(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
A Small Town Protest and The Dream of the Pterodactyl [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-18
Social anxiety dictated I take a quarter of a THC gummie before hiking the quarter mile to the protest site at the busiest intersection in my small town.
Along the walk, holding my telltale sign, my heart pounded erratically. I felt faint under the hot sun and from fear. When I’d protested a racist billboard at this intersection, alone in 2020, I was spit at, yelled at, told to ‘go home’, skirted close by hostile drivers and treated to chants of the mean, orange idiot’s name.
The billboard went down on a technicality. This town has a loud and visible contingent of orange idiot supporters but because they voted their supremacist-in-chief back in office, I had to go back to the protest place. It’s not like I wanted to hang out in the broiling sun.
I was the first to arrive but others soon showed up. About fifty of us in total. The majority were elderly women along with a good handful of elderly men. There were middle-aged women, young women and middle-aged men. A couple of young men. We were mostly white protestors. One person of color decided to bravely stand for freedom and democracy in this 98% white town.
Some of the seniors with health issues brought plastic chairs and held their wildly individual signs from seated positions. I was there a couple months ago for the June 14th protests. I noticed an increase in signs and shows of support from people passing in cars and stopping at the intersections.
The increase was noticeable and encouraging. I looked at the signs of the young people - ‘Education for All’, ‘Due Process For All’, climate pleas, equality pleas, pleas for justice. I thought about how much is on the line for them, so much more for them than us elders. But the elders stand to lose too - healthcare, a decent nursing home to die in, food assistance.
The young women who stood there looked a little shell-shocked but determined, to fight for their unequivocal birthright of fully owning and managing their own bodies and lives, through pregnancy and everything else.
We got the middle fingers so much it became a yawn. We got the chants of ‘Trump!’ One passerby lectured us at the top of his voice about how great Trump is until one protestor started singing “Oh, beautiful for spacious skies...” and drowned him out. Then someone in a truck deliberately released black, choking exhaust from his tailpipe that left several seniors in their plastic chairs, choking and waving away the fumes.
When that happened, I suddenly wished I was a pterodactyl and could fly and pick up that truck with talons — fly it and its passengers to the island in the middle of nearby Lake Nipmuc and deposit them there — safe and sound but stranded and alone and stuck with each other.
One woman with a passel of cute kids in her swanky car, stuck a glitter sign up through the car roof that read, “Jesus is My Savior…Trump Is My President” and mocked us. I thought to myself, those poor kids. And poor Jesus being used again to excuse and prop up hate.
We protestors chatted from time to time. We came from all walks of life. Someone showed up in a glamorous green dress and others wore shorts and tanks. We were all there, mostly timid people, to make a loud cry together for democracy, for human rights, for each other and the planet. And we’ll show up again. And again. Until we can’t.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/18/2334029/-A-Small-Town-Protest-and-The-Dream-of-the-Pterodactyl?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
