LATEST NEWS
Coming soon to Jackson, Michigan: the Labor Day Community Rally!
We're celebrating Jackson's workers, while raising awareness about some important issues along the way. Come listen to our insightful speakers, get some delicious food from the food trucks, and have fun with the community!
UPDATE:
We've got five food trucks lined up with everything from tacos to shaved ice to wings to eggrolls! Plus, we've got State Senator Sue Shink and former mayor/chief of staffing for Michigan AFL-CIO Derek Dobies as speakers! And! We even have some people announcing their runs for candidate positions :o!
And, for the first time ever.. we've got news coverage!! Fox47's Matt Prysiazny will be there covering the rally. Yippee!!! I don't want to get my hopes too far up, but I wonder if he'd be interested in other rallies too...
I'm very excited to see how things go, and I hope you are too!
This event took place from 12:00-2:00 on Saturday, August 2nd.
What a good time! We had great weather, a great speaker, and an even greater crowd -- roughly 30-40 people from all over southern Michigan (and even one person from Indiana!) joined us throughout the day!
Ironically, Rage Against the Regime was one of the calmest events I've hosted. In fact, we didn't have any incidents; just some very enthusiastic folks excited to be there. And they had great reason to be! Our key speaker really stole the day with his phenomenal speech about the exact kinds of actions we were there to oppose -- authoritarian actions against us, the people.
"Wherever people are assembling," he said, "they're speaking up for our freedom. For humanity. They are defending our constitution, and our democracy, and they're crying out for our nation to join them in resistance. (...) And the moral path is clear: We resist. We resist. We resist in the voting booth, and with our ceaseless demands to our representatives (...). We resist with our voices at public meetings, within the civil organizations whose democratic charters are being eroded! We resist with our wallets and by deciding which companies and political interest groups we support with our hard-earned dollars (...)! We resist in the streets, in our public spaces like this. We let our neighbors know we haven't abandoned them and they let us know that they are thankful as they drive by. And we let our politicians know that we will not forgive them. We will hold them accountable for their complicity. And we resist these would-be kings as if our nation and our democracy depend on it. Because it does! They do! It's our patriotic duty and it is our moral duty.
"If your rage didn't matter, your representatives wouldn't be hiding from their constituents! (...) If your voices didn't matter, they wouldn't be deploying troops to shut you down! If your votes didn't matter, they wouldn't be spending so much to buy our elections, to gerrymander districts. If your boycotts didn't matter, they wouldn't be trying to make them illegal in state after state in America. And if your resistance didn't matter, they wouldn't be working so hard and so fast to take away our constitutional rights to due process, and to suspend the writ of habeus corpus. So we the people today -- you, me, our neighbors honking their horns in support -- we're making it clear that our democracy is not negotiable. (...) Democracy needs your courage! Democracy needs our rage!"
We had some great resources from the Jackson County for Immigrants Coalition related to the ICE. Missed it? No worries, here's their linktree! It's got all their contact information, plus some important information regarding how to prepare for/deal with encounters with ICE. I highly recommend looking at their red cards -- a free resource all about your rights.
All and all, this was a fantastic protest! A special thank-you to Devin, our safety marshal/runner/photographer who did a wonderful job keeping watch; and to Steve, who brought chairs, the banner, several great street signs, and the ever-valuable canopy for the welcome table! Let's keep fighting the regime together!
Edit: added specific quotes from the speaker's speech. I will be keeping him anonymous as he doesn't want this to be publicly searchable yet.
This event took place from 4:00-6:00 PM on Thursday, July 17th.
Roughly 100 people lined the sidewalks at Withington Park, stretching from Washington Ave down Louis Glick! And we didn't just get Jackson locals -- attendees from six other counties joined us for the national day of action! Several participants were members of the Jackson County Democratic Committee (including chair Amador Ybarra and fellow organizer Natalie Schroeder), while others came from the Lenawee County Indivisible team. Plus we had a handful of folks from Rank MI Vote walking around with petitions! What a turnout!
While I wasn't really an organizer this time, I spent most of the two hours talking to people. Everyone had such incredible signs, with fun slogans and designs (see the Media page for pictures!)! And those who didn't bring a sign seemed to be having loads of fun cheering at the many honking cars whizzing past. This phenomenal group of people really made this event one for the books! I'm hoping some of them become regular attendees!
Fortunately, we had only one, quickly-resolved incident! I'd like to thank everyone who came for keeping things peaceful and respectful. As a reminder, we run by the rule of "everyone is welcome until you start antagonizing people" and advise all protest participants to back off from developing conflicts.
I'd call this event a great success! This more than doubled the usual turnout for the typical weekly Thursday 4-6PM protest, and was just as joyful as normal. Good trouble certainly lives on in Jackson!
Edit: Headcounts varied from under 100 to 130. I'm using "100" because that's what I heard on the day of.