Where is everyone?

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, it felt like a graveyard for dissent.

The third day of the Republican National Convention, I stood outside one of the main entrances with a bright pink flag that said “End War”. Some of the people shuffling in and out of the security checkpoint laughed, but many people nodded their heads at me. A nerd from The Heritage Foundation tried to argue with me about why we need aircraft carriers — and I wished the “intellectuals” on the right knew how disconnected they were from the American working class. His argument was that we will need more aircraft carriers to have a stronger navy as the ice caps melt. Millions of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are wondering why the hell they even pay taxes to a government that doesn’t give them anything back — a government that uses their hard earned money to line the pockets of weapons CEO’s. Aside from the grifters and pseudo-intellectuals that were meandering around filming me and my comrades, the area surrounding the RNC felt like a ghost town. And it occurred to me that the dweebs at The Heritage Foundation weren’t the only ones distant from regular, everyday people. I kept wondering: Where are all the liberals?

On the first day of the convention, we had a humble rally to march on the convention that ended peacefully and without issue. It was mostly groups on the left, in alignment with myself. There were a couple liberal groups there, but in small numbers. After Monday, they seemed to disappear and every subsequent day, it felt like CODEPINK was the only group marching around the city with our message. It’s not uncommon for CODEPINK to stand alone but our co-founders Medea and Jodie were taken aback by the lack of women’s rights activists or climate activists who are usually protesting the RNC in large numbers.

There was no way we could be everywhere in Milwaukee at once, but for the last days of the convention I did not see any cohorts of liberal protestors calling attention to reproductive justice, or any of the issues they claim are important to them. The mainstream democrats present the Trump candidacy as an existential threat to American democracy — one that will end women’s and immigrant rights as we know it. It will be the nail in the coffin for the planet and the poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer. I don’t disagree with any of those things, but at the Republican Convention I began to wonder if even the normal rank and file democratic voters even seem to care sincerely about any of it. If you care about my right to choose — why aren’t you here with me? If you care about young people and our future, why aren’t you here with me? If you care about Muslims, why aren’t you here with me? Where did all the outraged liberals go when they had the chance to confront and counter the narrative of the Republican party — when all the culture war assholes are in one place? If Trump is a fascist, why aren’t you in the streets outside his premier political event?

There are a few ways to answer that question. One I heard frequently is the issue of safety: they don’t feel safe talking about human rights around Trump and his supporters. Liberals' actions would signal to their base that the only way to respond to fascism is to lay down and let it run you over. Resisting fascism is oftentimes unsafe - that shouldn’t mean we don’t do it. I think we owe each other the tiny speck of courage it took to be in Milwaukee last week. Another answer is that the message wouldn’t be received by such an unfriendly audience — that there’s no point in showing up. But ignoring them and not interrupting their hateful message only makes them stronger — it makes them feel like the opposition is weak and unmotivated. And that’s exactly what it felt like.

There is a lot of scolding from the mainstream liberals about Donald Trump’s fascism, hatred of immigrants, women, and the LGBT community. I think people with the ideologies of Donald Trump should scare people. But what liberals don’t seem to understand is that if they spend all their time scolding people about voting but never show up to actually confront the harmful rhetoric of the republicans they begin to look like the boy who cried wolf to larger and larger sectors of the population. Not to mention the Democrats failed to codify the right to an abortion while they were in power and still choose to hang the issue over our heads. If the stakes are high, they sure aren’t acting like it. If they don’t show up, it just means their rhetoric is nothing more than a performance to scare people into thinking their party is the only viable future.

People who had been to RNCs in the past assured me it isn’t usually like that - there’s always huge groups protesting various policies of the Republicans. So it was disappointing to see that when so much is on the line — liberals failed to show up.

Dozens of Milwaukeeans passed us by and thanked us for interrupting the messaging of the Republican Party and I was glad to be there doing that. But when we were thanked I couldn’t help but feel a pang of defeat. That when we are staring down a second Trump presidency — the groups crying that democracy on the line decided to act like it wasn’t.