It Was a Blizzard . . . of Postcards; You Didn't Hear?

It’s been a tough week for the White House.

Democrats and news sources are trumpeting the “failure” of the President and the Republican-led Congress to ram a replacement for what they call Obamacare through the House.

Characteristically, the Chief Executive laid the blame anywhere but at his own door, and in this case, far from where it belongs. He blamed the Democrats . . . when in fact it was primarily the most conservative Republicans who dug in their heels and said “repeal and replace” didn’t go far enough to suit them.

But the White House could potentially claim one victory this week . . . though nobody’s talking about it publicly -- not even the Oval Office, which would probably prefer to see absolutely no mention of it whatsoever, anywhere -- so that’s what I’m going to discuss.

A BIT OF PREHISTORY

On the day after the President’s inauguration, the Women’s March on Washington drew at least 500,000 people to a rally on the National Mall against him. A total of about 2 million took part in D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle alone, and all were peaceful; no arrests were reported.

But that was hardly all. Total participation across the nation was estimated at five million, with 100,000 here in Portland alone, despite the nasty weather that day. The marchers included my wife Carole, despite her run of side effects from chemotherapy for cancer. Unfortunately, I had a previously scheduled play rehearsal that afternoon so I could not be with her.

An estimated 408 marches were planned in other U.S. cities, and another 168 in 81 nations around the world, on all seven continents (including one in Antarctica!). Twenty-nine took place in Canada, and 20 in Mexico.

The President and spokesman Sean Spicer tried to claim the inauguration crowd the day before had been the “biggest ever” for an incoming President in U.S. history, and that was followed by Kellyanne Conway’s now-famous defense of “alternative facts,” but various sources have thrown serious doubt on all that. For a grass-roots protest, with no corporate sponsorship or indoor parties in the offing, the Women’s March gave its predecessor a good run for the money.

In the wake of the march, citizens aroused against the new administration looked for other ways to voice their opposition. They crowded town hall meetings when their Congresspersons bothered to hold them (one of the most raucous and well-publicized was the one that greeted Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee); they flooded Congressional offices with phone calls on various issues; and they started letter and postcard writing campaigns.

THE IDES OF MARCH FOR YOU-KNOW-WHO

In early February, a 44-year-old in California named Zack Kushner (no relation to the President’s son-in-law), who had been overwhelmed on the trains to the Oakland women’s march with his 2-year-old son, hit on the idea of getting anti-administration protesters counted in a different way: by flooding the Oval Office with postcards on the Ides of March: March 15, the day famous in history for the assassination of Julius Caesar.

Kushner started an “official” Facebook page for The Ides of Trump, and urged everyone to drop a postcard (or many) on March 15, 2017 to let the White House know how many citizens opposed most if not all of its proposals. He was careful to include the warning: “THE ONLY RULE IS NO VIOLENCE, THREATS OF VIOLENCE, OR INSINUATIONS OF VIOLENCE. … We understand that the Ides of March has a history, but that’s not what we are -- in ANY WAY -- calling for here.”

The idea caught fire across social media, and lots of other people started their own Facebook pages to support the event.

A NATIONWIDE EFFORT

If you do a Google search for “Ides of March for Trump postcards,” you’ll find a report in the San Jose Mercury News that a postcard-writing party there generated “more than 4,000” cards alone . . . a West Hawaii Today report of “about 1,000” cards . . . a Queens Courier story that an activist group in Long Island City, NY wrote and mailed “more than 500 . . . .”

But it wasn’t just the “liberal coasts” that participated. I found a March 24 opinion column in the Pittsburg (KS) Morning Sun whose author said she participated in a party that generated “more than 100” cards, and a story in the Reno Gazette-Journal that asserted a group that called itself the Silver City Small Actions Committee contributed about “85 postcards” to the U.S. Mail on March 15.

Though they cite no card totals, Channel 11 in Little Rock, Arkansas reported that at least 400 participants wrote postcards there, and the ABC affiliate in Flint, Michigan, WJRT, said the Michigan Education Association chose to participate. Other news sources and blogs reported card-writing parties and rallies in homes and bookstores in San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, Larchmont NY, Cortlandt Manor NY; Ridgecrest CA, Alliance OH, Portland ME, Columbia MO, Fort Wayne IN, and Newton NJ.

Perhaps the most heavily illustrated and colorful report came from the “Pink Slips for [the President]” party in Waimea, HI. I sent five cards myself on March 15, with an additional one each to the White House, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell several days before.

WHAT HAPPENED?

But here’s the crux of this piece: Though I’ve searched the news every day for the past week, there’s been no apparent mention of the results of the “Ides of March for Trump” or “Ides of Trump” anywhere. The news stories pretty much stopped on March 15, although there were a trickle of further reports over the next two or three days about what “would” happen.

On March 18, the Santa Barbara Independent followed up by talking to Kushner, who said there was a decent chance the campaign had reached its goal of 1 million postcards.

If you counted up all the reports and photos of cards from people who participated, you’d get a pretty hefty sum: 650 from Fresno, CA; “over 500” from Loudon, TN; 450 from Green Valley, AZ; 119 from Port Angeles, WA; 100 from Olney, MD; 100 from a household in Vegas; 36 from a group at Mercy Corps in Portland, OR; 31 from Gustavus, OH; a photo of at least 30 from Halifax, MA; 29 from a couple in Parkville, MD; 24 from Anchorage, AK; 15 from the UK; 14 from someone in the Shenandoah Valley; 13 from a person in Texas; 10 from Kentucky; 8 from Tucson, AZ; 8 from central Georgia; 7 from Whitefish, MT; 5 from Greensburg, PA; 2 from Sydney, Australia; 1 from Hong Kong . . . and on and on -- many with artwork and/or wit -- in a continuing thread of posts at the top of the official Facebook page, which had 977 total comments as of Saturday afternoon just before I finished this essay and prepared to post it here.

Some comments said they were addressing their cards to “President Bannon,”and many commented that they found the postcard-writing exercise “fun,” “therapeutic,” or “cathartic.” One person reported “My father passed away yesterday, but I still felt I had to take the time to write a few postcards today.” Several sent their notes in Russian “so he can better understand!”

Back on March 16, Kushner & Co. noted 22,000 followers on their Facebook page, and 53,000 who said they were interested in or attending the Event. He counted 9,115 signed up for the mailing list, 5,093 Instagram posts with the hashtag #TheIdesOfTrump, 3,274 Twitter followers, and 2,226 mentions . . . so he estimated about 97,000 people had gotten involved.

He felt that was an acceptable number to start with, though of course there had to be duplications between the various groups above. However, many of these people likely enlisted the participation of family, friends, and strangers as well. Many sent one card, but others sent 5 or 10, and more. So he felt it was not unreasonable to estimate a million.

But there’s been no independent verification. The media silence after so much buildup has been mystifying and almost miraculous in its way.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?

The White House won this round, in a sense, but it also lost -- both because we manage to do this, thousands of Americans who were strangers to one another, and because the administration couldn’t crow about its success in bottling up the story without creating one!

As I told puzzled and disappointed participants on the page:

“There was always this possibility: that the White House wouldn’t let a word out about how much it received, or the press would drop the ball and not press for the info and report it.

“But the crush of mail could still have:

“1. Irritated the poor people who had to figure out what to do with it

“2. Given heart to White House employees who don’t like their boss

“3. Just possibly have upset the Chief Executive a little if anyone mentioned it to him

“What’s more important is we banded together -- thousands of strangers -- and did it. Think of it as practice, or calisthenics; we’re going to do other things like this in the future, because the nation needs us.”

Kushner has announced a similar effort in April, and the target this time will be Paul Ryan.

I’m in. Are you?