People all over the country are mad and scared about many of the practices that are being initiated by this administration. ICE has arrested more than 100,000 people nationwide. Foreign students with appropriate visas watching these visas get cancelled. People are learning that close to 10 million people will be cut off of Medicaid. The SNAP program is being gutted. Funding for medical research has been cut. Many important government services have been eliminated. Our legal system has been politicized and the government is trying to control the press. Many of the personal liberties that people fought for years to attain are now being cancelled. And now we learn there are talks to cut Medicare, the healthcare system for close to 70 million Americans.
With all this disruption to our previous way of life, it is surprising that there is so little apparent resistance. One reason is, these government policies affect different isolated groups, and there is very little overlap between them. The ICE raids are a threat to the way of life for the Latino community. The cuts to Medicaid affect the poorer segments of the population. The cuts to Medicare affect the senior population. The squashing of the rights of the LGBT population has little impact on the rest of American life. As long as these issues and the groups these policies affect remain separate, it is hard to imagine a large, cohesive and motivated group coming forward to fight the disruption to all our lives.
We now know that that this isolation will not overcome the monster. We must join forces in this fight. There is strength in numbers. It is time to realize that we are all connected, “brothers looking out for each other.” If we fight for fairness for one group, we fight for fairness for all groups. It is time for all of us to “Come Together.” We must see and feel each others pain and suffering and hear each others grievances. We should support each other. Together we can bring about change because together we are the majority.
I am proposing that we all protest on July 4 of this year – “The Unity March.” The anti-Trump people around the country need to be energized and feel enabled. There will be protests of thousands and thousands of people marching in many cities all around the country all at the same time. There will be a million people in Washington DC, a million people in NYC, a million people in LA and Chicago. And there will hundreds of thousands of people in Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Detroit, etc. This one day, July 4, 2025 will mark the beginning of the end of the “evil empire.” What better day than on July 4th, the day we celebrate our independence from tyranny? This massive protest will give people hope that we have the support and backing of millions of people, and it will give us the strength to fight and will give the opposition political party the backbone to take on this political nightmare. We need this now…so let’s COME TOGETHER on July 4, 2025.
H O W A R D S B E N D 