Dump Trump Crawl!

Thursday night I joined a few hundred of my friends from  Rise & Resist, ACT UP, the anti war movement, and Occupy for the Dump Trump Crawl. 

The details of the action:

On the eve of the election being certified by Congress, we are going to gather and march to show our resistance to Trump. We will highlight his conflicts of interests, and his inappropriate and dangerous cabinet picks. We will resist at every opportunity.

Join Rise & Resist at Trump Park Avenue (502 Park Ave bw 59/60th Sts) January 5th at 5PM to march in solidarity!

Visit our Trump Protest Guide via Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/zza6v2z

This simple 40 minute circuit, will touch half of Trump's net asset value in real estate. More often then not, the 'Trump' name on a building does not equal ownership.

Trump Park Ave • Niketown • Trump Tower • 1290 Ave of the Americas • Trump Parc • Trump International

So many friends from actions past were there to express their concern about what looks like a fascist turn in our country.  

There was a woman in stroller who had come all the way from White Plains, trying to make her way. She fell behind so the marshals went to find her.

Here we go again, I said to my friend Jenny, who I was arrested with at the Carlyle Group during the days before the Iraq War.  She has been at it, in the streets since the 1960's.

My friend Jim and I talked about the dialectics of such moments, open to bits of light and darkness.  Its not all darkness.  He told me he posted a picture of himself sleeping in 1968 when a generation fought the Viet Nam War and helped beat it back.

We've been here before and we crawled our way back out of the darkness.

And we'll do it again, organizing, marching, lobbying, using direct action, reaching out to each other, and looking out.  What won't help is leaving, running from the scene or detaching. Civil society runs the show.  We have to be smart and out in the streets, at the community forums, in local politics beating back the new assault on the poor.

Marching, I ran into a woman on the street, laying in a sheet, as if to sleep.  I gave her money and asked if she had a place to stay. Yes, she said, a shelter in queens. Get up and get into a coffee shop. Warm up, I implored her.

Sometimes people get so cold they get disoriented and fail to make it home.
I hope she did.

Its going to be a cold winter.

Erik McGregor always takes the best pictures. I was glad to run into him.

Bottom four photographs by Erik R. McGregor with Jamie Leo and Benjamin Shepard.  The NYC Trump Resistance Group organized a DUMP TRUMP CRAWL through midtown Manhattan on Thursday, January 5, 2017, in protest of President-elect Trump on the eve of the Congressional count of the Electoral College votes and his confirmation; to highlight the vast conflicts of interest that his business holdings represent.