SE Hoya Containment Thread (aka Politics)

April McClain Delaney, House representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district, did not get off to a hot start in her address to Frederick, Md.'s modest-sized but otherwise energetic and very positive "No Kings" protest on Saturday. As soon as she took the microphone, a few people on the back side of the little pavilion at the center of Mullinix Park began heckling her; at first, a whole crowd away and out of sight from the hecklers, I thought they were pro–Donald Trump counterprotesters, but I made my way over there and found that they were actually anti-Trump protesters, perhaps the anti-Trump-iest people there, and were mad specifically at the congressperson.

When McClain Delaney spoke of the need to stand up to the Trump administration's terrorism of immigrant communities, one of the hecklers shouted "Then don't thank ICE!" This seemed like it was probably a reference to her vote in favor of a congressional resolution expressing "gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for protecting the homeland." I didn't get a chance to ask any of them, but I'd wager they were also unhappy with McClain Delaney's vote for the Laken Riley Act calling on ICE to detain and deport immigrants arrested for—but not convicted of or even charged with—nonviolent offenses. Or her vote for a Republican-sponsored bill overturning the city of Washington, D.C.'s immigration laws and forcing its officials to cooperate with DHS and ICE.

McClain Delaney didn't handle it well, repeatedly scolding the hecklers for (paraphrasing, but not by much) disunity in the face of the Trump administration, a sort of ironic stance on the part of one of the 11 House Democrats who parted with their 201 party fellows in the chamber to vote for a bill that had the unanimous support of the Republican majority and which quite literally outlawed efforts at resisting that same administration (to say nothing of the sovereignty of a heavily Democratic American city).

[...] Badly rattled and also just sort of a clown who sucks, McClain Delaney then made a slapstick routine of the call-and-response act that should be the easiest part of any protest speech: first, by asking the crowd, "Are you gonna not be silent?" which nobody knew how to answer—No! We are not gonna not be silent! Or wait, no, yes! Yes, we are not gonna be silent!—and then immediately following that up with "Are you gonna stand up for ICE and these deportations?" neatly sounding out the gargantuan definitional chasm between the words to and for in the English language. A few feet away from me in the crowd, a guy facing the wrong way quipped, "That was a language pretzel!" and got scattered laughs for it.

Some brutal and endless-seeming period of rambling later, a different wiseacre nearer to the stage told McClain Delaney to wrap it up, and she snapped "I am wrapping it up" at them, into the microphone, and then talked for several more excruciating minutes. By the end, she'd beseeched the crowd of the urgent need to stand united "as Democrats" so many times that when she handed the microphone back to an event organizer, that person immediately and abashedly reminded everybody in attendance that this was not a party rally for Democrats but rather a pro-democracy demonstration open to everyone who loves America.

I truly cannot overemphasize how eager this crowd of people was to cheer and chant and feel good to be there, to be doing something instead of staring in powerless horror at the news feed on their phones. They would have applauded an announcement that somebody had left their car's headlights on in a parking lot in Denmark if it came at the end of a minimally competent Barack Obama–style oratorical crescendo. Only a special kind of politician can lose a crowd like that.