No Kings In America

This last weekend, we took to the streets and protested again. And by we, I mean specifically I did, author, contributor to this podcast. I showed up at the Waterfront in downtown Portland, OR, where the Saturday Market was in full swing. The very first thing I noticed was the way the music. From somewhere in the crowd, people had revived the old protest songs and were playing them through a loudspeaker. Who doesn’t get into some Creedence? As soon as I turned the corner from Davis onto Naito Parkway, the street that runs along the waterfront, I saw an ocean of people. This ocean of people stretched from where I was on Davis all the way down to Hawthorne, and over the bridge that took them over the water.

Little did I get an idea for just how many people there were! It was only when I arrived at the bridge, and looked down the river what must have been four or five blocks to the other bridge, that I truly understood: compared to the previous protest, this one dwarfed it by at least half. Both bridges, and by extension the streets in between, were wall-to-wall with people.

And it was all peaceful. There were vendors along the route selling hot dogs and other things, and there were police, in this case, doing what we pay them for - to keep traffic off of the protest route. It was a truly amazing sight, even if I don’t mention the absurdly creative protest signs.

Hot? Yes.

Long? Yes.

Violent? No.

There. You have it from at least one eye witness that the protests in Portland don’t need federal government intervention. No riot. No violence. Just people exercising free speech.

A beautiful thing.