As an aside to this whole post, I’m going to say it was incredibly frustrating to see that the vast majority of protestors in Santa Cruz (about 90%) were boomers. Millennials and zoomers are the largest age demographic in the US, and we were extremely few and far between. It is pathetic to see older people willing to stand up and fight for the future of our country when the people who will inherit it show such unbelievable apathy. There are a bunch of criticisms of young people (or not that young anymore, in the case of older millennials) that are completely invalid, but it’s true that millennials believe that putting out a Twitter hashtag constitutes activism, and that zoomers will do whatever the influencers that their TikTok algorithm serves them will tell them to do.
Nonviolent protests in Minneapolis got ICE to stand down and back off. In my city, the current mayor was elected by only a couple hundred votes. If I and a few hundred people decided not to vote that day, Seattle wouldn’t have our most progressive mayor in a generation.
Cynicism is not wisdom, and memes are not action. My generation needs to learn that, because not caring will only end with us being crushed by oligarchs and techno-feudalists, and ensure that the future looks like a boot, stamping on a human face, forever.
I had a pretty eventful Saturday, and I figured it might be nice to share some photos from it. As I’m sure people are aware, the No Kings protest went on across America, from massive cities to tiny hamlets, and Seattle was no exception. I went to check it out and show my support in the fight against fascism, and it was a great time. I’m so glad that across the country and the world, there were no violent incidents at all. I worried that if some idiot tried to start some shit, the right-wing media (and probably a lot of the mainstream media too, let’s be honest) would be trying to paint this movement as a violent insurrection no matter how small the incident was. That’s how they did after George Floyd’s murder, after all. The fact that they decided to drop the “scary violent Hamas Antifa Marxists” angle for a “these are just a bunch of old white people” argument just shows how successful we were in puncturing their bubble.
First off, before heading to the Seattle Center for the protest, I had to get there. The Link was already crowded by the time I got on, and got more and more crowded with every stop.
After I got off at Westlake and grabbed donuts and coffee at Top Pot, I made my way up 5th Avenue towards the Seattle Center. By that time the speeches had been going for about an hour, but there were still plenty of late arrivals.
Then I finally arrived at the west lawn of the Seattle Center, where the speeches were being held. Back in April, I went to an earlier protest at the same site. There had been a lot of people there: tens of thousands.
This put all of that to shame.
I literally couldn’t fit through the crowds of people to see my representative, Pramila Jayapal, speak. I have been in mosh pits with less density. It was glorious.
But we had only barely begun. It was time for the march down 5th Avenue towards downtown. The atmosphere was excellent. It was like a parade, which is exactly what it should have been. The best way to fight anger and hatred is with love and joy, and there was so much of both in that march.
Even my axolotl brethren came out of the canals to join in the fun!
We passed under the monorail tracks, waving and cheering every time a train went by. I sang verses from the Monorail song from the Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”, much to the amusement of nearby fellow nineties kids.
As we approached the convention center, I broke away from the crowd because I had plans to hang out with a friend at the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. When I arrived at the convention center, it was easy enough to follow the steady stream of alternative kids to the show floor, where plenty of strange and wondersome artifacts were on display for our purchasing enjoyment, from the bones of beasts…
…to snakes in jars and butterflies in boxes…
…to beautiful art and apparel in any color you want, provided it’s black…
…to taxidermized beasts of many varieties.
I ended up buying a shirt with the Sigil of Baphomet and the legend “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL”. My friend wasn’t quite so lucky. She ended up spending nearly $200 on fox skulls and various other bones. Still, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Seattle Saturday, from coffee and donuts in the morning to bottled snakes in the afternoon, together with friends old and new.
~ Ian (listening to Psychotic Banana by Hand of Juno)
