JOHN LEWIS-GOOD TROUBLE PROTEST 7/17/2025

JOHN LEWIS-GOOD TROUBLE PROTEST 7/17/2025

Editor: As I’ve said before, Grants Pass, Oregon, has for the last decade been a hot bed of MAGA nonsense, but since Trump’s re-election there’s been a lot less hysterical furor and mindless screaming, less red hats, less oversized pickups with giant banners and their requisite over-sized Trump flags. For me, all I can say is thank goodness. I hope the fever for this guy is finally breaking. Hate is not an admirable quality and Trump has taken this country to an ugly place. Give us back MLK, JFK, LBJ, a vision of a better life for all of us, not a chosen few. Give us back common decency. The turnout for the anti-Trump protests have been big all across the country, even in our town of 36,000 the number of protestors has been impressive. The following is an article by my friend Dave about our  recent experience at our fourth protest demonstration in the last 6 weeks. D.S.M.

By David Shadrick w/D.S. Mitchell

I was hot and excited to be at the John Lewis protest march. I was hot because it was 102 degrees. I was excited because I was causing “good trouble.” As usual, Darlene and John and I arrived with our collection of signs, drums, horns, and water bottles. We did not do the march because I’m a fat man at 275 pounds and no one wants to push me in my manual wheelchair the 1.2 miles from the courthouse on 6th street to Riverside Park, even on a cold day.

We get to the 7th street bridge (over the Rogue River) at 5:oo pm, where we joined an already sizeable group of like minded folks carrying signs, banners and flags. Darlene was all happy faced. We fit right in. We found a spot in the shade and joined the demonstration. I began waving my trustee ‘8647’ sign, Darlene had her ‘I like my I.C.E. crushed’ sign, and of course John had his drum and goat horn, and a sign about clowns and crowns.

We waved and hollered at cars  for the next hour, receiving hundreds of honks and thumbs up signs in  return with only a very rare middle finger salute.  In fact, the Trump support was miniscule; like I said there were only a couple of the middle finger salutes.

It must have been close to 6:00 pm when the protesters from uptown met up with us waiting at the bridge. The word was that there was music, speeches, and popsicles waiting down by the river. In disability language that means  deep in the park, “unreachable.”  Slowly the crowd on the bridge began to follow the marchers as they moved into the park, headed to the river

Our little group stayed behind as die hard stalwarts waving our signs on the bridge while most everyone else migrated to the area in the park where they were serving up music and speeches. Quite honestly I didn’t have the heart to ask John to push my wheelchair with me in it down the hill and then in an hour or two, ask him to try to roll me back UP THAT HILL to where our car was parked.  I got the fish eye from Dar when I asked if she wanted to trek down to the river with the other protesters. So with the crew in agreement we headed home for pizza and a couple hours of debriefing.

Here in Grants Pass with each new Trump protest we are seeing fewer and fewer Trump enthusiasts. There was an A-hole in an oversized white pick up truck that delighted in expelling black smoke as he passed the crowd, but even he only came around twice. Fortunately his smoke attacks were ineffective. That was the total pushback the local Trumper’s could muster,  I take that as good news.

Be ready to make more good trouble. Thousands of people are mobilizing for a National Day of Action against Donald Trump and his extremist administration. There are hundreds of planned “Rage Against the Regime” protests scheduled for the first weekend in August.”50 Protests,50 States, One Movement aka 50501.