My thanks to my friends in Clintonville area of Columbus who helped me attend this moment of patriots’ challenge to the con men robbing the USA of its power, wealth, ideals and humanity. The lack of media coverage was appalling. The misrepresentation of attendance numbers cannot be challenged when media fails to provide images of the gatherings. A local station covered it AFTER it was over and crowds had dispersed. Another stated hundreds attended when it was actually thousands. We are here. We are resisting. We are going nowhere until the despotism and kidnapping of people and the Supreme Court, universities, news organizations, social media outlets, medical and public health Institutions… even our very language and the meaning of words and phrases has been brought to an end and freedom restored.
Photo by Brendon Spring on Pexels.com. Read the full text of THE NEW COLOSSUS, (partially quoted below)by Emma Lazarus and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
our fascists try to build along our southern border.
To keep brown people out? Or keep us in?
Is America becoming a giant camp
concentrating those exercising free speech,
free movement and all dissent beneath the thumb
of authoritarian diatribe and power, making us numb
and willing to cooperate with endless hate?
I honor those who once fought to save the world
and keep it free from hate and bigotry,
and create a fair economy which served us all.
I see the last ditch in my mind with no need to recall.
It lives on every street, in every neighborhood,
in every school board meeting, and City Hall;
in governor’s mansions and courts of law.
It is still alive these many years
and brings anger along with tears
burning the back of my throat
as I mourn those who breached the fascist wall
and those whose bodies I imagine afloat
off Omaha and Utah Beaches, and now, in our cities.
And I remember, as if it is today. It is. Such a pity.
Community members clash with ICE, other federal officers, Minneapolis police, and other state officers as officials raid Las Cuatro Milpas in Minneapolis, Minnesota Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
For years I crossed to the opposite side of the street, or changed my direction, or turned a corner whenever I saw a police officer. PTSD caused my muscles to contract then quiver. Sweat beaded on my brow. My heart rate accelerated. My calves and thighs contracted as I prepared to run for my life. This was not because I was a criminal; but, because I had been a student protester in the late 60s and early 70s. I had been attacked and threatened with tear gas, pepper spray, bully clubs and bullets.
I was inspired by Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Reverend Martin Luther King,Jr. to seek justice through peaceful protest and political action, to embrace the protections in the Bill of Rights which granted my free speech and right of peaceable assembly, and to redress the Government for redress of grievances.
As a child, I watched TV police dogs attack and bite civil rights protesters peaceably assembled, watched those protesters beaten into submission with clubs and guns, watched them shot, watched busses burned, watched water hoses knock down men, women and children. I watched those asserting their rights jailed and injured while handcuffed in cells.
Brutality seemed a “southern thing”; but racism was everywhere around me, in my Ohio town, my Catholic school, my Italian-immigrant and Appalachian-white neighborhood. We immigrants, who faced our own discrimination were too ready to discriminate against Black people, lest we be seen as within their fold. We Catholics who saw swastikas painted on our gym walls, who faced our own discrimination were too ready to discriminate against Black people for the same reason. The common thought expressed whenever anything difficult happened was “At least I am free, white and 21.”
Too many missed the point that if one person is denied freedom we all are; an un-provoked attack on any person is an attack on all of us, justice denied one person means justice is denied all of us. We pretend that we are safe because we are “free, white and 21”.
The trick of oppressors is to recognize racists, misogynists, homophobes and the poor that they suffer because of those they are willing to hate, not because of those who wield the power of oppression to greedily retain their wealth and power. No minimum wage increases, destruction of workers’ unions, ignoring the need to build affordable housing, food insecurity, privatized mental and physical health care system. It all works to the advantage of the oppressors.
On campus, women in my co-ed dorm had a curfew and sign-out book to record where we went after 6pm, with whom and when we would return. Men had no such requirement. We were punished with student judicial charges if we did not follow “the book”. I wrote a Declaration of Independence for the women of Lincoln tower and with other women removed the books and threw them into bonfire. Today, we would have been arrested. It ended the sign-out system when requests to the women’s Dean of Students (yes, there was a Dean for Men and a Dean for women) refused to take action on our behalf.
I participated in hunger strikes and sit-down strikes for transparency of crimes on campus, especially crimes against women and Black students. Crimes were not considered public information back then. One hunger strike resulted in the installation of emergency blue-light cameras strung across campus. They are still in place. We also protested and had hunger strikes for a Black Studies department, Black faculty and curriculum. Racial awareness programs and efforts, affirmative recruitment of Black students and Black faculty.
Meanwhile, students formed their own racial crisis-intervention practices and programs. The Student Government Association joined with the leader of Afro-Am in the development of a petition to address the issues of racism and need for a Black Studies Department. The petition included 19 items, initially. The student Leaders were denied a meeting with The President of OSU, day after day. Finally, they set up a card table and chairs in front on the administration building, waiting for him to acknowledge their presence and meet with them. Student organizers from across campus dorms, clubs, and student organizations decided to support the effort and called for a student strike.
The day before the strike was to begin I called the Secretary of the Board of Trustees, asking them to step-in and meet with Afro-Am and SGA leaders, or demand the president do so. I explained the growing unrest and pending strike, which would disrupt the educational mission of the university, He understood and agreed to call each board member and see if he could attain a quorum wiling to meet the leaders. Late that day he called, saddened to report that the board refused to meet or discuss my request for their intervention.
The next day, the strike was called and the requests had become a list of demands. A microphone was set p on the Oval and anyone could speak about the need for a university response. One of the first speakers was Woody Hayes, our beloved and irascible football coach who understood the demands and applauded us for remaining peaceful. The National Guard was ordered to campus. Its commander took the microphone to ask us to remain peaceful and told us although his soldiers carried weapons, they had not been issued bullets.
The following day a different commander addressed us to report the first had been removed from command and the soldiers were now fully armed and weapons loaded. The siege was on.
The protest lasted most of Spring quarter. Any group with a grievance climbed on the backs of Black students to seek their own agenda; feminists, LGBQ, environmentalists etc. Then, Cambodia was bombed and OSU became part of nation-wide student anti-war movement.
During this time we were tear-gassed, chased by jeeps with machine guns mounted on the back, sprayed with pepper gas; and helicopters flew over us dropping a yellow gas which exfoliated the trees and shrubs, browned out the grass, and caused the spring bulbs to keel over and die. It was a metaphor for what they did to us. Thousands of students, even those frat boys along fraternity row who collaterally were gassed and their frat houses shot up as students were chased by police along side streets, joined in the strike. The faculty of the Philosophy department conducted training and held classes on peaceful resistance, helping us orchestrate lie-ins and die-ins. We learned about sacrifice of the few for the rights of the many, among other philosophical treatises. I often brought food and water to the guardsmen, raiding automated food machines in my dorm. We handed them flowers and made peace with them, understanding they had no desire to kill us, and had to follow orders. Police cruisers circling the Oval would stop suddenly, an officer or two jump out and begin clubbing students sitting there, handcuff, arrest them and toss them into the back of the cruiser. We gave our floor “activity money” to campus clergymen to bail-out those arrested every day. The Ohio legislature later created a law to seize those fees for university control only, to avoid our use of our funds in a manner they disagreed with.
One day stands out. Maintenance was taking down the flag in front of the administration building where our leaders still sat and waited for an appointment. The group waiting with them began singing “America The Beautiful” in a very sarcastic voice. Some threw marshmallows toward the guardsmen who formed a triple-line between us and the flag, even though no one moved toward the flag. An order was given. The first line went to ground. The second line crouched down. The third line rested their guns on the shoulders of the second line. I was in front facing three soldiers. Our group became silent. A second order was given and we heard and watch guns cocked and ready to fire. We knew the next order would be “fire”. I looked into the eyes of the soldiers and ask tears held in check in fearful eyes. I whispered, “it is Okay.” I have no idea how long we stood there, frozen guardsmen and frozen protesters. But eventually the order was given to stand-down. I brought food and water again that night, dodging armed jeeps and cutting across a party no car had access to.
We were never invited to meet and discuss our demands. Martial law was declared by the Ohio governor. Students were ordered to not gather in groups exceeding 4 persons, or could be arrested. Civil rights were suspended. The thousands of us who gathered daily simply divide up into groups of 4 sitting no closer than 10 feet apart. The bully-club attacks continued. The gassing continued. We stayed. Most of us slept overnight knowing if we left the field the Oval would be cut-off to us. We held the field for those arriving in the morning to swell our ranks.
Until Kent State. Black students at Jackson State had been shot and killed a few days before Kent State. They were overlooked because Black lives have seldom mattered in America. But, when Kent State students died campuses were shuttered and students sent home; allowed back to take finals before dismissing for the summer. Campuses were reinforced for crowd control. Rules and laws were changed to undermine student organizing. Legislative hearings were held on campus, and facts suppressed. I attended the hearings. I recalled E.R. doctors from University Hospital appearing to report the nearly 30 students were shot during the protests, some left paralyzed. This had never been reported upon. The legislators asked the doctors to turn over the medical files they had brought to support their testimony. the doctors refused because medical records should be private, and because we “fear the information contained within will be suppressed.”
We have been in this space before:
Civil rights demanded and ignored.
Peaceful association branded harmful, protesters branded violent criminals.
Marshal law invoked to eliminate due process and civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Use of weapons of war against civilians.
I have been called a “commie, pinko, radical, n…. -lover, racist”, since my teenage years into my mid-70s. I am a peace-lover, people-lover, nature-lover activist. All activists who embrace our constitutional rights are considered radical. We are trouble-makers when we question injustice and seek redress. Name-calling is meaningless to activists. We care not care what you call us because that is not us. We do care that you use name-calling to justify your own inaction, your own fence-sitting, your own unwillingness to facedown bullies. We bring attention to your deepest fears, while you insist there is nothing to fear. But, I tell you, there is something to fear.
We all should be afraid. I cannot watch scary movies. I face fear daily, for real. I cannot involve my consciousness in fake fears to entertain myself. I cannot look away from real suffering. I cannot sit on the fence and watch. I must act. I ask you to act, peacefully and continuously, “Until justice runs down like water, and righteousness lie a mighty stream.” And, know this: when you stir yourself to action, you will be attacked.
Once you find the courage to act, the emotional fear subsides. The physical attacks are more difficult. Mostly, because we never seem to expect human beings to be so cruel to us, fellow human beings. We know we are not behaving wrongly. We know we are not hurting others. We know we are not asking for anything we do not need, nor deserve. Why would anyone hurt us? Well, I have no answer because it is not a rational thing. There is no rational answer that applies to all. What I can do is offer some useful tips.
Check to see if parade-marshals are present. Listen to them and follow their instructions.
Wear shoes that are secure on your feet and allow you to run, and run fast. Wear socks.
Wear long-sleeves and long pants.
Pay attention to your surroundings and the people around you.
Note any inconsistent behaviors, especially violent rhetoric.
Try to stay upwind of police, note wind direction to avoid gas.
Wear a mask to avoid breathing in gasses.
Apply vaseline to exposed skin to avoid burns from pepper spray/pepper gas.
Note exit routes in case of attack, or stampede. Be ready to exit.
Move away from disputes, not toward them.
Employ the maxim, “Run away to fight another day.”
If arrest/removal is attempted go limp, lie down and allow peaceful removal. You can argue in court later through your attorney.
Do not block sidewalks, nor ingress and egress into buildings on your route.
Do not interfere with others going about their business.
Have videographers present to film.
Use camera to record incidents. Do not willingly turn over phones/cameras (without a warrant). Leave before anyone grabs them, and preserve images.
Have emergency number and agreed upon pick-up point in case you need to call for assistance.
Let others know where you are going to be and call when you finish to let them know you are safe.
Look out for one another. Calm others when they start to get agitated. It happens to the best of us.
Register with groups and organizers. They will help if things go haywire.
Peace overcomes war. Love overcomes hate. Stay in that space. When you no longer can, leave.
Come back and join in the next march, protest, sit-in,/die-in…and if you cannot physically engage in this way, offer financial support, write Letters to the editor, call your local-state-county and federal officials and representatives. And for goodness sake, vote as if our lives and our sacred honor as Americans rely upon you.
Did you ever hear of the Golden Rule? “Treat others as you would be treated.” When asked which of the ten commandments Moses shared with the Israelites was the most important, Jesus advised questioners to “Love others as I have loved you.” In the 60s, even non-believers of any religion, or of even the existent of God, followed the precept “Lead with your heart.” “Flower children” believed in love, for everyone, at all times. And those were turbulent times. We watched freedom riders maimed and killed, their busses set on fire, their murdered bodies hidden and buried in shallow graves. We watched the perpetrators of violence go free; the Citizen Councils ( marketing change for KKK) often included law enforcement and local judges. This is the America currently referred to when Trump supporters urge us all to “Make America Great Again.” They no longer wear white robes nor hide their faces. They wear red ties, dark suits and sometimes red hats.They pretend to be news anchors on FOX News and elsewhere. They pretend to be president like Elon Musk. The delivery system of hate may have changed; the racism and sexism have not. We are experiencing a backlash to the progress made over the past 50 years. It took 50 years for it to grow this strong.
I was a resident student advisor (RA) at Lincoln Tower on the OSU campus in Columbus, Ohio in the late sixties and early 70s. I was also a student activist. I had to become one because I believed in the Golden Rule. I watched Black students, Jewish students and women students derided and demeaned. I was privy to racist commentary because white students assumed they could say them to my white face with my full agreement. White men also felt safe making sexist comments to me despite the fact I was a woman. As an Italian-American I was sometimes mistaken for Jewish and heard my share of anti-semitic remarks. Much of the time such hate-talk was passed off as a joke. Whenever I heard the joke I stopped the speaker and explained nothing they said was funny, nor factual. I demanded such language never be used while in my presence. Those who just joined in to feel safe in the crowd became serious and apologized. The bullies did not apologize. But they shut up. “Stand up to shut them up” became part of every day life on campus. That is activism at its core.
I had a few empty suites on my floor due to an on-going criminal investigation. A mentally ill student was on trial for arson, having set fire in a suite the year before. Once the case was resolved, those suites were re-opened and spaces filled, as were other vacancies on my floor. Who moved in to those spaces? Black women looking for a safe space. Some had repeatedly been locked out of their rooms by white roommates. Several had threatening notes nailed to their door; threats to rape or kill them because they were Black. Most were ostracized and demeaned daily by white roommates. Their complaint to Student Affairs fell on deaf ears. When the spaces opened on my floor, they found refuge there.
Our dorm was typical for OSU where Black students made up a tiny percentage of the student population. My floor was unique. I held floor meetings to discuss expectations that we would all follow the Golden Rule. When I saw or heard of a racial incident I immediately intervened. Soon, I was doing racial mediation on a regular basis. Black women entered the elevator and experienced white women moving close to the emergency call button, with hand hovering, ready to cry for help from women just like themselves returning exhausted from a day of classes ? Time for mediation! Call everyone together and talk it through. Day after day. Incident after incident. It was exhausting for the Black women, and the Black men who visited them, to face daily racial challenges and outright discrimination.
Another RA and two students worked with me to develop a racial mediation program in our dorm. Whenever the Student Judicial Council was handed a case involving a white student and a Black student in dispute, it was handed off to us to mediate the conflict. Our efforts were not always welcomed, but we persisted. Incidents of violence, write-ups to judiciary, and racial conflict decreased. Today, this program would be outlawed by the President who gleefully extorts OSU by threatening loss of education grants and federal funds for programs and research. OSU has caved to the bullies. OSU is not standing up to shut up the racism. It would cost money. And money is god in America, and on college campuses.
OSU is caving to racists and bullies again. And, not just OSU. Columbia University, indeed nearly all colleges and universities, if not all, are caving to racist bullies under the guise of following the law, accepting the lawless and illegal actions of the current administration. Following the law would require universities to protect the free speech rights of faculty and students, to abide by employment contracts and civil service laws to protect both administrative employees and faculty. Universities with law schools had readily-available experts to stand up, speak out and take action. I was an Associate Director of Law at Ohio University. There is a national organization of such attorneys. Why are they so silent? Why have university presidents and provosts not joined arms to defend their campuses against illegal searches and seizures of students? Why did Columbia University not come to the aid of Mahmoud Khalil and his family? If they did so in any way, it was neither apparent nor sufficient.
The Poster Boy President leading the racist mob of greedy Americans spoke at the DOJ recently. His racist and personal attacks on lawyers, prosecutors and judges, was accepted and even cheered. Racism and greed cross all boundaries and sexual preferences, exist within every profession, religion and community group. It is a constant and persistent threat to the principles of democracy. Those whose racism had been laid low, who crawled under rocks to hide their sins, have crawled back out, empowered by the greed for wealth and power, threatened by those they spurn who have finally found success on a more equal path, and undermined by their own sense of failure despite the promise of an American Dream. Instead of blaming the greedy power-brokers of industry, banking and finance, politics and education they blame their fellow victims. Their racism blinds them to truth, and they willingly embrace false-hoods and disinformation. They would not recognize a fact if it stared them in the face. They would prefer to attack the fact and the experts offering the truth of the fact.
As a lawyer, as an educator, as a writer, I am heart-broken over the loss of my country, my Constitution and its guarantees of personal freedom for all persons who are in this country…no matter where they came from, or how they got here. That is the promise of America. That is the American Dream. Shopping for cheap goods because your existence only matters if those power-brokers can make a buck off you cannot fill the place freedom once filled within the American heart and psyche. Woke? Woke is what is required to survive the on-slaught against a free people who simply want to find a good-paying job, buy a house, feed and educate their family. The power-brokers want us to stay asleep. Like children, we are angels in our sleep, causing them no discomfort, and quietly staying out of their way as they take over our economy, our government institutions, our military, our banking system, our educational systems and local/public schools…even our post office!
Wake up, my fellow lawyers, my fellow professors, my fellow school teachers, my fellow social workers, my fellow counselors, my fellow retail workers, my fellow waitresses and caterers, my fellow babysitters, my fellow students, my fellow Catholics and people of faith, my fellow Americans. Wake up and stay woke! We have work to do, if we can stay awake to do it loudly and persistently. This is no time to lie down and feign sleep. God knows, none of us sleep well theses days.
annarino writes 
DECONSTRUCTION
The streets were lined for blocks on end.
Signs reminded all who rejoiced to attend
Why they walked and talked and smiled and waved
At passing cars who braved delays
While drivers honked horns and shouted out
“Vote him out and make it a rout!”
Costumed critters danced to our delight
Knowing their freedom would give him a fright.
Deconstruct the lies we have been told.
Deconstruct the narrative being sold.
Deconstruct the bullie’s hold.
Deconstruct institutional mold.
Gather in peace the young and the old.
Stronger are you, more wise, more bold.
Deconstruct so we can rebuild
What he has destroyed with his minions’ lack of skill.
We know how to do this, and more.
We have done it many times before.
My thanks to my friends in Clintonville area of Columbus who helped me attend this moment of patriots’ challenge to the con men robbing the USA of its power, wealth, ideals and humanity. The lack of media coverage was appalling. The misrepresentation of attendance numbers cannot be challenged when media fails to provide images of the gatherings. A local station covered it AFTER it was over and crowds had dispersed. Another stated hundreds attended when it was actually thousands. We are here. We are resisting. We are going nowhere until the despotism and kidnapping of people and the Supreme Court, universities, news organizations, social media outlets, medical and public health Institutions… even our very language and the meaning of words and phrases has been brought to an end and freedom restored.
We shall not be silenced.
Leave a comment
Filed under COMMENTARY, POETRY, POLITICS
Tagged as activism, American democracy, American History, animals, anxiety, authoritarians, AUTOCRATS, Bill of rights, bullies, citizens united, civil rights, climate change, community, congress, corruption, courts, creativity, DEATH OF DEMOCRACY, democracy, discrimination, disinformation, diversity, DOJ, economics, economy, education, election, elections, environment, fascism, FBI, free speech, freedom, global warming, government, grassroots organizing, greed, gun control, gun regulation, health, health care, history, human rights, HYPOCRISY, immigrants, immigration, insurrection, isolation, J.D.Vance, journalism, judges, justice, laughter, law, leadership, LGBT, lies, light, MAGA, media, mental-health, middle class, misogyny, money, national security, news, news media, No Kings, NOEM, Ohio, Ohio politics, oligarchs, pandemic, patriotism, peaceful protest, photography, poetry, poets, political propaganda, politics, power, Project 2025, propaganda, protest, racism, republican leadership, Republican Party, resilience, resistance, resistance movement, rule of law, security, silence, social media, Supreme Court, teenagers, trump, Trump administration, truth, U.S. Supreme Court, Us Constitution, VOTE, voter suppression, voters, voting, voting rights, white supremacy, woke, women's health care, workers, youth