ON ORGANIZING A PROTEST:

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-if-your-rights-are-violated-demonstration-or-protest
I am ready to organize a protest against Richard Burr at his office in Winston-Salem for remaining silent about the appointment of Steve Bannon to a top administration position. While the Senate has no direct jurisdiction over Bannon's post, I call on Senator Burr to use the bully pulpit of his office to independently condemn Mr. Bannon and the ideology of bigotry he promotes.

Many have contacted me with details about how to find the man himself around town, or how to find out in advance when he will be in his Winston-Salem office. I, however, am more interested in protesting at his office, wether he is there or not. Let's rattle his cage at home, make some noise, get some media attention, inform other citizens of both the facts and our outrage. Let's create a platform through which to proclaim our views.

I am torn in two directions about the timing of this. New and generally horrifying cabinet appointments will be made almost daily, it seems, and our outrage will begin to hemorrhage at, for example, the appointment of Jeff Sessions to Justice. Get out there, my instincts tell me. I'm mad, and I want the world to know it.

On the other hand, I want to actually achieve my objectives through this action, and I want it to be well attended and covered. In my interactions with the staff at Burr's office, I have been subject to misinformation which can be construed as intimidation. "Go ahead and protest but you'd better have a permit." Why do I call this intimidation? Because it is simply untrue, and any representative of mine in government had better know this and adhere to it. Unless you are blocking the street, making too much amplified noise, or taking over a park or a square, you are well within your rights to march, chant, and make speeches.

So: my plan is to cool my hot-headedness and go with plan B, which will be calm, organized, well-publicized, and heavily attended. My inclination is to not get a permit, because I believe that we are going to need to win some test cases in just this sort of situation in the near future. According to the ACLU, many local ordinances in fact violate the First Amendment. Why do we need to test this now, when we could easily just wait to get the permit? Because evolving news situations often require immediate action, including spontaneous protests, that can be easy targets for suppression by the police. This type of suppression is likely to increase under a Trump administration.

Another route to go is to find a business or venue that will host this, or get a permit to use a public space like Whitaker Square Park. By moving away from Burr, we can craft the message of the protest as one of outrage at the silent complicity in promoting bigotry to the highest offices in the land. Burr can be one of many we call out, and we can extend our outrage to any and all objectionable appointees. The disadvantage of this plan is that it starts to become too generalized.

I want to draw a bright line between policy with which I disagree and outright bigotry. Cutting taxes for corporations is a terrible idea to me, but that quintessentially conservative pillar won the day in our election, and holds the levers of power. I will object to that, but in conventional written means such as letters to the editorial, op-ed pieces, and social media posts, and with my ballot. But in the case of individuals who represent truly fringe and bigoted ideas that are flatly undemocratic, I will take to the streets. I will compliment Republicans who were recently elected on their victories, and I will acknowledge their right to pursue their legislative agenda. But I cannot stay silent when the loathsome views and factual distortions of Breitbart News have the president's ear. And neither should my representatives in Washington. Drain the swamp indeed.

Testing our civil rights through well organized, committed, and credible protests is particularity important because the president-elect tweeted immediately after his election that "paid protestors" were "incited by the media." Two chilling fictions propagated here, and they both are a precursor to abrogating your rights: if protestors are paid, they can be swept aside as inauthentic. Dictatorships often discredit protestors by saying they are foreign instigators, "thugs," or, as Russia cleverly used in its illegal seizure of Crimea, "Neo-Nazis." This sets the stage for brutal counter-actions by the police and national guard. The word "incite" is also used to describe a riot. The second part of the tweet is an attempt to undermine the free press, since all major media outlets were simply covering what were in fact spontaneous and anguished protests. The degradation and discrediting of mainstream media is the means through which the Trump team will attempt to control the message going forward. They must be kept under vigilant scrutiny by a free press, a tradition that has only intensified since the era of Watergate and J. Edgar Hoover.

I for one do not advocate general anti-Trump marches at this point. I think specificity is the best way to go. Each terrible direction Trump takes, be it on mass deportations, Muslim registries, egregious trade wars, his very existence as a possible sex offender and certain apologist for sexual assault and the objectification of women, the attack on reproductive rights, the return of coercive and racist police procedures, the expansion of torture, the curtailing of voting rights, and the callous disregard for the very future of the plant should be met with a well-worded, intellectually sound, passionate rebuttal of what is wrong and a clearly articulated position statement about policies we see are legally, ethically, and morally sound.

Please let me know your thoughts, and let's plan to meet in person soon, and if anyone agrees with some or all of the above and wants to take over or help coordinate logistics, please make yourself known. I have been informed that UNCSA students, as one example, are chomping at the bit to take action. I would love to hear their concerns but also make my argument for how to proceed. Or maybe somebody else has a better idea. I'm all ears!