Week 9: “This is NOT a left or right moment. It is a right or wrong moment.”

“This is NOT a left or right moment. It is a right or wrong moment.”

By Marybeth O’Mara
April 2, 2025

I have just watched the last couple of hours of Senator Cory Booker’s 25-hour-long speech on the Senate floor, during which he detailed abuses committed by this administration (and DOGE, under Elon Musk’s supervision), and he cited historical inspirations that have enabled a Black American to be a US Senator and to commandeer the Senate floor for just over twenty-five hours. He repeatedly cited, admired, and praised John Lewis, the civil rights activist and US Congressman who survived police beatings in the Selma March, and participated in nearly every notable civil rights campaign, including the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and the March on Washington. Booker echoed Lewis’s call to “make good trouble.”

Booker listed and explained some of the offenses he believes have been and are being committed by this administration (only some–even 25 hours is not enough time to list everything!), and how they are affecting his own constituents, as well as American citizens, businesses, legal and educational institutions, immigrants, museums, all federal agencies, and US standing in the world. He repeated his thesis, which is “This is NOT a left or right moment. It is a right or wrong moment.”

I fervently hope that this speech gives his fellow senators and other elected Democrats (including my pen pal, Dick Durbin) the energy to build on the frustration and anger of their constituents, and that they use the tools that even members of the minority party hold to oppose and slow down what the MAGA Republicans are doing by allowing Trump and DOGE to remain unchecked.

Meanwhile, I believe there is enough accumulated anger and frustration built up among the public to fuel more coordinated and substantial protests than we have seen so far.

So, this weekend, I will be heading to downtown Chicago to join the Hands Off Rally and March. This event, hosted simultaneously in many cities, has many names, suggesting the variety of reasons people are protesting. In addition to Hands Off Rally and March, it also is being advertised as the People’s Veto Day, Defend the Students/Stop the Genocide, and several other names and purposes. The variety of sponsors of these events hint at the diversity of objectives:

One of the goals of this set of events is to show solidarity that the administration and its Republican supporters cannot ignore and to raise awareness about the horrors of the past 10 weeks and the prospect of more unchecked power grabs in future years. An implied goal is to surpass the attendance at the 2019 Women’s Marches, at which an estimated 3.5 to 4.5 million people gathered in the US (including me at Chicago’s 250,000 march!), and 5 million worldwide.

So, if you are in Chicago, meet me at the Daley Plaza at noon (CDT) this Saturday, April 5th.
Lots of Chicago-area suburban events here!

Nashville: noon CDT , Centennial Park
Palm Beach: 3-5pm EDT, Palm Beach County Courthouse
New York City: 1-3 pm EDT, Bryant Park

Links to Indivisible and other organizers can be found under the “Resources” tab on The Council of Crones webpage.

See you there!!