Hands OFF!
Iowa Patriots Rally against Fascism
Note 1: Abena Sankofa Imhotep, CEO, author, speaker, and educator will be joining Spencer Dirks and me at noon CT on Wednesday, April 9, for our Iowa Revolution/Deep Midwest Substack Live event. If you are a subscriber, you will receive an email notification when we go live. Thanks for subscribing. Everyone needs to know Abena and her work.
Note 2: I’ll be the guest today, Monday, April 7 at noon CT on Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck. Please subscribe to Julie’s wonderful interview series to find the link. Thanks.
Thousands of Iowans and millions of Americans participated in one of approximately 1,300 “Hands Off” protests across the nation. I was at two of the protests in Des Moines on Saturday and saw many friends, made some new ones, and found much joy in participating in solidarity with so many other Iowans who are fighting fascism as it rises here at home. I was honored to meet with several subscribers to Deep Midwest who I hadn’t met before. Thanks for coming up to talk with me!
Above is what it looked like as we marched from the disgraced Republican Congressman Zach Nunn’s office on Cowles Commons to the Capitol. If Donald Trump asked Zach Nunn to kiss his ass, Nunn would reply with, “Which cheek?”
Above is a great video short my friend Van Garmon and his team created.
Tristan Camp Productions captures the emotions of the event. Thanks, Van for bringing this to my attention!
This woman’s point is profound. Now let me ask you a question that is likely to piss some people off. But I don’t care.
Q: What’s the difference between the fascists, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Hirohito, and Trump?
A: History tells us what Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, and Hirohito did while Trump’s atrocities have just begun.
As I’ve written before, Trump and Musk are ending lives and livelihoods, not just here, but around the world where the death count climbs as they work to make billionaires even richer. There is blood on their hands. Buckets of blood. Swimming pools of blood. Lakes of blood. And it’s on purpose.
One of our friends at the Unpopulist, Larry Diamond, reminds us of the T.S. Eliot quote from The Hollow Men—that democracy and the world die “not with a bang but with a whimper.”
But the people at the Des Moines Hands Off event, and the millions at the estimated 1,300 other events on Saturday aren’t going out with a whimper. They are fighting.
Diamond provides some great advice on how to best resist authoritarian rule in How to Undo Trump’s Growing Dictatorship and the Damage it is Inflicting—Not giving in to tyrants who count on obedience in advance is the key to defeating them.
We won’t obey.
I was pleased to see my friend Parker Williamson, press secretary for Progress Iowa. Parker is the author of the heartbreaking, The Place I Call Home No Longer Calls Me One of Its Own—What happens when the place you love stops loving you back?, originally published at Progress Iowa’s Rural Routes, and republished at the Iowa Mercury, the Gazette, and the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Parker was distributing copies of his Zine “These Guys are Going to Kill my Mom,” the story of what might happen to his mom, who is on dialysis, if Medicare and Medicaid are cut.
Parker won’t obey.
Nor will I, or my other friends I saw at the Hands Off Rally in Des Moines, including Jen, Megan, Julie, Van, Matt, Pat, Marianne, Neil, Ralph, Sue, Bob, Laura, and many more.
Neither will the millions who rallied across the country on April 5, saying HANDS OFF!
And neither will you, dear reader.
Together we can defeat fascism. Only together. United. Take to the streets.
We will not obey.
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I’m a proud member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Please check out our work here. Subscribe! Become a paid subscriber if you can afford it. Please and thank you. We need you. Thanks for being part of the team! Want to buy me lunch or a cup of coffee? Venmo @Robert-Leonard-238. My friend Spencer Dirks and I have a podcast titled The Iowa Revolution. Check it out! We can get ornery. And have fun! I also publish Cedar Creek Nature Notes, about Violet the Dog and my adventures on our morning walks at Cedar Bluffs Natural Area in Mahaska County, Iowa.
Here is the Zoom link for this month’s Office Lounge for paid subscribers. It’s always held on the last Friday of the month at noon, except for November and December.
The women in our local Southwest Iowa indivisible community have sponsored local events since the Women’s March of 2016. For many people it is difficult to journey to the large urban areas to participate. I have loved the fact that these courageous women have been so open in our rural communities. We were full of joy on Saturday when 150 protesters showed up to line Highway 48 in Red Oak, Iowa, the place where our female senator has a house. The cheering and honking horns give us hope. Now on to the next event.
Thanks! you have restored hope in Iowans! It used to be a state of highly educated, literate people who thought deeply about their neighbors. I was raised by my community of Decorah, IA-the best public schools, Excellent public land grant university( University of Iowa) and medical school….for all I am eternally grateful. When we left Iowa it was because not good fishing( for my beloved husband) and no jobs for our specialties. The population simply didn’t support us in terms of a need for our services. In any case, thanks so much! I am fearful for the future with the current situation. I listen to IPR occasionally and know there are innovative young farmers hoping to stay in agriculture with smart and progressive farming. Keep up the great work. I should add back in the 60’s, my deceased father-in-law was the first farmer in Webster County to do no till farming. Everyone thought he was crazy…but he was very smart…a college educated business man turned farmer.