I’ve encountered a lot of pushback over protesting, but recently I have heard it supported by someone I deeply respect.
President Barack Obama.
In a press conference in Berlin, Germany today, when asked about whether he would, like so many others, advise people to stop protesting against Trump, his response was clear.
He not only called protesting their right; he said that: “One of the great things about our democracy is it expresses itself in all sorts of ways, and that includes people protesting.”
You get that? Protesting — in this case, against Trump — is “one of the great things about our democracy.”
He also linked the protests to specific concerns anti-Trump protestors had, stating: “I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the campaign — I wouldn’t advise them to be silent.”
This seems clear to me. He’s talking about “the issues that have been raised during the course of the campaign” — emphasizing Trump’s disturbing rhetoric over his run. The terrible sexist, racist, crude behavior he has engaged in over the last several months.
And then he spurs us on, stating that we should “organize” and that doing so “matters”:
What I would advise — what I advised before the election and what I will continue to advise after the election — is that elections matter, voting matters, organizing matters, being informed on the issues matter.
As if that’s not enough, he then discusses the factor that got Trump elected — the propaganda flying in the face of facts. He emphasizes the fact that we as a country need to inculcate ourselves against such lies in the future:
If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not — and particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in soundbites and snippets off their phones — if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems….
Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation — and it’s packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television — where some overzealousness on the part of a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere — if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect.
This is the advice we need for the future.
Thank You, Obama.
The protests matter. The organizing matters. The research you do to be right on political issues so that you can help the most vulnerable in this country — it matters.
But it doesn’t matter automatically. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, either way. Because if we don’t believe that it matters, we won’t do it, and it will fail, and we will fail as a country.
We have to gear up for a long fight. This isn’t going to be over in a few weeks. I’m prepared to protest and call my representatives and fight during the entire four years. And I won’t stop writing.
I know I haven’t written about religion for awhile. That’s because, frankly, I think that in Trump we are fighting a bigger threat. And we can’t let ourselves be complacent. We have to be vigilant and ready to fight as a nation if we are going to protect the people so many of us love and care about.
Thank you for reading.
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