Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Many cold people in the snow.



This photo of people crowding the Minnesota capitol steps (by my FB friend Sondra Mann)  still doesn't very accurately show the scale of the people who turned out last night. MoveOn.org suggested 500, but I think they counted early, because people were still streaming in as late as 5:30 pm.  Besides, those capitol steps are wide and two tiered. I would bet closer to 800-1,000, though I'm never great at guesstimating crowd-size.

I have a blurry picture that shows a much better sense of scale, which I took as I was leaving at 6 pm. They told us we could disperse after only an hour because they didn't have much in the way of "programming." (Several speakers spoke, which is, honestly, my least favorite part of protest gatherings. No one can hear them; most of them are not professional speakers and so are often rambling and boring.)  I wonder if they'd have let the protest grow naturally, how much we might have have in terms of turnout by say 7 pm or even 8 pm. I mean the protest only officially started at 5 pm!  That only gave people who might be running late a half-hour to catch the tail end of things!

Let's see, so a full recap.

I picked Shawn up early from work, because the three of us wanted to head out to Barnes & Noble to get Mason an AP Calculus booklet, which he's been agitating for. I guess he plans to take the AP Calculus test, even though he's technically NOT in AP Calculus, but CIS (College-in-School) Calculus. This is another one of those things that Mason decided _entirely_ on his own.  I have to say our laissez-faire/free range parenting seems to have really paid off with Mason. He is a better advocate for himself than we are. He's on the ground and seizes every opportunity and, even, in this case (and with his job at the Science Museum) hunts them down. So, I mean, kudos to him!

Since we were out there we stopped into Smash Burgers for dinner and discovered that the Har Mar Mall now not only has a ramen place (an Ichido) but also a new Hot Pot place. My Canadian introduced me to the joys of hot potting and now I need to convince my family of same! 

I got everyone home and grabbed my signage and extra layers of warm clothes and headed out around 4:15 pm. I left early because I wasn't sure about parking. I've parked in one of the public lots before and it's actually almost as far away from the capitol steps as the Minnesota Historical Society and I wanted to have time to get a spot, pay, put the ticket back in the car window, and hike the two and a half really LOOOOONG capitol lawn blocks up to the steps.

When I first arrived, I thought, "Oh, okay, it's going to be like this."



To be fair, I took this picture around 4:30 pm, maybe 4:45 pm. The protest hadn't even officially started.  And, as I was walking the long haul of the capitol lawn, I kept watching streams of people coming in with each light rail stop (approximately every ten minutes). So, I thought, okay, all right, we'll be a couple hundred, you know, the steps are big, they make us look small... it'll be fine.

Then more people kept coming.

I was really surprised because the Russian investigation is... weird. It's not an easy one-ticket kind of slogan-y protest. I mean, this sign will work at almost any rally:



When I admired this sign and asked to take a picture of it, the woman said thank you and "Don't piss off the art teachers, am I right?" I was like, you are right!

My friend Shaz Stiteler caught me "in action" once the crowd started to swell.



Running into Shaz was funny if only because she is one of those people who I recognize on sight, BUT in different contexts. Like, I knew who she was when she said, "Hey, Lyda," but I turned to her and was like "??" because my brain was very "Is it CONvergence? Am I in Minneapolis??" I totally forgot that she's a park ranger and works here in the capitol city. So, she ended up giving me the, "Uh... it's me, Shaz." And I had to say, "Oh! Of course!" which made me seem like such a knuckle-dragger I'm sure.

Speaking of knuckle-draggers, we had one loan pro-Trump supporter standing in the back heckling us, holding a huge "Trump, Make America Great Again" flag and his red MAGA hat.  (Rev 13:16: "And they shall wear a mark upon upon their foreheads... bearing the name of the Beast.") As I was leaving, I walked past him and accidentally caught his eye and he said, "I'm on the right side of history." I'm sorry to admit that I legit burst out laughing. I mean, "You, sir, are the epitome of delusional." We were just shouting "Restore the Rule of Law".... how contorted does your brain have to be to believe that being IN OPPOSITION to the rule of law and justice for all is the "right side" of anything, much less HISTORY????

But, any time he tried to engage people in a more serious argument someone else passing would remind us with a shout, "Don't feed the trolls!" 

Because, it's NOT worth our time. If there was more than one of them? If he shouted racial slurs or transphobic remarks or other bullshit Nazi bigotry, YES. But, not if he's just muttering "But her emails."

Moron.

Anyway, that was my night. Even though I think they would have had a better crowd if they'd held out until 7 pm, my toes were happy they didn't. I came home in the driving snow flurries and hopped straight into a hot tub.  

The sticker on my coffee cup lid this morning asked me: "Do you know who you're voting for?" On Facebook, I answered this way: "My answer: so many--my trans and queer friends and family, the immigrant and refugee students and their families that are my son's colleagues at school and who still want to come to this country to make it a better place, for women and men who have been abused and should be believed, for black lives that matter, the environment, democracy, and... oh, you meant on the ballot?"

Because, yeah, I've known who is on the ballot for some time and (thanks to naomikritzer), I've had a cheat sheet in my wallet for months.

The coffeeshop I got this cup at, Claddaugh, has a sign out that says, "'I Voted' sticker = free cup of coffee!" Mary, the owner, told me that someone harassed her barista and said, "You can't do that; it's illegal." Of course she can. Mary isn't telling anyone WHO to vote for and rewarding only the answers she likes. In fact, if someone looks at "I will reward you if you vote" and sees something partisan, that tells me A LOT about which side of the divide THEY are standing on. It's kind of amazing that one of the things we are fighting for right now in this election is the idea--which should be a basic and AMERICAN value--is the right for every citizen to vote. 

This morning at my polling place, I got a little teary-eyed. There were people occupying any space they possibly could to vote. Rather than wait to vote with a privacy screen, people were sitting on the floor and filling out ballots. This is _mid-term_, people. The last time I saw this many people so anxious to vote was in a presidential election which I don't want to name for fear of jinxing it (but which had the slogan HOPE). I was telling my friend in Wales that Shawn and I have showed up to mid-term elections (in a state that has one of the highest voter turn-outs in the nation) and looked around and wondered if we'd come on the wrong day it was so empty.  

The guy in front of me had his ballot rejected by the optical scanner. He was able to put it in and have it count, but the guy in line behind me (an older black guy) joked about a "conspiracy," we all laughed in a ha-ha-ha-TOO-SOON kind of nervous way, even though Minnesota is possibly the single safest place to cast your vote in the country because we DO have state-constitution mandated paper ballots that (as Al Franken well knows) can be hand-counted in case a recount is necessary. It can take weeks (even months), but voter intention is clear and preserved on PAPER. Frankly, I have no idea why other states don't insist on this.

We also have voting day registration, with some of the fewest requirements nation-wide. A REGISTERED VOTER who is your neighbor can vouch for you. That's _all_ you need, if you literally have nothing else. But, most people have some form of mail that shows where they live -or- a driver's license or student ID (or a provisional one) with their current address.

When people wonder why we have such good turn-out here, I'm sure that's part of it. It's ridiculously EASY to vote here. There is early voting, plus employers are required to allow all their employees time off to vote.

But, Minnesota is one state. I can only pray that the rest of the nation is doing its part.