No Kings weekend, June 14-15, promises to be the largest protest event in the United States in over 50 years. In the SC Lowcountry, five separate demonstrations are planned. See our TIDELC calendar as we fill in the details. It is also the beginning of our Liberate Our Lowcountry Campaign, Five Weeks for Freedom campaign. We will raise the new Mary Flag in Summerville on Saturday at the demonstration there at 9:30 for the first time. When the flag goes up, we'll fully activate the first iteration of TIDELC, our new communication network for Lowcountry Progressives.
This large, local response, which is part of a massive national uprising that has already begun, is a challenge to Trump's agenda for America: cruel, stupid, and repressive. Trump's birthday is June 14. It's Flag Day and the birthday of the US Army, which Trump plans to have fighting the people it is supposed to defend in the streets. The military is already fighting the people of Los Angeles in circumstances so shrouded in disinformation that we can't tell what is happening on the ground.
Los Angeles warns us that if we don't stand up now, in huge numbers, we may not be able to do so later. Trump will attempt to terrorize the population into surrendering our democracy for protection from monsters which exist only in Stephen Miller's imagination, beasts capable of eating nothing but our freedom. This night is already long, and the resistance cannot sleep, lest the dark win.
Our light, shown above, at the "Home of the Brave" in Mount Pleasant, SC (A predominantly Republican suburb just North of Charleston, SC) is predictably being more. We're members of the Burning Man community, so lighting and its meaning loom large in our imagination. However, most people will be choosing a simple electric candle, available at any craft or discount store.
Our inexpensive, solar-powered light came from Amazon. It twinkles in several modes and echoes the massive burst of light and energy that began our universe and began pushing back the darkness. It stands and shines between two flags: a 15-star, "Star Spangled Banner" (we don't fly the modern US Flag any longer) and the flag of Ukraine. When they arrive, the center bracket will be used to fly one of the new version of our local Mary Flags.
The lights we bought are, came in a set of two. We'll be giving the other to Linda Saylor, our activist sister in Brownsville (Summerville, SC). We're proud of our porch, but Linda's is something special. Over 50 years ago, she stood next to her Grandfather as he held off the Klu Klux Klan with a loaded shotgun while they burned a cross in the street in front of his home. Had they attempted to breach his fence and burn it in his lawn, they would have died and the Summerville Klan knew it. He raised Linda and her family to be tough, and tough they still are now. Here Linda is organizing Brownsville, Lincolnville, Ladson, and Summerville for No King's Day (Video).
At this point, America is about the kind of person you are and the kind of light you send out. You can be like the cowardly Klansmen or you can stand like the demonstrators in LA, protecting vulnerable people. You can do nothing and gamble the good guys will win this time. We might. We have in the past most of the time, but the ashfields outside the concentration camps, the dark places where there were lynching's and the vast fields of white grave markers in France do warn that waiting and hoping raises the cost of stopping fascism.
All you have to do is decide what the future is worth now and how big a gamble with it you are prepared to take. Your children and grandchildren may not have that option. We may decide for tem, this year.
Consider it all. As for us, we illuminate the American Night in resistance.
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