RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. That’s unusual for Presidents’ Day in Chicago, where the weather is typically a mournful dirge for Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, with blowing snow and biting wind. But in 2017, it was a gentle, sunny day that felt like mid-May.

A good day for a protest, and one had gathered on the riverbank opposite Trump Tower. There were lots of police nearby, but they were relaxed, without much to do. The demonstration was clearly peaceful, so I decided to walk over and see what it was about.

It was about President Donald Trump, and the demonstrators did not care for him one bit. What was interesting, though, was the cheerful, benign feel of the crowd, juxtaposed to signs saying they were victims of fascist oppression and to speakers egging them on. No one seemed to notice the inconsistency or care about it.

There were about 1,000 people, standing on the sidewalk, courteously making way for pedestrians, chatting with friends, and occasionally repeating slogans tossed out by various speakers. One was talking about transgender people, another about home foreclosures, and concluded with an attack on the new Treasury secretary and a brief chant, “Lock him up.” No one seemed to know who he was, and none had signs about housing, but everyone enjoyed a chance to repeat the line once directed at Hillary Clinton.

Another speaker tried a different tack, “The people, united, will never be divided.” Hearing that old protest bromide, I mumbled to myself, “I think that’s true by definition.” A woman standing nearby started laughing and her boyfriend said, “That’s just what I was saying.”

No one was looking for a fight. No militant communists or anarchists in the crowd, no Trump supporters there to taunt them. They just wanted to share their view that the president was a fascist, a tyrant, a dictator, and a hater of immigrants, gays, or transgender people, depending on who was speaking.

The crowd was mostly white, some who had been doing this since the 1960s, some of more recent vintages. There were singles in their 20s on lunch break, and moms and dads in their 30s, with kids tagging along for the holiday. There were surprisingly few Hispanics and even fewer African-Americans. It looked like the crowd at a Bernie Sanders rally.

I asked a couple of blacks why they thought so few were involved. “We got enough going on in our own community,” one told me. I asked if that meant there were anti-Trump demonstrations in other Chicago neighborhoods. “No,” she said, “It just means we have different problems.” Hardly a random sample but surely accurate.

Everybody seemed to be holding a sign. Nearly all of them were handwritten—the mark of a grassroots rally, not one organized by teachers unions or public employees. Those unions are backed into a corner and ready to fight, but this wasn’t their day.

Few signs even bothered with specific issues. Some scattered ones pushed for “open borders,” using those words. A few others said, “Immigrants are people,” clarifying that vexing issue. Three or four, straight off a printing press, supported Planned Parenthood. None—at least none that I saw—mentioned health care, taxes, income inequality, war, or the military. The demonstrators may well have cared about those issues, but their protest went well beyond policy differences or concrete actions by the president.

The signs and speakers opposed the very idea of a Trump presidency: “Not My President.” “Stop Fascism.” “Fake President.” “People, Not Billionaires.” And a few demanding, “Impeach Him Now.”

This crowd was so opposed to Trump that they couldn’t single out one or two main issues as grounds for a political battle. They were simply opposed to Donald Trump, full stop, and to everything he stands for.

With the right leader, they might be galvanized into a political movement. But on a beautiful Presidents’ Day in Chicago, they were just a happy crowd, guarded by polite officers, enjoying their chants about being oppressed by fascists.