As of 5 minutes ago my spare bedroom is probably free if any relatively reputable people need it who don't mind a toddler or cat in the house.
Not sure what I'm doing. We're currently planning to go to the march. We would be bringing the aforementioned toddler. We expect the crowds to be huge, but not actually dangerous. The weather's also a factor. Right now it's warm but nine days from now, who knows. I don't want to walk that distance in 20 degree weather with the kid strapped to me or in a stroller, but I also don't want to rely on buses on those days. I think we have no other plans for that weekend so could probably at least drop in at a meetup, but I'm expecting the unexpected then.
My particular attendance is certainly the least important part of the post, but I did recall several folks mentioning they intended to be there so thought we might want to chat in advance. I will be attending with my wife and daughter from late Friday night through Monday morning, massively overpaying for a hotel room near Washington Nat'l. Not sure of schedule outside of the March other than intending to be tourists on Sunday probably hitting the Holocaust Museum at a minimum. Some other extended family members may be in town as well potentially complicating things, but if something is planned here first I can maybe avoid them altogether schedule around it (also not sure of wife/daughter's appetite for meeting the imaginaries).
Other than that I'm in... Everyone else plan away unconstrained.
I had been planning to go to DC, but then flaked out of a combination of laziness and vague concerns about intersectionality that should not be construed as thinking it's a bad idea for anyone else to go. So I'll be marching to Trump Tower here.
I'll be there to represent the critical over-60 Midwestern-bred upper middle class white male demo. (I'll reiterate an offer I've made several times to my family and maybe here. If you need to kill me as a part of ridding the world of the existential menace that group represents to the planet go ahead; I completely understand. Offer valid for any God, demigod or other minor deity with the means to do that.)
(I am appalled at the level of non-constructive anger I continue to burden myself and others with.)
I'll be good in Washington, though.
3: Could you make that less vague? Or if you don't want to be on the spot, I'd be happy enough to see a link to someone reputable and/or thoughtful discussing it. Most of the concern I've seen about it is coming from /r/washingtondc which I don't trust too much on this issue in general and has been a shitshow about this topic in two active threads I see at the moment.
Will be joining the London march, for solidarity. With family.
4: When I bemoaned the current state of American political/civil life, my 14-year-old son gleefully informed me that it will all work out okay after me and my generation are dead. He was just repeating to me my own optimistic take after the election.
6: Laziness is probably a much bigger factor than any valid concern about intersectionality. And the concerns aren't terribly well thought out, and they totally shouldn't dissuade anyone else from going. But if you want me to ramble about them vaguely:
Trump is going to be fantastically horrible for poor people, minorities, gay people, women, and also everyone else. He is going to be particularly horrible for women. But he's sort of going to be particularly horrible for women in a pretty much completely standard Republican way: almost anything, policy-wise, that justifies a Women's March On Washington against Trump would justify one against any Republican candidate.
He also seems to personally be a rapist (by Ivana's account), serial committer of sexual assault (by his own account), and says horrifyingly misogynistic things, and that what seems to be driving the energy behind the march specifically as a women's march. At which point, I start chasing my tail worrying that while those are horrible things, they're sort of horrible on a retail level -- direct injuries to maybe a couple of dozen mostly attractive mostly white women. And elevating that to the organizing principle of a movement over the systematic harm he's going to do hundreds of millions of people who will never be personally in his presence feels off.
But this is vague, and ill-thought-out, and any opposition to Trump is better than not opposing him. Mostly, I'm being lazy and thought that there were demonstrations here I could go to just as effectively.
That's really interesting and something I hadn't put my finger on.
A counter-argument could go something about how Clinton should have won and the general sexism of the country that prefers the least qualified candidate ever over a highly qualified woman, within margin of EC error.
I mean, generally, I think being holier-than-thou about who's organizing your mass demonstration is a mistake. Unless it's straightforwardly evil, whatever gets people in the streets on generally the right side of things is good. I'm just not knitting pussy hats.
Sweaters? I think they'd had to be cardigans.
I think they'd had to be cardigans.
Typical male.
They should march really slowly so that everybody knows they're not russian.
The CT thread about intersectionality vis a vis the march is interesting, in large part because Belle's comments are consistently good.
God, "arge-bargle" is such a great word. I haven't heard it in ages. (From the CT link.)
My wife, a friend, and I will be heading down on Friday afternoon, staying until Sunday sometime. We're staying by the Ballston metro.
Wait, we have to cite weird Britishisms now?
Blimey! (From Monty Python, probably).
9.3: I find this quite different than my reaction. That a man who admits such behavior succeeded against a woman is to me is just a uniquely staggering indictment of our country, and I think imperils many, many women on many fronts beyond politics and policy.
AB was planning on going, then demurred, but I've been encouraging. However, her aunt's husband died the other day, and she spent 10 hours in transit to SE PA today, so the odds of a last-minute DC trip next weekend seem slender at best.
Maybe all 4 of us will go to the local march. 11 and 10.2 are where I am on the whole issue. More broadly, Lindsay Beyerstein's recent FB post captures almost 100% of my response to left/liberal policing over the past 3 months:
"You don't just get to join because now you're scared, too," read the post. "I was born scared."The number of people who apparently view the rise of America's first dictator as a great opportunity for sniping at the insufficiently pure is fucking nauseating. You'd be shocked how rarely I sneered at people who came out to support our park fight, "Oh, you just started caring about urban planning issues?"Yes, you do get to join, even if you just got scared recently. That's how mass movements work.
On the ideological position of the march.
My back's been acting up but if it stabilizes I'll probably go to the march. A meetup after or before would be nice.
21: That's fantastic. And I'm honestly unsurprised. No guarantee they'd end up here, of course, but the narrative that it was primarily about UMC white women who wanted to get their steps in or whatever struck me as preening lefty BS. I'd note that one thing in that article is that an unapologetic call for Hyde Amendment repeal was/is controversial; but it was Clinton's position, and not one that was driven by Sanders. But lefty heroes were too busy shrieking "neoliberalism" to notice, apparently.
Btocked? Maybe a touch.
I've thought about going to the march in Helena, and also thought about spending the day (and weekend) in Canada.
I can't understand how to get from 9 to the conclusion that LB or any other particular woman (or person) shouldn't participate in the march. All 9 seems to suggest is that women should be planning exactly the same sort of march / political resistance against any government unified under the current extremist Republican Party, because, broadly speaking, they would all be similarly horrible. And that seems... right? I don't think women broadly would or should be meaningfully less upset if Pence were president with a republican congress instead of Trump. (Or Cruz, or...) But why exactly does that make it problematic to protest Trump? I'm lost.
If I'm around I'll be up for meeting up. Honestly though, I want to flee the National Capital Region.
9, 15, 21: thanks, that clarifies things. BW makes a good argument.
25: The viscerally offensive things about Trump are what he's personally done and said. His policies on racial and gender issues, while horrible, are not meaningfully more horrible than any other Republican. If one actually would protest any other Republican, then it's ideologically consistent to protest Trump, but I admit I probably wouldn't protest other candidates. (I mean, are we comparing him to previous Republican nominees, the other primary candidates, or what? And how did the campaigns go in the alternate history that resulted in a different Republican winning?) Consistency aside, objections to Republican policies get too easily diverted by Trump's personal horribleness. Other Republicans can and will decry Trump personally, or dismiss it as locker room banter and express confidence he'd never actually do it, or whatever, while continuing to hold all the same policies as him. Any protest of Republican policies should be focused on those policies, not Trump himself.
I'm not saying I actually believe that. Like I said, I'm currently planning to protest, and by its nature a protest is about more than expressing an ideologically coherent position. But I feel obligated to argue in defense of laziness.
9: This feels like the point where a laser focus on policy becomes less helpful than usual. Although Trump's policies on gender issues, reproductive freedom, etc. are equally bad, doesn't the entirety of his personality and history, combined with his victory and unrepentance, effectively send its own message? He assaulted women his whole career and kept it from hurting him with a combination of lies, intimidation, money, and just coasting on the deference powerful men receive by default. It models to all men a vision of who's really in charge, of the male-dominated culture which, say, defunding PP only enables more indirectly. Not that Cruz, Rubio, etc. don't also militate in this direction, but it's a lot more deniable from them. It's a difference in kind on women's issues that I suspect adds up to a difference in degree.
28: Yeah, I'm really not sure of myself on this at all, especially with how solid the platform looks now (it wasn't out yet when I was being concerned).
Ah, so maybe not as many attending as I had assumed (to the OP).
This piece in the LRB by Rebecca Solnit pretty well captures my feeling on many of the uniquely bad parts of the past year's developments* (although I think both the headline and subhead are very misleading).
Although most nat'l Republican politicians match a majority of these descriptors: a reckless, unstable, ignorant, inane, infinitely vulgar, climate-change-denying white-nationalist misogynist with authoritarian ambitions and kleptocratic plans.
I'm going, but in the most streamlined way, not even spending one night. Sorry!
Friends and neighbors are riding a bus to DC, marching, and then getting on the bus back to Chicago. I don't know what they'll eat but they're basically sleeping on the bus.
We were originally going to do the bus in and out but decided we wanted to try to be tourists and with 3 the costs weren't *too* unreasonable.
This is mildly disconcerting--I'm guessing a result of disagreements in handling of inauguration events and demonstrations.
The head of the D.C. National Guard, Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz, said Friday that he has been ordered removed from his command effective Jan. 20, 12:01 p.m., just as Donald Trump is sworn in as president....
"The timing is extremely unusual," Schwartz said in an interview Friday morning, confirming a memo announcing his ouster that was obtained by The Washington Post. During the inauguration, Schwartz would command not only the members of the D.C. guard but also an additional 5,000 troops sent in from across the country to help. He also would oversee military air support protecting the nation's capital during the inauguration.Serves at discretion of the President. Black guy.
More disconcerting for the long term than for next weekend specifically.
Serves at discretion of the President. Black guy.
He is now, but you should see the new fuck.
FWIW, I think I'm going to go to the Austin version.
See you there, heebs.
I am a tiny bit curious why/how Trump is doing so much stuff before he's actually president, like the above or Congressional hearings on his nominees to various offices. Is this normal? Is it normal with a friendly Congress? Is a little stuff like this normal, and it's weird how much he's doing? I mean, I've already gathered that telling people to leave their jobs the minute he takes office is not normal. I guess what I'm curious about is (a) hearings on nominees who weren't nominated by the current President, and (b) if Trump has the legal authority to do this stuff now or if it's a de facto thing that Congress or the current administration are going along with to make it smooth.
I'm guessing a result of disagreements in handling of inauguration events and demonstrations.
Maybe. I'm wondering if this guy was seen as responsible for issuing permits to the Women's March.
40: If so it would be another example of Trump not understanding how things work. The National Park Service handles permitting for stuff like that.
There was some static about that, tho. It appears that there may have been an attempt by the inaugation committee to keep a lid on protests by gumming up the NPS permit process. I would imagine another angle they may have tried would have been security related, and possibly the General wouldn't go along with that.
Does he know the kings of England and quote the fights historical?
42.last makes sense to me.
I suspect there is (always) a bit more flexibility in the name of a smooth transition, but the 12:01 thing sounds more like retribution for being disagreeable .
Sometimes you need to fire a General pour encourager les autres. Sad!
I'll be in DC for the march; staying with friend in DuPont Circle Thurs-Mon.
So who wants to host a meet-up where we watch the inauguration on tv and get really really drunk? I don't know if the person I'm staying with would volunteer her place, but I can ask.
Activists are calling to avoid watching the inauguration on TV, to deny HWMNBN the ratings. (Keeping the TV on something different may aid in that, I'm not sure. May not matter if you're just streaming or watching broadcast rather than cable/satellite.)
And miss the Springsteen cover band? That's crazy talk.
48 Are rating derived in some way other than from the Neilsen families these days?
I'm thinking that "I Stand with John Lewis" is a fine slogan for those of us planning to skip the festivities.
I stand with John Lewis (in 2017 when I'm hopeful that doesn't involve getting beaten to a pulp).
"I'm thinking that "I Stand with John Lewis" is a fine slogan for those of us planning to skip the festivities."
Never Knowingly Disenfranchised.
All Californian posters and lurkers, please call your local reps office tomorrow morning and respectfully, politely BUT strongly urge your rep to boycott the inauguration, then call your local offices for Feinstein and Harris and do the same. Unless your rep is Lee, Takano, DeSaulnier, Huffman, Lieu or Chu, in which case call to thank and support them!
Perhaps we could have a separate post on this?