When my sons were young, Prop. 13 passed affecting the amount of money available in the elementary schools.  We parents united to raise money selling hot dogs, creating a Halloween carnival, inspiring our children to walk twenty miles in a Walk-a-thon, selling books, and on and on.  I taught computers.  The money we raised paid for art, music teachers, and computers, and we met each other, worked together, and we had fun.

I’m reminded of that today as I reflect on how much those of us who gathered yesterday to connect and protect this threat to our democracy and way of life felt happy, inspired, connected, and safe within a basket woven of threads of awareness and care.  Our gathered energy will defeat those who paid one million dollars a piece for a meal anchored with speeches of greed and hate.

I’m with these words of W.S. Merwin today.

Little breath, 

Breathe me gently. 

Row me, 

for I am the river I’m learning to cross.

Yesterday I, along with 5000 other people, attended the Hands Off protest at the Marin Civic Center.   It was a beautiful gathering that began with music from the 50’s and 60’s, and included inspiring speeches, including one by our beloved Jared Huffman.  We sang This Land Is Our Land and Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down.  I’m still vibrating with what it means to gather peacefully with people for what is right and good, and to save our Democracy and what’s been built and what it represents.

Today we protest, remembering to celebrate and sing like the birds, as we vibrate and fling forth Compassion, Community, and Joy!

Terry Tempest Williams:

Once upon a time… there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Trump continues to work to destroy the world.  He is a mob boss.

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s son Eric appeared to confirm that the tariffs are a shakedown when he posted: “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with [Trump]. The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.…” Foreign affairs journalist David Rothkopf was more graphic: “These aren’t tariffs,” he wrote. “They are a horse’s head in the bed of (almost) every world government and business leader.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman suggested that if a government refused to negotiate with Trump, that country’s major companies should deal directly with Trump, exempting that company’s products from tariffs in exchange for a new factory or some other investment Trump wants.

Trump is overturning the past 80 years of global trade cooperation in order to concentrate power in his own hands.  He’s not content to destroy the U.S. He wants to destroy the world.  

This Saturday, April 5th, is a day of protest.  While Trump is golfing, the people will be protesting.

You can find information here at Hands Off:

https://handsoff2025.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

April Fool’s Day turned into April Celebration day.  We’ll never forget this day with Cory Booker speaking over 25 hours for freedom, and Judge Susan Crawford soundly defeating Musk’s attempt to buy an essential election.  

This is a photo of The Flame of Liberty memorial in Los Gatos, CA.  It is dedicated to U.S. military service members, first responders, and the two local 9/11 heroes, Todd Beamer and Mark Bingham, who were “Killed In Action” during the events of 9/11. 

The memorial incorporates symbols like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, an eternal flame, and a soldier’s cross, representing freedom, remembrance, and sacrifice. 

We, our body-minds, have no straight lines.  Everything spirals.  

The political system is currently spiraling out of control.  It’s time to bring it back into an alignment that spirals and rounds in unity and connection to benefit all, the wholeness we share.

John McWhorter:  The Trump administration’s list of words that are now unwelcome in government and government-funded documents — such as “trans,” “privilege” and “female” (?!) — also includes the word “pronoun.” 

Simon Rosenberg: Trump is now, clearly, a mad, early stage tyrant, and is doing extraordinary harm to the American people and our country every day. With students disappearing from our streets, legal residents ending up in foreign prisons, universities and law firms being terrorized, alliances being torched and our government being systemically, illegally and unconstitutionally dismantled, there is great urgency now for the pro-democracy forces in the country to rise up and find more effective ways to challenge him and stop his rancid efforts to turn the US into Russia and to turn us from a free people to cowering subjects gratefully kneeling before a Mad King.