On June 14, there will be another opportunity for Mainers to demonstrate against the current administration in Washington, and here’s why I think Mainers should participate loudly, wherever they can.

For decades now, Americans have accused presidents they didn’t like of being “fascists” and even portrayed them as Hitleresque. I have always taken Hitler comparisons and loaded words like “fascist” with a large grain of salt. Have our most popular politicians occasionally promoted ideas that had the potential to impede our rights as Americans? There is no doubt they have.

Let us consider what would happen if there were no judges to check this administration’s blatant betrayal of the U.S. Constitution, or if there were no cell phone cameras to capture ICE arrests without warrants and imprisonments without due process. How many documented immigrants and legal U.S. citizens would be rounded up and sent to private prisons outside the USA? How many states would lose funding to provide educational services and mental health services to needy students? What other cruel and unusual defundings and disappearances would be happening at the whim of Stephen Miller and a rogue president-king?

On Saturday, June 14, the president is planning a massive, colossally expensive military parade in his own honor, for his 79th birthday. As a countermeasure, let Mainers and Americans everywhere gather in much greater numbers to protest the grotesque authoritarian actions put forth by the current administration, and take words like fascism and nationalism out of the conversation.

James Gale
Bowdoinham