In cities including Los Angeles, Seattle, and Detroit, Refuse Fascism was in the mix at May First Marches. This report (below from Detroit) gives a feel for the engagement and what YOU can do when people are in the streets trying to resist the crimes of the regime.
From Detroit:
I went to the May 1st protest in southwest Detroit. There were several hundred people there – maybe as many as 400-500. I’m not good at crowd estimation, but the numbers of Calls I got out would suggest those numbers. The reaction was much different than at some of the other events I have been at recently. This is a much younger crowd than we usually run into. I had made a few hundred copies of the Refuse Fascism Call Act in Spanish and passed them out at the gathering place and along the march. I wish I could give you more particular information about how people are thinking, but many people had very little English and my Spanish is elementary. One woman had her son translate her questions for me, which centered on what exactly our plan was to get Trump and Pence out. Once that was made clear, she wanted to know “when?” I’m not sure how the response was translated. I have been better off pointing her to relevant paragraphs in the flyer. She didn’t want to sign up.
At one point, a man from Chihuahua came up. He took my roll of stickers and began passing them out, along with flyers, and had his young son going around to people collecting money. Within 3 or 4 minutes he had collected $25-30. When I thanked him he said that it was because of the paper that was in his language, and indicated the Call. He asked his son to give me his email address, and will go on the Spanish section of the website. Throughout the march people came up asking for stickers, almost all Spanish-speaking. Two people had read the flyer and came up asked for Spanish flyers to distribute. When some people didn’t have money to donate, others stepped in to donate on their behalf, and I collected an even $50. I also got out a lot of English Calls and the 5 points about impeachment flyer to English readers.
Along the march I ran into a Black youth who read the slogan on the Call and said very emphatically, “Now this is what I want!” He feels the regime is intolerable, and is very angry at the fact that the Democrats haven’t done anything to impeach yet, and ran down the grounds for impeachment that they are clearly ignoring. He is very much influenced by the terms set by the focus of the Mueller investigation, but not in the same way some others are who say “they are giving our country over to Russian control.” His view is that the Democrats have ample grounds to get rid of a horror and are refusing to do it. He signed up to be contacted. There was a group of young women who asked to sign up as well.
This tone from the people was so different than what was coming from the organizers and speakers. The demand of the march and the chants were focused on driver’s licenses for immigrants. Trump nor the attacks on the borders were not even mentioned in any of the chants or flyers. I didn’t hear much of the speakers at the end. A section of the march changed the chant to “Aqui estamos, no nos vamos.”