people who had showed up that we couldn't see because we'd come in through the other side of the IHOP and the parking lot was full!

    An eccentric collection of people were present including a lady dressed as a Handmaid with the white bonnet and red dress. There was rain but the nice couple traded an umbrella for one of my signs. A lot of cars honked their horns in support and some shouted obscenities at us. In the end, it was a good experience. I was a part of something greater and I'm glad to have done something, however small.