Dancing Frogs
Before we get started, here’s a funny story out of Portland. There is an ongoing demonstration in front of the ICE facility there. It’s not the nightly “battle” of the George Floyd era. It’s simply folks expressing their displeasure with the actions of ICE in Portland. There are regular folks with signs and there are religious leaders praying for ICE to stop. One minister was shot in the head by ICE with a pepper ball from the roof of the building (that’s true).
And then, there’s the dancing frogs. The frogs captured the imagination of the Nation, big, cartoony frogs standing up to ICE agents in full battle regalia. Supposedly, one day the frogs showed up with fishing poles, donuts on the hook as bait. What were they doing: ICE fishing.
I admit,I had a tough time “fact-checking” that story – but even if it’s just a “tale” (a frog tail?) it’s still a good one. If they didn’t do that, they should.
Number Six
Saturday I was Umpire number Six at the Central District Cross Country Championships. An umpire at a cross country meet is a passive task. You watch the runners go by (twice each race, twelve races total). You make sure they stay on the course, in between the white lines painted on the grass. Umpires watch and report athletes who foul each other in some way, or discover athletes who are in illegal uniforms, or call out other illegal aids from non-competitors. And, a couple of times during the six hour meet, I went to the aid of an injured athlete.
If all that sounds exciting, it really wasn’t. The mere presence of umpires keeps runners from doing anything stupid. So, for most of the day I’m “just an observer”, a guy in a white shirt with a white signal flag, trying not to get “coach-y” and get caught up in the competition. And, of course, I get to see many old friends from my decades as a high school cross country coach.
Cross Country runners are their teammates best fans. When the boys team is running, the girls team is cheering and vice versa. And, inevitably, there’s “that parent” with the cowbell (just what we need, more cowbells!!). Folks say some interesting things out there on the course, many that I don’t think would motivate me as a runner with two miles in and one more to go.
So it didn’t surprise me to hear chanting during the race. But this chant broke my intense “official” concentration: “O-H, I-O, Donald Trump has got to go!!!!”.
Down the Road
That wasn’t part of the meet. But just down the road, hundreds of Americans were protesting the Trump Administration in the “No Kings” march. It was the local town; Hilliard’s version of the event. And there were smaller marches all over Central Ohio; in Mt Gilead and Pickerington, Newark and Westerville, Mt. Vernon, Grove City and in deep-red Somerset out in Perry County, as well as the “big” rally downtown at the Statehouse.
They joined an estimated seven million Americans who rallied, marched and chanted on October 18th. The “No Kings” movement is a demonstration of Americans showing “No Fear” of retribution by the Trump Administration. They sent a message, one that MAGA-Republicans certainly heard. “No Kings” wasn’t the radical-left, George Soros backed, “Antifa”, undocumented, Marxist, Communist, America “hating” violent rioters that President Trump, Speaker Johnson and the rest warned about. They were Moms and Dads with their kids, Grandparents with white hair, teenagers in their first demonstration, and just regular folks who finally found a way to stand up against the America we are becoming. They were NOT AFRAID, something that it’s getting harder to say in this era of MAGA repression.
No one was arrested. Seven million demonstrators: no violence, burning, overturned cars, or tear gas. The only police actions were to stop the few counter-demonstrations that went too far.
Hope
What did they achieve? In a one word answer, hope. Many opponents of the Trump Administration worry that they are alone, isolated from the “Resistance”. They feel helpless against the impact of tariffs, ICE “vanishing” neighbors down the street, and a President who makes a public spectacle of executing Venezuelan fisherman on the high seas.
Seven million Americans stood up on Saturday. Some even missed their Saturday college football game on TV, as if that was some kind of American sin. Gosh, even in O-H-I-O (if you know, you know) the big rally with ten thousand people happened right after the Buckeyes kicked off in Wisconsin. It didn’t matter. Standing up to Trump authoritarianism was more important.
I was unable to march. But, very quietly, under my breath, at Umpire position number six, I was joining in with the good folks of Hilliard.
They gave me hope too.
