(Ed. Note: A lot of events happened in and around downtown this weekend. We’ll bring you coverage of the Knoxville Book Festival and the Dogwood Arts Chalk Walk in the next few days.)
I’ve been watching the protests of the current national administration. They pass my house once, sometimes twice a week. I’ve taken to counting them, curious if the numbers would grow. The faithful fifty-to-seventy-five have steadily marched with no obvious growth in numbers. Knoxville has never been a big protest town and, with exceptions like the massive women’s marches and Black Lives Matter marches, large crowds have been rare.
Confounding the momentum, I think, has been the large range of issues over which many people are currently unhappy. So, for example, to protest cuts in National Park, Department of Education, or National Institute of Health staff, or to protest Elon Musk’s access to our private information? To protest deportations without due process or to protest tariffs and the current state of the economy? To protest threats to schools systems, book bans, or the roll-back of climate regulations? To protest the coopting of the antisemitism issue as a way to defund universities, or to protest the pardoning of violent attackers on our nations capitol? The roll back of abortion protections, the defiance of the courts or possible cuts to Social Security and Medicaid?
The list is long and the respective groups most attuned to each issue often bear small connection to each other. How to organize a protest movement in the face of such diverse issues?
Indivisible, a national organization with local chapters, including one in East Tennessee, sought to bring the different groups together under a theme of “hands off,” addressing all of the above by admonishing current leaders to keep their hands off education, scientific research, vaccination and aide programs, and so on. Protests and marches, planning in over 1,200 locations around the country, drew pre-march sign-ups of over a half million people. I would venture a guess that most of those who attended didn’t register ahead of time.
The largest rallies were held in New York City and Washington D.C., but many cities reported large turnouts. Knoxville proved no exception, with somewhere around thousand joining in the effort. Hard numbers were virtually impossible to come by as the protestors lined a multi-block section of Summit Hill Avenue (from Eleventh Street to Walnut Street) and bits and pieces of Broadway near the intersection with Summit Hill. Protestors came and went and were so spread out, estimates of crowd sizes proved near impossible.
I spoke with a number of people, asking if they had protested before and what made them adamant about coming out on this particular day. Several simply stared after the question as if to say, “Where do I start?” Others expressed the sentiment directly, pointing out a litany of issues. Others said it was a particular issue that drew them out. I hit about fifty-fifty with people who had protested before and those who were new to the action. One sign said something to the effect of “Too much s*** for one sign, while others listed a dozen issues.
The diverse crowd leaned more toward female and white. A healthy mix of ages mingled, their causes not that different. While Trump carried Knox County, forty-one percent voted for Harris, so it’s not surprising large numbers would be displeased with the current state of affairs. Hundreds, if not thousands of drivers passing by honked in support, some of them hold signs of their own out their windows. A very small number flipped the marchers off. One person made circles on a truck with a large flag that said F*** Biden.
A current of anxiety ran through the crowds as violence against protestors has become more common and the current president has implied that he thinks that might be acceptable. (Axios put together a list of some of those statements.) Fortunately, the day seems to have come and gone without reports of injuries and, at least locally, there were few confrontations.
So, does it matter? The women’s marches were larger and didn’t seem to engender policy change. The marches likely encouraged some who felt they were isolated in their distaste for the direction the country seems to be headed. Will more marches follow? Will the numbers grow? Is there a better course of action beyond waiting for the next round of elections?
It’s impossible to predict what might happen next, of course. What’s clear is that the country continues to be divided and the two sides have a very difficult time talking to each other. Likely a majority of us feel the country is in peril, but we’re hard pressed to agree on the source of the threat. For those gathered Saturday, the answer was clear: The undermining of democratic norms by the current administration and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the most wealthy.
Whether a majority of Americans will come around to that view remains unclear.