It’s a brutal truth, proven by history, that politics as usual never stopped an oligarchy or autocracy. Historically, stopping an oligarchic system that has grabbed a hold of the levers of power takes either a cataclysmic all-out war, as, obviously, we saw in the 20th century, or it takes a wholesale shift in public awareness — the invisible, peaceful, but unstoppable transformation in consciousness that, for example, brought down the Berlin Wall.
Let’s go with the latter, shall we?
Saturday may start small, but it may also be the start of something big: Protests are planned nationwide against the Trump and Musk administration’s privatization of power through DOGE and its attack on the basic, foundational tenets of American democracy and our American system of checks and balances.
The April 5 event is titled Hands Off! and it has been planned by a coalition of more than 100 organizational partners nationwide, from labor groups (the United Auto Workers and United Federation of Teachers) to climate-action nonprofits, free-press advocates, campaigners for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, among many others. The aim of the protest is broad. “Our message to the world is that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of a small group of power-hunger billionaires,” the organizers state.
Hands off veterans services. Hands off the national parks. Hands off Medicaid and Social Security. Hands off the Postal Service. Hands off scientific and medical research. Hands off Americans’ private data.
Here in East Hampton, as of press time Wednesday morning, 100 citizens had signed up in advance for the protest that will take place from noon to 1 p.m. along Pantigo Road in front of Town Hall. That may not sound yet like a tidal wave, but it’s a signal that at least twice that number may turn up, which would actually make it the largest political gathering on the hometown scale in living memory. Hands Off! protests are also planned for Sag Harbor, Greenport, Riverhead, and across the country.
Essential to this movement is that all participants model nonviolence and behave like rational, calm adults. We in this office won’t soon forget the disgraceful and even threatening behavior of the so-called Trump parades as they rolled down Main Street a few years ago, with angry drivers shouting insults and epithets out of pickup truck windows and Ford F-650s wielded as tools of intimidation. That is not what will unfold on Saturday. “We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values,” the organizers say.
What’s happening around the world today is a struggle between rationality and irrationality, between reason and science and the blind id of Trumpian rage that the hive mind of social media has unleashed. On Saturday, patriotic Americans will stand up on the side of not just compassion but common sense.