April 5 "Hands Off" Protest Report

100,000 demand reckoning

On the National Mall, the cherry blossoms have bloomed—and so has, finally, the #resistance. The April 5 “Hands Off!” protest promised to be “not the end” of the Trump era, “not even the beginning of the end,” but at least “the end of the beginning,” to quote Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This was billed as the launching point for the rebellion against the United States’s authoritarian leadership. I went in expecting this would either be very tame—who could be a safer messenger of dissent than the pink pussy hat people?—or a nightmare.

I did not sleep the previous Friday; I was still finishing my report on the Principles First Summit from February that had been interrupted by the arrival of Proud Boys and a bomb threat. If the April 5 event were the first protest where President Donald Trump and ex-Fox News host Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shot protesters, or if MAGA paramilitary-types incited terror, I wanted to have my warning about the dangers of political violence posted. I figured: If something happened to me, Anderson Cooper should have to cite my quotes on the topic and say: “Hex was right.”

This is not to suggest I wanted anything to happen to me. I brought a bright yellow utility vest and clipboard, so in the event there was hellfire and chaos, people might assume I was essential personnel and let me slip away. I had a baseball cap with a hard hat insert, so if they shot rubber bullets, at least my noggin would be protected. I had safety goggles, so if they deployed pepper spray I could still see. I had thick boots made for running, so if anyone stepped on my foot my toes would be uninjured.

No, I have no intention or desire to be any sort of martyr. I simply have things arranged so if Mr. Trump does decide to cross that line, we can get “Hex was right” merchandise rolling out immediately.

I got there early to stake out my good spot next to the Sylvan Theater stage. The crowd was rapidly thickening in the city—there was a comic book convention and the Credit Union Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run happening the same day. I realize that led to potential for misunderstandings—what if someone dressed like a Starship Trooper was mistaken for a real villain by a protester? What if a jogger had their run interrupted by a blob of chanters? These potential comedies of errors I predicted also did happen.

I positioned myself with line of sight and a clear egress to the street, so that at the first sign of danger I could dip. I was overprepared for the worst-case scenario, which did not come to pass. I am glad of that. I repeatedly said that a protest at the National Mall is basically a tourist attraction, and if there were any trouble that it would be because the administration went out of their way to crack down on dissent. They did not! So, I suppose I must applaud the Trump-Musk Administration for not violently suppressing public demonstrations.

I can laugh at myself for my paranoia. It is legitimately funny to me that I came into town wearing goggles and packing a disguise for no reason. My evaluation of risk was based on verbatim statements from Mr. Trump and ex-Fox News host, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Mr. Trump repeatedly, publicly fantasized about shooting protesters. Mr. Hegseth has told the Senate he is good with that. So by taking them at their word and assuming the worst, it is rational to make sure I am prepared to be injured or killed before going to the sort of event where they have indicated a desire to injure or kill attendees. To me, it was a coin flip whether the United States Park Police would be instructed to kettle us and then hose us down with tear gas and rubber bullets.

As I said the night before: “[T]hinking of the student protesters who are being captured in broad daylight by masked men… thinking about men who are, without trial, being sent to [the CECOT] prison in El Salvador from which nobody has ever returned… thinking of the threats to send Tesla protesters there… [b]ased on how this administration has conducted itself so far, how probable is it we get the peaceable versus the miserable outcome?”

Based on this sum of evidence, I thought it was not impossible that this might be another Kent State. I called a friend in the National Guard about my concerns. They asked me why the hell I was calling at 5 AM. They told me I was being “crazy,” and said most servicemembers would not do something like that. If I thought that were true, I would be relieved.

My dark vibes were not generally shared by the April 5 protesters. I saw a man walking around and playing a tuba. The bell of the instrument (the flared opening at the end, what I call “the big hole”) was covered by a circular sign indicating that Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump were prohibited. He was a hit.

To be honest, I was never much for the earnest chanting. I have trouble understanding people who buy their own megaphones, so they can lead the crowd in “This is what democracy looks like” karaoke. As long as they are having fun, I suppose. I feel similarly about the tambourines—when we demand an end to real horrors, should that be punctuated with jingling bells? I recognize that I may be the dour one, distinctly not in solidarity.

From my observation, one in five protesters had a cool sign. My own attempt to make a sign earlier in the week had been a miserable failure. Posterboard was sold out at my local Wal-Mart, and even after I resigned to sketching the Partisan Hex slogan “Trump Is a Bitch” (available in t-shirt form at our web store) on cardboard, I could not find a stick to mount it on. Worse, the Wal-Mart employees I spoke with said they “did not have anything like that” when I asked them if they had any yardsticks, hardly an obscure product.

My favorite signs included:

“Grab them by the midterms” (someone murmured “that will not be for a long time”), “Divorce your MAGA Republican husband,” “GOP: Spineless, Vichy Cowards,” “Silence is complicity.”

Handmade “Fuck Trump” were visible throughout the crowd.

Other messages included:

“Christians Against Trump: Nuremberg 2.0.” “STOP DOGE,” “I didn’t elect President Musk,” “Dump President Musk,” “Tariffs are taxes,”

“Hands off my 401k” signs looked like they were drawn up the night before with shaking hands—Mr. Trump’s disastrous trade policy has people rattled.

Mr. Musk was not spared, either: “Deport Musk,” “Democracy, not kleptocracy,” “Musk stinks” (always a clever pun), and “No more DOGE,” signage was common. (Side note: You can also purchase FUCK DOGE memorabilia at the Partisan Hex webstore.)

There were deep cuts, too; “Krasnov,” a reference to a viral Facebook conspiracy, appeared on at least one sign, and another read “Ticked-off entomologist girl.”

The sun was bright, the Mall was safe and green, the signs were colorful. Very positive vibrations. I do not doubt rage underlay the arts and crafts, but many of these folks seemed happy just roasting the dumb motherfucker in the White House. The rally opened with a performance by Songrise, a “DC-based women’s social justice a cappella group.” They seemed very talented, but O Fortuna would have been more appropriate. The mood they conjured did not match the moment—a reckoning is due.

Whenever I heard sirens or low-flying helicopters, I grew afraid. My tension increased as my line of sight to the street became blocked. At the first hint of a kettle, I wanted to be out.

Someone resembling a human political cartoon with a gold full face mask dragged a damaged suitcase full of money labeled “BEWARE OF DOGE” down the sidewalk. I could not decipher the exact meaning of the symbolism, but I hope the performance made him feel self-actualized.

A V for Vendetta with his mask painted with the American flag posed for photos. I recently watched that movie again, and had just been thinking maybe that cringe revolutionary fantasy hero should be admired again. The mask is starting to make sense. The original comic addressed fascism in Britain, and when the movie Americanized it, the new story lost significant complexity as well as the respect of its original writer Alan Moore. But damned if the stupid, simplified dystopia does not resemble the stupid, simplified American dystopia on horizon.

This protest should make clear how far this nation has fallen in just 75 days. “No third term!” “No secret prisons!” “You can’t make Gaza a resort!” “No war in Canada! No invasion of Greenland!” You would have been accused of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (I am one of many such cases, very sad) if you had said six months ago that these would be serious proposals put forward by Mr. Trump. In fact, MAGA adorers still have to pretend these are not serious policies but rather jokes and negotiating posture, to justify their continued worship.

Many rallygoers wore shirts that said, “If not us, then who?”—which I find to be an excellent aphorism to encourage a civic spirit. But still, the answer to the question, “Who will stop the president from putting legal asylum seekers into secret prisons they will never escape?” remains unanswered.

Because Republicans have become supplicants to the world’s stupidest tyrant, we cannot count on them to intercede—even when they believe a Trump disaster must be stopped.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, an actual doctor, opposes RFK Jr.’s “effort[s] to wrongfully sow public fear about vaccines [with] confusing references of coincidence and anecdote” but voted to confirm the crank anyway. Now there is a measles outbreak in Texas, which has killed three and infected nearly 500.

Sen. Ted Cruz has warned of the disastrous Trump tariff policy: “Donald’s only economic agenda is imposing massive taxes on the American people with a 40 percent tax hike of a giant tariff. That would send us into a recession. It would drive jobs overseas. It would kill small businesses.”

Yet, Mr. Cruz is still equivocating about “angels and demons… on each of President Trump’s shoulders, urging him to use them as leverage or keep them forever,” while acknowledging that “If we’re in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now with massive American tariffs and massive tariffs on American goods in every other country on Earth, it’s a terrible outcome.” He could instead join his colleague Sen. Rand Paul in full-throated denunciation of the economic vandalism and legislation to claw the power back to the Congress, where it should rest.

I have a real bone to pick with The Atlantic right now. I thought their article: “The Cardboard-Carrying Opposition Arrives” was annoying and disrespectful. “Hands off what, exactly?” author Elaine Godfrey asked, as if we, and not her, were confused. Then again, when she said “Democratic lawmakers addressed the rally … on a stage somewhere amid the dense crowd gathered at the base of the Washington Monument. But most people couldn’t hear them; some had no idea there was a stage at all,” I assume that to mean she had arrived so late that she could not hear the speakers Or else she would know the litany: hands off our schools, hands off our rights, hands off our public services—hands off our unions, our contracts, our democracy, our futures, our power. Hands off queer people, off students, off DACA, off immigrants. Hands off our health care, our bodies, our clean air and water and public lands. Hands off Greenland, Canada, Panama, the courts, and the Bill of Rights. Hands off everything that does not belong to them.

I noticed a surprising meanness in the crowd, too. Rev. Graylan Hagler’s voice rasped badly—he had beaten throat cancer. But before he explained that, audience members thought he was mocking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s dysphonic disorder and laughed. I thought it was tasteless and also a signal that liberals who previously cared very much about offending people have become crueler to fit the environment.

Mr. Hagler declared that “woke” was the opposite of asleep, that DC was a “woke city,” then quipped that in the Republican Party’s racist crackdown on diversity, they “woken up a sleeping giant, and they haven’t seen nothing yet…. We will not sit down, we will not be quiet, and we will not go away.” The crowd went wild for this. I took this to mean that the left was caught sleeping. I tend to think progressives took progress for granted—by never declaring victory, instead marching ever onwards without defending their gains, they let themselves be characterized as an invading force, rather than a liberating one.

The Right has bitched endlessly about the “woke,” to the point where the word has become a meaningless catch-all for anything that involves anyone being included in anything. But this is a word that has been with us since the 1930s—folk singer Huddie Ledbetter/Lead Belly used the phrase in 1938 when discussing the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers who were falsely accused of gang raping two white women and barely escaped execution after a show trial: “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

So, the phrase has historically meant to be conscious and not complacent towards the harms bigots and their systems can, will, and have inflicted on people. “Stay woke” in the context of Black Lives Matter clicks into that legacy. The twisted bastardization of the term, turning it into a weird slur to describe movies that contain cringe public service announcements about the importance of respecting people different from you, represents a deliberate desecration of the human beings who suffered the ugliest parts of the American experience.

The goal of reforming institutions so that they did not visit these violences on the American people was a noble one. The refusal to recognize this on the right is in bad faith.

Rep. Jamie Raskin took the stage, and the assemblage exploded with applause. When people say they hate Mr. Trump but do not think Democrats adequately speak out against him, they pay insufficient attention—because this man goes hard. It is banger after banger whenever he gets up to the mic—each block of text from his mouth is densely layered with damning details. There are people who want us to find a Democratic Joe Rogan, but Mr. Raskin is our Democratic Eminem.

For example: “On January 20th—the day when Donald Trump did not put his hand on the Bible, even his own Bible available online to true believers for the low, low price of $59.99—on that day when he swore to support our Constitution, we saw what a dictatorship of autocrats and plutocrats and kleptocrats and theocrats looks like. It’s a twice-impeached, multiply-bankrupted, very stable genius standing in front of oligarchs Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos—standing in front of a cabinet of billionaires and Putin followers who make war plans over the public Signal app, even while they’re literally sitting in the Kremlin.”

He delivers his arguments in stacked bars—Constitutional analysis, case law, historical callouts, news reports, extrapolations, and indictments all lined so tight the words become a weapon, a lethal injection—everything he says has an inflection, a direction, and purpose.

I think this might be Mr. Raskin’s greatest hit: “There’s no future with presidents who have the politics of Mussolini and the economics of Herbert Hoover.” This line should go on a T-shirt and into the Congressional Record.

Mr. Raskin does his homework. While his peers are still complaining about the broligarchs, Mr. Raskin is going deeper—he spits fire at the evil ideology driving them—technomonarchism, the futurist fever dream that now governs the real world and hurts real people:

“Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley billionaire mafia believe that high IQ tech supermen obsessed with eugenics and impregnating as many women as possible are destined to govern the rest of us.” “They believe democracy is doomed, and they believe regime change is upon us if they can only seize control of our payment systems, our data, and our computers.” “Elon Musk[‘s] mentor, Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug—says American democracy is a failed experiment. He praises slavery and its ‘positive effects for the African American community.’ He told The New York Times that the American people have to ‘get over’ our ‘irrational fear of dictatorship.’”

At the mention of Mr. Yarvin’s name, one hundred thousand people jeered and booed. They are onto him.

Referring to Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to CECOT, the El Salvadoran maximum security prison also called a “gulag,” Mr. Raskin declared: “If you’ve got the means to unlawfully deport someone, you find the means to bring them back.” The crowd chanted in response: “Bring him back. Bring him back. Bring him back.”

To be clear: I have searched and searched and found no reason not to call CECOT a concentration camp. Which makes me resent the people who proudly called it hysterical to worry about Mr. Trump’s admiration of Hitler.

I have found myself preoccupied with worry for Mr. García of late. While making coffee, it will disturb me into near panic to remember that half the country celebrates treating human beings with such cruelty and indifference. I do not believe in God, but I do believe those Republicans deserve the same Hell they acclaim.

Mr. Raskin said: “Let’s tell MAGA what democratic movements all over the world tell the dictators of the world: hands off the courts.” The crowd roared the reply: “Hands off the courts. Hands off the courts. Hands off the courts.”

Reverend William Barber captured the spiritual dimensions of the moment for me. “When greedy technocrats with a supremacy foundation want to rule the country, we with moral vigor and righteous indignation must stand up and say, ‘No!’” His frame—“moral versus immoral, right versus wrong, and justice versus injustice”—resonates with me because I think the instinct to call Republicans anything but evil enables the transformation of America into an authoritarian hell.

Mr. Barber called for a “Third Reconstruction of America.” The weight of that phrase should not be lost. The First Reconstruction passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—abolishing slavery, establishing citizenship and equal protection, and granting Black men the right to vote. The Second Reconstruction, also known as the Civil Rights Movement, dismantled legal segregation and secured the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So, for a Third to now be necessary, we should imagine he means the nation’s founding promises of liberty and equality are in fucking shambles.

Becky Pringle from the NEA talked about the value of the Department of Education, which Mr. Trump is tearing down with real malice. There were incredible jeers for Linda McMahon’s name, but an attempt at a “Hands off, Linda McMahon” chant fell flat because it (1) had bad rhythm, and (2) broke the established syntax of “Hands off” slogans, which append the phrase with an object of harm (e.g., “Hands off our schools,” “Hands off the courts”). “Hands off, Linda McMahon” named the perpetrator, not the object. As far as I’m concerned, they can do whatever the hell they want to Linda McMahon. She took a position leading the Department of Education so she can destroy it. She, too, should see her works destroyed.

Kathy Kennedy said: “Our nation’s public programs were created for a reason—during times of struggle[,] … when seniors were dying in poverty, veterans were left without care, and millions of Americans lacked the basic services to live…. This administration knows very well that these are popular programs with voters, so … [t]hey sneak in the night with a plan to turn these public programs into money-making systems for private corporations.” She knows the plan, too: “First, they have to break the system—slash funding, fire staff, change policy until the program no longer functions properly, and then private corporations swoop in offering to ‘fix it,’ for a profit.”

Randy Irwin said: “This president has laid off 275,000 people. That means almost 100,000 veterans are now jobless because of what he is doing. Concurrently, they are decimating the Department of Veterans Affairs—laying off 83,000 people who care for veterans. This is a one-two punch to the face of our veterans. Are you okay with that? Hell no. Hell no. Shame on Trump.”

Greisa Martínez Rosas, the Executive Director of United We Dream Action, identified herself as “undocumented and unafraid,” called the authoritarians “creepy,” and said the kidnappings of college student by ICE should be a warning sign they would be coming for the rest of us eventually.

This is my fear, too. At what point does Donald Trump declare that too many people talking shit about him is a national emergency? He already is exploring ways to denaturalize and deport American citizens (which should just be called “exile” or “sending to the gulag.”)

Sy Day Smith and Sarah Parker, from Voices of Florida, led the crowd in a “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA” chant. Vintage resistance. “No Trump. No KKK. No Fascist USA. No Trump. No KKK. No Fascist USA.” There is an instinct to treat the mantra hyperbolic. It was not in 2017, and it is not now. Mr. Trump, who was endorsed by David Duke and has been the subject of adoration from white supremacists since 2015, is effectuating our transformation into the Fascist USA.

What else do you call a country who puts people in a gulag, whose leadership publishes music videos mocking humans shaved shoved into small cells with 70 people apiece?

Their bodies—kneeling, shackled, shirtless—were made into props by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a sadist who brags about killing pets, who is publicly cheating on her husband with Corey Lewandowski, who Mr. Trump fired previously for assaulting a reporter and sexually harassing a donor. Ms. Noem appears to believe posing in a hole where men are sent to rot and die, innocent and guilty alike, is good for her brand. I hope those photos are displayed at her eventual trial in The Hague, alongside everyone “just following orders.” For her, the cruelest curse is: let what she has done unto others, be done unto her.

The ones cheering this atrocity—the Fox News sycophants and “based” goons who turn inhumanity into revelry, make me afraid. When I remember that I will live beside them in America for the rest of my life, my skin crawls. It makes me sick to know they will live on while the men whose imprisonment they endorsed will suffer. To imagine they might decide other men’s fate on a jury, or breathe the same air as decent people, gives me doubt this nation will ever be good or free again.

That any American would build a system that sidesteps due process should disqualify them for office. Mr. Trump’s fascists cannot uphold the Constitution, or must not understand it—they do not love our founding document or the wisdom of its fathers. So, yes—“No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA” is an appropriate chant. If resistance liberals made you uncomfortable over it—apologize to them. Their foresight was better than yours.

But I digress. Ms. Smith said that “by design[,] [w]e are experiencing the death of the American dream in real time. And it’s not only dying, it is being killed. Violently murdered in front of us.”

She suggested that Mr. Trump’s disastrous economic policies, which, according to the general consensus, have yeeted the nation’s prosperity off a fucking cliff, were deliberately intended as damaging—they knew what would happen. “America is being systemically isolated from the rest of the world. Our media is being censored. Our borders are being closed. Access to help and resources is being withdrawn. Air travel has been made unsafe. And make no mistake—the president knew that tariffs would cripple the economy. That is exactly why he passed them. By spiraling our nation into severe economic collapse, Trump is ensuring that low- and middle-income Americans will never be free from the boot of the wealthy elite in this country.”

This is perhaps more alarmist in tone than a typical pundit would suggest, but there is a hypothetical that gets asked which I think is clarifying: “If Mr. Trump were intentionally, deliberately, sabotaging America (so he could strip it for parts), is there anything he would be doing differently?”

You already know the answer.

Kyle Lewis from VoteVets talked at length about his recovery from Stage 4 cancer using NIH-funded experimental drugs through Johns Hopkins. He then revealed that program which saved his life had been cut by the “counterfeit king and his jackass jester.” He later referred to Messrs. Trump and Musk as the “felonious pharoah” and “his wannabe Willy Wonka.”

I do not know how he could stand to be so silly, when the situation he described was his own life and death: “They want to fleece the people’s government—our government—and seize more money for themselves. Make no mistake, these are our tax dollars…. These are our services. I was, and remain, extremely lucky to be here. That clinical trial and those drugs saved my life… [t]hey’re the only reason my young children got more time with their dad. If I received my original diagnosis today, I wouldn’t be so lucky. If my cancer comes roaring back—and the available data suggests that it will—I won’t be so lucky.”

Gabriel Eaton introduced himself as: “I am Black. I am Filipino-Japanese. I am second generation. I am a disabled trans man. But I’m also a Medicaid patient. I’m also a person who uses food stamps. I’m also a person who has been through houselessness in this country. I’m also a person who has gone through substance use and addiction. And most of all—I am a patient of Planned Parenthood. I am everything that Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to erase. I am everything they want to silence with every executive order, every safety net they slash, every hateful word they say.”

I felt real horror processing this. I have talked to a few other people who have made similar statements—people do feel afraid when they see their characteristics are being explicitly targeted for harm by the government. This cannot be dismissed—as certain right-wing figures might—as a “victim complex,” because the GOP apparatus does threaten Mr. Eaton’s safety and security. If the #resistance fails, Mr. Eaton, who has already endured much, will be sacrificed. Any MAGA goon who reads that line with any sort of satisfaction ought to question the state of their own soul.

If the choice were theirs, I think the mainstream Democratic establishment would have disallowed the rally’s list of speakers, which would have been some shameful shit. Messrs. Raskin and Frost might be mainstream enough, but they were opening for the day’s real rock stars, Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Al Green (D-TX).

The crowd furiously roared against what Reps. Omar, Green, and other speakers called “genocide” in Gaza. However carefully Senate Majority Leader Mr. Schumer and House Minority Leader Mr. Jeffries may want to approach the topic—and I am sensitive to this, too; I do not presume to know the “correct” answers to complex intergenerational conflicts—the Democratic voter base is unpersuaded by balanced, parsed analysis of what they see as moral failure.

This should only be to the Party’s advantage in a world where the Republican Party is motivated by vanity and cruelty—expressly immoral traits. In a war against evil, Democrats should be unafraid to label themselves as good.

Mr. Green was the most popular and loved speaker of the day. It was not even close. His shirt said: “Censured, not silenced,” and the people were with him. Whenever he raised up his cane, people cheered. He at times pointed it in the air for either no reason or emphasis, and it never failed to get applause. The ten Democrats who voted to censure Mr. Green for accurately informing Mr. Trump that he had no mandate to cut Medicaid were: Ami Bera, Ed Case, Jim Costa, Laura Gillen, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Jim Himes, Chrissy Houlahan, Marcy Kaptur, Jared Moskowitz, Tom Suozzi. I did not see any of them in attendance and on the stage, and they would not have gotten the same love as Mr. Green.

And Mr. Green celebrated us, too: “Let us hear it for these liberated Democrats. All of whom are unbought, unbossed, and unafraid.”

Hell yeah.

He said things which should be obvious, but because the modern Republican Party has less common sense than it imagines and no conscience, we cannot assume are obvious any longer: “Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It is part of the American dream. It belongs to our seniors! And we have to tell President Trump: Canada is not going to become the 51st state. Russia invaded Ukraine. Greenland is not for sale. And Gaza is not going to become a resort. Let me say it again for the people in the back: Gaza is not going to become a resort. There must be a home for the Palestinian people. Yes, there must be!”

Mr. Green elevated his cane to the status of a mythological weapon: “I carry this cane because I believe in the 23rd Psalm. That portion that reads: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.’ This is my comforter. And I want you to know, I am going to take this staff of truth, and I am going to take this rod—And I want President Trump to know: He is not going to have a third term. There will be no third term. No third term. No third term.”

No good Democrat would have tried to punish such a man—in doing so, they have betrayed the Party’s conscience. They should have instead placed their hand beside his on the cane, and sent into it all their love and courage to give the gentleman the strength to carry on.

Mr. Green said what everyone wanted to hear: “I want President Trump to know that I will use my staff of freedom to … say to him: He may not finish this term. He may not finish this term. He may not finish this term. Because… [I am] going to bring articles of impeachment against you within the next 30 days. Within the next 30 days. I am bringing articles of impeachment. I am coming for you, Mr. President. You do not deserve the office you hold. You cannot be entrusted with liberty and justice for all. You cannot be entrusted with government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I am coming for you.”

I understand Mr. Green’s previous impeachment attempts annoyed party leadership, but they should get over themselves. The crowd assented to Mr. Green’s declaration unanimously, because after a long day of having Mr. Trump’s evils made explicit, he offered a real solution. Instead of complaining about Mr. Green, every Democrat should vote in favor of his impeachment resolution, and they should lobby for Republicans to join and finally put an end to the national nightmare.

In closing, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin criticized Democratic leaders—Schumer and Jeffries—for “rolling over and playing dead.”

One rallygoer quipped: “More like bending over.”

This is not how Democratic Party leadership should encourage their voters to regard them. I have previously suggested that Mr. Schumer enjoys no confidence from the base. That sentiment has not changed—nor has there been any reason for that standing to improve. He ought to consider, for the good of the Democratic Party, announcing he will not seek re-election in 2029. That will at least give pundits less cause to nitpick the rest of us.

I had written down a quote from Audre Lord’s New Year’s Day that Ms. Pringle had mentioned. “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” I am not that. She went on to say: “‘Deliberate and unafraid,’ we will continue to fight for… justice until this country lives into the promise and the poetry of our Constitution.”

I intend to be so persistent, too, but I fear being embarrassed by sparse #resistance. I wish I could say: “Let this be a call to action! We must not give up!” But I think the reality is grimmer than that. Each time someone else gives up, the burden of fighting lays heavier on the rest of us, and then, as our strength gives, we will all find the points at which we break or kneel.

This protest was 100,000 Americans in the nation’s capital demanding a reckoning. Millions more around the country stood in their own city squares to ask for the same. Enough Americans understand the regime’s horrors and underlaying reality that I think it will be inevitable that awareness will spread to a point where even Mr. Trump’s most proficient gaslighters will be unable to convincingly deny reality.

That will not be the climax of this all, unfortunately—I think that will be where the ugly stuff starts. I look at what this administration has done, promises to do, and openly fantasizes about doing, and I simply do not see people who will expect to ever give away power or face legal consequence or even their own consciences.

I complained about the tuba earlier. There was another horn, one that I would recognize anywhere. Someone in the crowd was generating a noise that was, unmistakably, the Horn of Gondor.

A music nerd might have been having a lark with that, but it sent a chill inside me. Would we have a decisive victory before sunset, or would this fellowship fracture soon? But I think the intention was more positive: it asked for reinforcements to gather and come. The speakers convinced me of what I already knew: the country will fail if this authoritarian transformation does not stop. I think ending Mr. Trump’s reign of terror is an achievable end, and that the margin of people who will come to see these facts communicated this day is enough to bring the takeover to a conclusion.

The hardest part remains convincing Republicans they must vote in conscience against concentration camps, mass poverty and unemployment, the destruction of the social safety net and civic infrastructure, and whatever the fuck it is the technomonarchists are doing. Rep. Eric Swalwell described this rally as: “This is what kicking the shit out of fascism looks like.” I hope so. But that means: I have hope—which is where any possible good endings have to start.