No Kings, No ICE, No Trump - The Whites Only Political Jamboree Of A Small Southern Town

Bridget Pitcher fixed the last of the cucumber sandwiches, poured the unsweet tea into thermoses, and fixed her hair.  This was to be the rally of the year, an all-purpose, big tent affair where everyone from her small Mississippi town would come out to protest the antics of Donald Trump. 

Bridget had arranged protests before - the last one that made the Columbus Dispatch was Occupy Wall Street, a heady affair to protest the concentration of wealth in the New York investment banks and to proclaim a new era of redistribution. 

That event was less well attended than Bridget had hoped, for someone had brought up the fact that Morgan Stanley had invested millions in Columbus Iron and Steel - a failing business unable to keep up with the robotic age and still noisy with lathes, mechanical presses, and power drills. 

'Invest' is not quite accurate - Morgan Stanley bought up Columbus Iron and Steel, reconfigured it completely, balanced robotics with skilled labor, and under a new name, Columbus Dynamics, Inc., hired two hundred workers. 

That and the fact that workers' 301k retirement accounts were flush with cash thanks to the surging stock market, made possible by Wall Street investment, dampened enthusiasm for the protest.

'These Jewish bankers don't keep their money under the mattress', said Alden Phillips, haberdasher, civic leader, and pastor of the Mt. Olive Baptist Church of Aberdeen. 

It was not a question of antisemitism because ninety-nine percent of the town knew that Jews were responsible for the ungodly trash coming out of Hollywood, why it was difficult to get a homeowner's loan, and how Congress had been bought by George Soros, the Rothschilds, and the Jewish bankers of Florence. 

Yet here was Phillips saying that if the Jews wanted to invest their money in Columbus, the town should take it and send them flowers, not protest the 'fulcrums of productivity', one of his stock phrases spoken from the pulpit when it came to Jesus and the Baptist Church. 

One member of the committee to organize the Occupy Wall Street protests suggested, given the idea by Phillips, that the town should be protesting the international Jewish conspiracy which was at the heart of most of America's problems. 

Bridget took the floor to politely disagree.  The Jewish conspiracy angle was a good one, but what the town was protesting was Wall Street's manipulative powers, the dangers of concentration of wealth, and the cabal of trigger happy capitalists ready to make a buck - Columbus Iron and Steel notwithstanding. 

The skein of wool, however, came unraveled, and no one could agree on just what Occupy Wall Street was or what was the purpose of the protest, so although the event went on as planned, attendance was desultory at best. 

The No Kings rally that Bridget organized was far more successful.  She recruited everyone - Walmart greeters and checkout clerks, dime store cashiers, telephone linemen, and housewives, all of whom were convinced by Bridget's impassioned appeal - Donald Trump was an autocrat, a dictator in waiting, a man bound and determined to become king, establish an imperial kingdom, and destroy democracy. 

No Kings had a nice ring to it, something more palpable and immediate than the Wall Street thing, and so it was that a good crowd, still more sparse than Bridget had hoped came out on a bright May Sunday to protest. 

As the townspeople joined the procession from the four corners of the town and from nearby Westport and Aberdeen, Bridget's colleague from the local community college said, 'I see nary a black face', and in fact none had any intention of showing up.  Although the town was now over 40 percent black, few showed any interest in Bridget's politics and less in her public assemblies.  

Years after slavery and Jim Crow, black people were still yessum and no suh darktown tarpaper shack nonvoting residents, contributing nothing in the way of taxes, leadership, ownership, or responsibility; so it was no wonder that not a soul among them had any interest in wasting a Saturday afternoon baking in the sun for some white cockamamie nonsense. 

This time around - that is, for this Big Tent affair which was going to be one grand, one-size-fits-all protest against Trump and for the environment, the black man, and the transgender - Bridget made a special effort to rally the black community. 

'I don't do no faggot shit', said Pharoah Jones to which Bridget smiled and quickly made her exit.  It took quite an effort to get her out of her white neighborhood, but in the interest of solidarity and communal solidarity she made the trip.

'I'll never do that again', she confided to her colleague.  'It was awful'.  She and the Big Tent organizers had to be satisfied with a whites only crowd. 'Just like the old days', said Bridget's 100 year old grandmother who remembered the white settled time before the diversity hoopla. 

Bridget promised to wheel her to the best street corner to watch the march, and would set up her own beach umbrella and make her special sweet tea. 

The police closed Main Street between 4th and 15th to make way for the parade, refreshment stands were set up at convenient intervals, and the football field at the high school where marchers were to end up, listen to speeches, and cheer, was festooned with banners, flags, balloons, and signs. 

There was no particular order to the event - no particular corner of the field for climate, another for black rights, and another for the gender spectrum - so it was a hodge-podge of parochial protests.  Nevertheless the spirt of protest was universal and engaging.  People hugged each other, commiserated, and prayed together.

'What is the purpose of the event', Bridget was asked by a Dispatch reporter.  'What do you intend to accomplish?'.  The reporter was recently hired by the paper because of his credentials.  He had been a journalism major at Columbia but wanted to return South to his roots.  It was a Northern, Jewish question, and Bridget fumbled and scrambled until she gathered herself and said it was about America and the dangerous direction it was taking.

The reporter, despite his polite, genteel Southern upbringing had forgotten his manners during his years in New York and pursued the issue until Bridget blurted out, 'You know quite well, sonny' and walked away. 

The whole event was not about meaning or purpose but about solidarity, camaraderie, and togetherness.  Piqued and upset by the interview, she went back to her cucumber sandwiches and hand-painted signs until her anger passed. 

This event, supposed to be the jewel in the crown, was even less attended than No Kings.  It was a ragtag affair at best, only half of the sandwiches got eaten, most marchers gave up even before they got to the football field, and the speakers spoke to only a scattering of diehard believers. 

When she was approached by a progressive community organizer from Jackson to organize another event to protest the wars in Gaza and Iran, she demurred.  

She never gave up her passion for progressive causes, and wrote letters to the editor of the Dispatch on a weekly basis, but all in all she retired her public persona and tended to her husband, Irish Setter, and two grandchildren.