I posted here a few days ago about thinking of yelling at an elderly white woman who was doing a one-person protest about Trump’s attack on the post office, and was criticized for this by several people here, who said that I should have tried to interact with her politely and basically push her left. I didn’t actually interact with her at all because I had my work uniform and would have been risking my job for mentioning things like Palestine or communism, politely or not.

Yesterday I found myself in a different town with nothing to do for about forty minutes and saw yet another white boomer woman who was protesting Trump by herself. This different person had a sign about respecting the constitution. Since I didn’t have my work uniform on, I decided to try the approach advocated by Hexbear, and spoke with her as politely as possible. I ended up speaking with her and several other white boomer women (who joined us) for pretty much the whole time I was there. It was an amicable discussion, and one of the women there really talked with me and listened to me for awhile, but in retrospect I still have some doubts. It reminds me of talking with my parents (who are white liberals), how I could get my dad to agree that we basically live in the Confederacy or even Nazi Germany one day, for him to seemingly completely forget this discussion the next day and rant about how Trump is destroying the country and we need to support Biden because at least he’s not Trump. On the other hand, I’m not sure my parents (who are both Bernie voters) have ever attended a protest for anything. I told the first woman that the constitution is what got us here, it was written by genocidal slave-owners, etc., and she actually turned her sign around, which advocated for saving social security, which I of course support.

I asked the women there if they would be voting for the Democrats in the next elections, and they said they would be. This was after I had been talking about Palestine for awhile, so I was actually kind of thinking of abandoning them at that point, but I kept going. I advocated for withholding votes from our Democratic congressman, who never interacts with his constituents and who votes with Trump like 90% of the time (and who always wins elections by pretty thin margins), and got nothing from them. I of course talked a lot about Palestine, but this issue just doesn’t seem to be on their radar at all, since it makes the Democrats look like Nazis. I think one woman said something about how it was too bad—I can’t remember her exact words, but I said something like: if those kids in Gaza were your kids, would you feel a little more strongly about it? Nothing. The woman I talked with the most said that Trump was destroying the country, and I started saying that it wasn’t exactly a bad thing, since this country is so terrible, but I wasn’t able to finish my point. She listened a lot more when I told her that the local police work with ICE (which is true, of course). I told her that she should attend local town meetings and ask about it, but I think I should have told her to go to the local police station (within walking distance of us) and ask the cops if they work with ICE. The cops are such fucking assholes that they will proudly admit to working with ICE every single time you ask them.

The woman I talked with the most said, as politely as could be said, that I should probably leave the country. I told her that I would have left if it wasn’t so expensive. She said that she herself had been thinking of moving to Mexico. She mentioned that in Russia, people have no rights. I was like—they have the right to universal health care! I brought up how the modern Russian Federation is basically a creation of the USA, which destroyed the USSR, etc. And then I asked about what rights we have in America, when I will lose my job if I put a Free Palestine sticker on my work vehicle? (A coworker of mine has three Ukraine flags on his vehicle.) I talked a lot about how the Democrats will never support universal health care because they’re controlled by private insurance companies. Another lady there told us that she had been appalled that none of her caregivers, during a recent visit to the hospital, had been masked. I had gone to a cafe for a few minutes before all of this to get something to eat (I was starving after a long run and hadn’t properly prepared for my time in town) and found myself interacting with a weird cafe owner who had posters for the Poor People’s Campaign on his cafe walls and who bragged about being fully vaccinated but who wasn’t masked and for some reason decided to talk about my mask. He said that covid wasn’t going anywhere, I said that’s because nobody masks, and he said he agreed—as I walked out. The cafe was packed with unmasked people and I was really uncomfortable there. But the muffin I got was amazing lol (I ate it outside of course).

Is this a good use of my time? I don’t know, I felt good doing it? A Tesla driver drove by us and honked his support. I told him to sell his car. He said “check my bumper sticker.” I said: I don’t care about your bumper sticker, sell your car! And he just shook his head and drove off. The bumper sticker was, of course, about how “I bought this before I knew Elon was crazy.” Okay dude, time to rectify that mistake with more than a bumper sticker. I talked about Elon with the white ladies and said that he just makes the mistake of saying what all billionaires think.

Bla bla bla, etc., etc., etc. Doing this is probably better than screaming into the void, but not by much. I’ll probably end up in a similar situation next week, so I’ll probably try to bring a Palestinian flag with me to see what happens.

I should note that I’ve been reading Marxist theory for years, I ran in elections and won but resigned after I felt like the police were really going to kill me for voting against their budget, I write Marxist novels, I’ve done my best to organize in my area, I’ve participated in many different protests here, I give almost my entire salary to people in Palestine—because some people in the other post were saying that I’m not good enough to be a Marxist or that I’m just an armchair Marxist or something. I’m posting this here for critiques, of course, because I’m probably going to be in a similar situation again and could use hexbear’s advice, but I just feel like this should be noted.