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Next Comes What
Freezing Trump Out -- Lessons for a Grim Time
00:36:11
A cold day in hell on the streets of DC as the city shows us how to handle Trump. Read the post that inspired this episode: Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: ...
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- [00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
You're listening to. Next comes what from Degenerate Art. Each week we'll look at one aspect of authoritarianism to figure out how we got where we are and how to fight back. This is Andrea Pitzer. So it was somewhere around McPherson Square, on the edge of the park, when the cold began to hit. It entered through my teeth, which felt like a series of small spikes driving up into my eyeballs from below. After accounting for the wind chill, we were wallowing in some 12 degrees of Fahrenheit warmth, which, fair enough, is not a lot. And I've been to the Arctic on four expeditions, so I didn't really recall this particular kind of eyeball skewer before, and I realized part of it was probably just psychological and due to the events of the day, no point in mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. It was not lost on me that for the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. And Trump's second inauguration, that these two things were taking place in the same moment, the tale of two cities in one district, living inside the Beltway and pondering our national future. I felt obliged to witness some part of both of them in person, and today I'll talk about what I saw and the lessons that I would take from it, as well as the opening salvo of executive orders from Trump that came in after those events and what they indicate for the country. The first shock, even before the chilly air, was how empty the trains were. All of them. The outdoor events had been canceled due to the cold, but for a normal inauguration for the Women's March, for any real DC Happening, even a big baseball game, Trains are usually loaded up back to my station in Northern Virginia, but there was no one around after I got on. The emptiness continued at each stop. The closer I got to the city, the more police and National Guard units there were, but only one or two riders would be visible getting on and off at each station. At Rosslyn, just before D.C. where I assumed we might actually hit a crowd, a lone man declaring that he was from Florida got on. He had a hip length, heavy fur coat, and he said he was trying to get to Dulles Airport, which meant he was on the wrong train going the wrong direction. He had been robbed of his cell phone and his iPad, he said, and he just wanted to go home, and.
- [02:50]
Unnamed Commentator
I'm filling with hate and rage right now just thinking about it.
- [02:52]
Andrea Pitzer
I explained how to get to the airport and sent him on his way, and he seemed kind of emblematic of the day for reasons that will become clear later.
- [03:01]
Unnamed Commentator
That's a very profoundly personal commentary on your perception.
- [03:05]
Andrea Pitzer
I had planned to start my reporting at McPherson Square, where a march to celebrate MLK's legacy had been planned to begin at 10am in the park.
- [03:15]
Al Sharpton
And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
- [03:28]
Andrea Pitzer
Arriving a half an hour early, I found only two Ukrainian filmmakers and their French colleague. They had come to cover the March 2, but it had apparently been canceled because of the weather. Just like inauguration, which we suspected might be a possibility. But before leaving, we took turns taking images of the lone white protester who arrived clutching a sign that said Unite Against Racism, which was also a little bit of a theme for the day.
- [03:54]
Unnamed Commentator
Greed, treachery, stupidity, cupidity, positive power of lying, total contempt for any sort of human, constructive political instinct. Everything that's wrong with America, everything that this country has demonstrated as a national trait that the role defines repugnant. The bully instinct, the power grab, the dumbness, the insensitivity.
- [04:24]
Andrea Pitzer
Thousands had protested Trump's policies on the Mall over the weekend, and hundreds would gather in that same window on Inauguration Day at Malcolm X Park and at Dupont Circle as Trump took the oath of office. People are talking about women's rights, trans rights, LGBTQ rights, talking about the rights of Palestinians, D.C. statehood and much more, but activity in the heart of DC's business sector, in the federal seat of power, and the kinds of transportation people typically use to come in to those places from outside the city. They were ghosts of prior inaugurations. Up to 2 million people crowded into two freezing miles of the Mall, turning a solemn ceremony into a national a global celebration. Their new leader warned them, though, this is a nation in crisis. But he insisted America's decline is not inevitable today. I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious, and they are many. At 10am I took the train to Capitol South Station, where huge gates and bevies of policemen were blocking any close approach to the Hill. In the Capitol building, people were milling to see if they might catch a glimpse of new administration celebrities coming or going through the gates. Many of them had gotten tickets for the outdoor events from their congressional representatives, but were now out of luck and couldn't get into the Capitol Rotunda, which of course holds far fewer people. There was a brief buzz due to someone putting on a giant rat costume, at which people began to take offense, but it turned out to just be PETA handing out material about animal experiments. And given the many other possibilities that a rat could have portended for them, nobody really seemed to mind that. Everybody snapped pictures of the giant rat in its costume. And so then I began approaching people in the crowd, and I first talked to a woman from Missouri. Connie. Connie. Thank you, Connie. Who spoke about the importance of unity for America and how critical it was for Trump to bring people together and stop the spread of hate, something she thought he was well equipped to do. The unitedy the unity of people. Right, because we've been divided for a while. Then she told me, it's time for us to take our country back. We've allowed a lot of people in here, and I'm all for immigrants coming in, but we need to do it the right way and safe way. Having someone come in and stomp on your flag and burn your flag is not somebody you trust with your country. I talked to her companion.
- [07:11]
Donald Trump
My name is Corey.
- [07:12]
Andrea Pitzer
I'm from Missouri. Who brought up a concern over U.S. aid to other countries going unaudited, something he called a gross negligence of taxpayer dollars. We don't know where the money goes. We don't know who it's getting to. There's no oversight. He brought up his enthusiasm for Doge, and then he added that immigration is a big issue for him. I would like to see legal pathways reinstated, he said in a healthy manner. Asked about ways that Trump immigration policies might create camps or crises, he added, I think if we put feelings over facts, we're just gonna ever solve any issues. We make way too many mistakes with not enforcing the rule of law. After talking to a few more people, the themes of Trump as a uniter.
- [08:00]
Donald Trump
Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable.
- [08:10]
Andrea Pitzer
Excitement over Doge.
- [08:11]
Donald Trump
My administration will establish the brand new Department of Government Efficiency and overwhelmingly, their.
- [08:20]
Andrea Pitzer
Wish to close the border.
- [08:22]
Donald Trump
I will declare a national emergency at our southern border.
- [08:26]
Andrea Pitzer
Formed a pattern over and over and over again. Repeated rhetoric, repeated threats, and the danger just keeps increasing. That is the pot. We have all been slowly boiling in to see if I could get any other answers. I set my sights on a person of color who stood out in the crowd. I sidled up to him and hung out for a minute or two as we both looked out at the, you know, just dozens or so of people who were milling around. He had a nice jacket and a cabby hat, and I asked if he had a minute to answer a couple questions about his feelings on the future of the country. I'd like to help you out, he said, not turning to look at me at all. But I'm on duty, so I'm pretty sure I had a Secret Service guy there who had thoughts of his own but was not about to share them with me. In that moment, I left Capitol south and got back on the train and started interviewing people there. There weren't a lot, but I found one group of people, and the first woman I spoke to, she and her friends basically told me what others had said on the Hill. Most of them didn't want to go on camera, but another one in her group, even though she talked too, about closing the border, she said that she had a good friend who's Mexican, and her friend had had a really hard time coming to the US Legally because it was such a difficult and convoluted.
- [09:49]
Unnamed Interviewee
Process for the overwhelming majority of the undocumented population. No matter how long they stay in the United States, there is no way that they will ever be able to fix their papers. There is just nothing that it can do to get a green card at all unless Congress changes the law. And that has been a deliberate choice by Congress to make that happen.
- [10:10]
Andrea Pitzer
As a result of witnessing her friend's plight, she understood that the US System of immigration as it stands is incredibly difficult for those trying to do the right things.
- [10:20]
Unnamed Interviewee
Which of these do you think we should do? Create the system that you kind of think already exists, or go down this path to mass deportation? People pretty overwhelmingly say, let's create the system that we think already exists.
- [10:32]
Andrea Pitzer
She understood that it needed to be reformed, but her first priority was still, as she said, they need to close the border. Leaving the train, I went up to a couple guys and asked if they'd be willing to talk to me, and they said I should really talk to their friends because he'll say it so much better than we will. So I caught up with that guy who was a lawyer named Greg, who told me that people are tired of the liberal mindset. All the woke DEI crt. It's done.
- [11:01]
Greg
They voted for that crazy Democratic switcheroo Kamala Harris by like 98% in Washington, D.C. so that means the federal bureaucracies are completely filled with these woke people, and Donald Trump is taking them on. Now they can come after him like they did last time, but this time he knows their game.
- [11:21]
Andrea Pitzer
He does. With beer on his breath at 11am Greg told me the country is back to a meritocracy and returning to its roots. He himself had run for the Board of Education. He told me, and was trying to get through a local law on parental notification, one which, for now, had been stopped by a judge. But this lawyer believed that his side would prevail, and given how far overboard he was claiming that Biden had gone in terms of endorsing and expanding liberalism, I asked him if there was any danger of Trump overreach going in the other direction. But no, he assured me nothing like that would happen. Anything too extreme that Trump would do would, quote, get bogged down in the courts, and we'll end up somewhere in the middle in a good place.
- [12:13]
Donald Trump
I want to go back to this one issue, though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you under no circumstances. You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody. Except for day one. Yeah, except he's going crazy. Except for day one, Meaning I want to close the border and I want to drill. That's not a. That's. That's not. That's not retribution. I got. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. You know, he keeps. We love this guy. He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no. Other than day one.
- [12:49]
Andrea Pitzer
Leaving that same station, the next person I got to talk to me was a Latina woman named Melinda from San Antonio, Texas. And she told me that she was counting on Trump for relief and for healing for the country so that it could go back to its foundational aspects.
- [13:05]
Donald Trump
Our liberties and our nation's glorious destiny will no longer be denied again.
- [13:12]
Andrea Pitzer
This was something I heard again and again. I asked what that looked like in terms of actual policies, and she said, shut down the border and get rid of them. Get rid of dei. You don't get a job just because you're black or Latino. You have to be qualified.
- [13:30]
Donald Trump
We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit, based.
- [13:36]
Andrea Pitzer
At Metro center station, there were likewise no people other than the cops and the National Guard contingents sent to the city for the inauguration. I met guardsmen from Buffalo and Peekskill at two different stops, and then, above ground, another unit from Delaware. I waited for each train to empty, and I would see maybe 20 or 30 people get off, and then the station would empty out in ways I had never seen in the 40 years that I've been living in DC or Virginia. Heading up to the street level, I went over to F Street, where maybe a couple hundred people had lined up, hoping to see Trump's motorcade come through. We were right by Capitol One arena, and I met an Italian immigrant, also named Andrea, or Andrea, as he says. And he was someone who had become a US Citizen himself. And he had moved from Europe after globalists, as he called them, had taken over his country and brought it into the European Union. He claimed that he had seen the same forces at work here in the last few years.
- [14:50]
Donald Trump
We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again.
- [14:54]
Andrea Pitzer
He explained that that had motivated him to support Trump and to come out that day to express his opinions. You have to take care of your country, he said. You have to protect the national identity. You want to have a certain pride in the nation.
- [15:11]
Donald Trump
We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to.
- [15:15]
Andrea Pitzer
The Gulf of America right outside the gates that had been set up to block the streets adjacent to the Capitol One arena.
- [15:24]
Donald Trump
So I'm going to go right over to here, and I'm going to sign in front of you. Is that okay? Good.
- [15:28]
Andrea Pitzer
Where Trump would go for the indoor parade after his official inauguration activities.
- [15:35]
Greg
The next item here is the withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty.
- [15:51]
Andrea Pitzer
I met a husband and wife from South Carolina. They were accompanied by their son, who was a 2022 graduate from Duke University. They asked if I knew about the false rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse players from 2006, and they said that because of those, they had been terrified for their son at college. My son, the mother told me, was afraid of girls. He never dated while he was there all four years. The father explained how even if their son had gotten sexual consent in writing, the university officials the parents had questioned said it would be impossible to protect him if a girl changed her mind. The son changed the subject slightly, saying, in all of higher education, there is not a single conservative. Asked about issues that were important to them, they went through the same litany as everyone else, using the same language. Dei doge, immigration. @ one point, the father and mother said in unison, drill, baby, drill excitedly, as if they were happy to recall another catchphrase of Trump's that they could repeat. I asked them if there was any danger of overreach in the Trump administration. No, the father answered. That's not Trump's style.
- [17:24]
Donald Trump
No, no, no.
- [17:25]
Andrea Pitzer
Other than day one, he uses common sense, the mother added.
- [17:29]
Greg
The next item, sir, is a freeze on all federal hiring, accepting the military and a number of other excluded categories, again until full control of the government is achieved.
- [17:40]
Andrea Pitzer
By this point, the hope that those waiting would be allowed inside the gates to get closer to the arena had passed, and I extricated myself from the trio. And this was the moment when I ran into the part of the Ukrainian camera team again, it was probably inevitable that we would meet up once more. There just weren't that many people to talk to outside. Since Monday's Martin Luther King march to the AME Church on M Street had been canceled, I thought I would see if the memorial speeches were still taking place inside the church there. So I headed up to M Street, realizing that I had walked by the church a million times but had never been inside. A lot of security stood just inside the doors, but the doors were unlocked. They were open to everyone. And one of the guards ran a bag check before visitors were allowed up onto the second floor, which is where the sanctuary is. But there was no impediment to entering, and I arrived in time to see Al Sharpton speaking Sunday service style to a full house of a couple thousand people, with an organist providing flourishes in his words about MLK's legacy in the days that lie ahead.
- [19:04]
Al Sharpton
The King told us to be proud of who we were. Why do we have to be colorblind? No, we can acknowledge each other's color and treat each other equal.
- [19:14]
Andrea Pitzer
If you've ever been to a Sunday service in the black community, you'll know exactly what it was like.
- [19:19]
Al Sharpton
I ain't been to one of the Ivy League schools. I'm not as classed as some of y'all downtown, but I'm not gonna let them. I heard there's a giant that defies Martin Luther King. There is a giant that defies Frederick Douglass. I come to Washington with my slingshot. I'm not scared of that giant. I'm not scared of that giant. The Lord is my shepherd.
- [19:54]
Andrea Pitzer
And Sharpton was talking a lot about MLK's legacy in the days that lie ahead. And looking around the church, it was really the opposite of the people that I had interviewed out on the streets.
- [20:09]
Al Sharpton
What do we want? When do we want it? When do we want it? When do we want it? When do we want it? Hug the person next to you. Tell them you love them.
- [20:34]
Andrea Pitzer
It was filled with people of color, and it occurred to me that Trump was being sworn in for his second term that very minute, just under two miles away. Al Sharpton has been called an ambulance chaser and an opportunist across my entire adult life and has disgraced and redeemed himself repeatedly through apology and through action.
- [21:02]
Al Sharpton
New York police went and corralled five young black and brown men, coerced them into signing confessions, put them in jail. One of their mothers called us. We had just started National Action Network. We went and stood up for them. They called me everything but a child.
- [21:23]
Andrea Pitzer
Of Trump has apologized to no one and has revealed himself to be, in my adult life, perhaps the greatest opportunist in US history.
- [21:33]
Al Sharpton
Corey Weiss did 13 and a half years in jail for a crime he didn't commit. Others, four of them time in jail. Donald Trump took out an ad in the newspaper and said, bring back the death penalty and execute these young men. And even when the city of New York said that we have to compensate them for the time they served that they were coerced into, he said, don't give them a dime.
- [22:13]
Andrea Pitzer
Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed to take my life. The returning president said in his inaugural dress before declaring himself America's Messiah.
- [22:24]
Donald Trump
I was saved by God to make America great again.
- [22:30]
Andrea Pitzer
Both born in New York City and entirely products of the best and worst of post war America, Sharpton and Trump praised King's legacy.
- [22:40]
Al Sharpton
Martin Luther King Jr. Gave his life, shed blood and died to open up America for everybody.
- [22:54]
Andrea Pitzer
Yet their approaches were different.
- [22:56]
Donald Trump
Today is Martin Luther King Day and his honor. This will be a great honor. But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.
- [23:10]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump spoke about unity and King, but then listed grievances against, quote, millions and millions of criminal aliens in the country, a number orders of magnitude larger than anything in reality. Trump declared that the government will exclude any recognition of trans people, asserting, quote, there are only two genders, male and female. In one executive order he signed later in the day, he authorized stripping the birthright citizenship guaranteed in the Constitution. Sharpton, on the other hand, spoke about those whom the new administration had set itself against.
- [23:47]
Al Sharpton
But if we colorblind, we all the same thing. We not the same thing, but we can be on the same page. Cause the same people that don't like blacks, don't like browns, don't like gays, don't like women, we all got the same enemy. And we may not agree on everything, but we gotta agree we got to fight this enemy together.
- [24:11]
Andrea Pitzer
He reminded those in attendance that they stood on the same rock that sent Frederick Douglass home and had held watch over the coffin of Rosa Parks, too. This is sacred ground, he said.
- [24:25]
Al Sharpton
And every once in a while in history, we are tested. And Trump is nothing but a test.
- [24:38]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump likewise used battle language to talk about the days that lie ahead. We will not be conquered, we will.
- [24:45]
Donald Trump
Not be intimidated, we will not be broken, and we will not fail.
- [24:51]
Andrea Pitzer
But the Key difference was that Sharpton was talking about fighting back to ensure survival.
- [24:58]
Al Sharpton
I ain't trying to go to the moon. I'm trying to live right here in.
- [25:01]
Andrea Pitzer
The District, he said to a rapt audience, later offering a call in response in which they vowed not to embrace violence or become like those they were fighting.
- [25:12]
Al Sharpton
But I will peacefully stand against those that want to bring us down. I commit this in the house of God, on this sacred ground, so help me God.
- [25:29]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump is now the most powerful man in the most powerful country in the history of the planet. Other than the nation of Panama, which Trump has threatened with false statements about the canal he would like to seize, or Greenland or Canada. All invented battles. Who is Trump really fighting against? Those who recognize more than two genders, those who want race to be a part of public conversation and accountability, anyone who opposes his administration. Oh, and those US Citizens he's announced will no longer have citizenship. It was a vision of two Americas, one hopeful, the other punitive. But for now, the latter is in power. Leaving the church, I headed toward Farragut Square, going back to the metro, when I passed four people carrying signs made out of torn up cardboard boxes written on with magic marker. They were students from the University of Maryland, and they'd come down to do their own small protest. It was the only anti Trump protest I had encountered in the corner of D.C. that I was in. The majority of demonstrations had been religious activists calling on the country to repent. One of the students, Cecilia, held up a sign that read, resist Fascism. They had not known what to do that day in the face of Trump's arrival, but they felt like they ought to do something. Another one held a sign that read DEI saves. And a third had a quotation from Dr. King that read, freedom must be demanded by the oppressed. The one who held that sign explained to me that there has been a radical centralization of power. Never before has the government been more up for sale. There's an oligarchy forming that we have to protect ourselves against and act against. We need to build a community to act. My friends, what we are looking at here has nothing to do with democracy. What we are looking at here is oligarchy. This is up and up government by the billionaire class for the billionaire class back home. Listening to Trump's inaugural address after the fact, I realized that the Trump followers all across the morning had parroted his talking points from the speech exactly before it had even been given.
- [28:10]
Donald Trump
You like my speech? Thank you.
- [28:23]
Andrea Pitzer
I had talked to some people for just a minute or two. And others for as long as 15 minutes. But other than the woman on the metro talking about her Mexican friend who had had such difficulty for years and years trying to follow the US Law to get citizenship, not one person spoke to me in language that seemed to be their own or to involve any actual thought process from them. And even she, in the end, overwrote her own thinking by declaring it was still more important to close the border. And Trump followed through on all the things that his supporters had parroted to me, all the things that he had told them for months and months, in some cases for years, that mattered. He's going to try removing not just birthright citizenship, but also trans people from official life.
- [29:15]
Donald Trump
We will. Drill, baby.
- [29:17]
Andrea Pitzer
Drill is official policy now, though we shouldn't lose sight of the many quieter but practical orders, like stripping price reductions for medicine. Many Medicare and Medicaid patients tonight are concerned that President Trump is now signaling that he is not going to work toward lowering the price of prescription drugs, which was a signature goal of the Biden administration, and tearing up green energy programs. There are so many orders, I won't address them all here today. But I want to talk about one part of what Trump did yesterday, which was to lift up and pardon the January 6th rioters and coup plotters, the people who had abetted in the attempt to overthrow the US Government.
- [30:01]
Donald Trump
We want a unified country, they said. Don't talk about the J6 hostages that you're going to be releasing today.
- [30:10]
Andrea Pitzer
He wants those prisoners released and current cases underway, shelved. Some of those processes are already happening.
- [30:18]
Donald Trump
Pardons for a lot of people. A lot of people.
- [30:22]
Andrea Pitzer
Now, back in 2017, I talked to Chris Hayes about a time, a year into Hitler's rule in Germany, when states attorneys still sometimes tried to take action based on the law. Some 25 paramilitary SA concentration camp guards were charged with beating detainees, forcing them to eat, vomit, and worse, all clearly illegal acts. They were convicted in 1934, a year after Hitler came to power.
- [30:52]
Unnamed Commentator
And Hitler came in and pardoned them.
- [30:55]
Donald Trump
Wow.
- [30:55]
Unnamed Commentator
And it was this mass pardon that made clear to the courts there was no point in bringing these cases because in the end, nothing would happen. So it's this active embrace at high.
- [31:07]
Andrea Pitzer
Levels of low level abuses that I.
- [31:11]
Unnamed Commentator
Think you see happen in a cycle, that then you have to harden the population as a whole, but then you really have to harden the people that are going to come in contact with these humans on a daily basis, because our impulse is to treat each other humanely.
- [31:23]
Andrea Pitzer
In the wake of yesterday's pardons, Even the more independent attorneys remaining at the Department of Justice will be likewise less willing to push for charges in many kinds of cases. And the department as a whole will be working hand in glove with an administration that may now be more likely to commit civil rights violations than to act against them. But unlike in 1934 Germany, we the people can make sure this kind of mistreatment does not go unreported, unpublicized, or unnoticed. It's worth pushing the point.
- [32:00]
Unnamed Commentator
So it's terrible that this mechanism has happened again and again in the history of camps, but it does hearten me a little bit that, you know, if you have to be trained to do this, then there are ways to undo it. You know, there are ways to stop it.
- [32:12]
Andrea Pitzer
Many people yesterday said things off camera to me that they weren't willing to say on camera. Most often they alluded vaguely to feeling hatred in a divided country due to wokeness. They clearly feel they've been victimized and that Trump will restore an America in which they won't have to feel bad about anything. On some level, they know that their language is suspect and that it's something to which they shouldn't attach themselves publicly. My sense is that we should tackle this from two directions. One is to engage the democratic process at a community level. If, as in the case of the lawyer I mentioned that I met who was pushing a parental notification law, he ran for the Board of Education, and if he's willing to do that, then some of us need to be out there protecting the kids. We should be out there running against him.
- [33:06]
Unnamed Commentator
Republicans are trying to build long term sustainable power. They're trying to make sure that what our kids are learning in schools will cultivate the kind of citizens who will grow up to be long term Republican voters. You know, 20 or 30 years ago, Ralph, one of the founders of the Christian Moral Majority, said, I'd rather have 1,000 school board members than one president. They understand exactly how important these offices are. They've been investing in them for decades, and we have now reached a point where that's coming into light. And people who care about our kids learning empathy and compassion and an accurate telling of history have to get in this fight, too.
- [33:41]
Andrea Pitzer
Let the community hear both voices at the very least, and make people who push these policies address what they're really after and what the real outcomes will be in the best case scenario. Sometimes you'll even win the seat from that guy. The other direction we can go is to be a gadfly at every level. Nephew, if you can have Melania. I want Imelda. That is my mom. Let her back in. If you can't stop the agenda, you can slow it down. You can be annoying. You can make sure nothing happens easily every day we need to make the decision. Are we going to uphold a democracy and the kind of government that is for the people? Are we going to sit it out? For me, I'm going to stand up. How about you? Are you going to stand up? Fight back? For now, I'd like to think that the empty corporate core of the city that I saw yesterday was a sign of not just the cold and the holiday, but also one of negative participation of the real heart of D.C. and its communities. Steering clear, refusing to go where Trump wants them to, not showing up on the streets or getting on the train. The real city held its own party, including its own protests elsewhere, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. So much of history, even the last election, is comprised of events that easily could have gone either way. The same is true of the future. The arc the past makes in the wake of the present is made clear only retroactively. It's up to us to create it every day from the things that we do.
- [35:53]
Unnamed Commentator
Democracy. You have to be a player.
- [35:54]
Unnamed Interviewee
Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this message. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.
- [36:10]
Andrea Pitzer
That's it.