Enjoy Protests While You Can.

It was quite a weekend. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President in front of 1.5 million people, which surprisingly enough was the size of the crowd at the last Regina Minor Girl's Softball game I attended. We learned a new word - alternate facts. I have been familiar with them for some time, mainly from pro-birth people and the anti-extraction, anti-food, anti-agriculture crowd.  Just never knew what they were called.

Saturday millions of women the world over crowded the streets of hundreds of cities calling for an end to the patriarchy and all of its associated evils, and standing together in fear of what will happen to women's rights under the Trump/Pence administration with Republicans having achieved their dream world of full control.  Republican Jesus Christians will get their theocracy in return for allowing Republicans to rape and pillage the economy and destroy everything related to Social Justice even from before the New Deal.

Comments from Trump supporters reflect a deep desire for revenge on everyone they hate; the Other.  Women, Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, all brown people, the poor, the sick, LGBTQ.  Anyone whose attempts to garner equal rights is viewed as having diminished the privileged position of the Trumpanzees.  And Canada is desperately trying to keep up with America in that regard, though it may not be as easy. We have Kellie Leitch, Jason Kenny and now something called Kevin O'Leary all taking what lessons they can from Trump's win.  Do not write them off.  Americans made that mistake with Trump.

And Trump isn't even the one you have to worry about.  When he has outlived his usefulness to the Republicans he will be impeached and replaced by Mike Pence.  Pence you need to worry about.

Jen Psaki, (former) White House Communications Director, wrote this the day of the inauguration about the Women's March: But I have a sinking feeling in my stomach about the march. Not because I am worried about the cold or the chaos. But because I worry it will give too many people license to congratulate themselves for their activism and move on with their daily lives. 

One-day marches like this are only the beginning.  Necessary to galvanize people into action, from which will come a core group of dedicated activists who will prepare for the days ahead when real protests become absolutely necessary.  And they will. Ukrainians have learned that unless you are willing to take to the streets day after day after day and put your life on the line, protests are meaningless. The people at Standing Rock can testify to that as well.

Every demonstration, every protest teaches both sides something.  How to be more effective and how to prevent it from happening. The Kremlin learned after the protests over the rigged 2011 election and the 2012 presidential farce.  Demonstrations are limited to one person.  If they don't like you, they run three or four stooges in with you and arrest you for exceeding the limit.  Extremism is the key word in limiting communication.  The Kremlin decides what is extreme and convictions carry years of prison.  Yanukovych, at the urging of Putin, illegally passed legislation January 16th, 2014, that would have made all protests illegal.  Two days later the protesters carried the fight to Yanukovych at the cost of 100 lives but succeeded in driving him out.

While there is no denying that Obama was overall a good president, American civil liberties continued to take a severe beating, all in the name of combating terrorism.  Whistle blowers were punished as never before, NSA spying on individuals increased dramatically, police were militarized with billions of dollars in military equipment.

If you have been following Standing Rock, you an get a glimmer of how it will be when the 1% AND the Republican Jesus Theocracy are threatened.  So far Standing Rock is only dealing with the Establishment and they are getting the full meal deal. See this article about their WiFi communications difficulties.

He was the first to allege that the planes flying over were equipped with what he called "scramblers," which "fed white noise into the cell signals" to interfere with internet access at Standing Rock and "keep information from getting out." People from every corner, whether they had been on site for days or for months, would talk about their cellphone signals cutting out just as drones circled above. Mobiles would switch themselves off and on again -- not in pocket but in hand. Camera apps were opened out of nowhere, and batteries would drain by enormous percentages, killing the phones in minutes, rather than the steady decline of any device pinging back and forth searching for a signal. There were even reports of people's Gmail accounts being hacked.

And North Dakota is going one further with other states following suit to prevent protests:

In North Dakota, legislators are pushing a bill that frees from liability a motorist who accidentally runs down a protester obstructing a highway. In Minnesota, a recently introduced bill would fine demonstrators blocking a highway up to $10,000 and sentence them to a year behind bars. And in Michigan, lawmakers are considering an anti-picketing law that would increase penalties against protesters. Several Republican-held legislatures have quietly proposed legislation aimed at curtailing or criminalizing public demonstrations. 

Remember Occupy Wall Street?  Once the powers-that-be decided to act, they did.  Fast and mercilessly. In liberal cities.  Not just in New York, but in Oakland, Seattle, Berkeley. The FBI treated OWS as a potential terrorist movement from day 1, as they have with every social justice movement in their history.  

From the Guardian: The document shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

Now that the march is over, here are suggestions as to how you can stay involved.  It is aimed at Canadians but I am sure I saw several articles like this on my FB feed:

An amateur’s guide to activism for frustrated Canadians