LiDona Wagner

 YES, WE CAN!

City Hall to City Hall

I want to take you behind the scenes of the massive numbers and amazing signs at 3300 NO KINGS rallies and marches, covered by mainstream media. There was a lot of grassroots organizing that went into these events. 

To support the combined Eugene/Springfield rally & march held jointly in Springfield, two young female bike riders arranged for bikers to assemble in Eugene and ride together from Eugene’s city hall to city hall in Springfield, the site of the No Kings demonstration. 

I learned of this grassroots-organizing because another person in her eighties and I had decided to for-go the massive crowd and traffic in Springfield by demonstrating alongside the major bridge crossing the Willamette River, accessing Eugene’s sister city. Arriving at 10:00, we noticed bikers with signs assembling below us at Eugene City Hall. 

We walked down to check it out and were present as rally-goers of every age kept arriving. Conversing with a few demonstrators, we learned that two young people had arranged for bikers to meet at Eugene City Hall for a joint ride to Springfield City Hall, site of the rally. We also learned that non-biking groups were organized to meet at a University of Oregon rapid transit site to travel together to central Springfield.

I walked among the bikers taking photos of their signs and trying to capture their multi-age nature without giving away too many identifying characteristics.

At 10:15 one of the leaders stood on a cement ledge and explained that she would be going now to the head of the line to lead the group. A second young woman stood beside her and gave an excellent explanation of biker etiquette: visual and auditory signals. She would be at the end of the line with someone who would be counting as each biker trailed the leader.

After waving a couple of late arrivers on, my friend and I walked back up to our site, unaware that we were launching another much smaller group of protesters. 

Streetside Rally

One demonstrator was already down the road from where we chose to stand, waving two bright green signs. A man across the street from us called over to ask where the rally site was, nodded when he heard Springfield and took off to get there for the 11:00 launch.

Soon a woman in a green frog suit appeared across from us. She tested waving her sign, seemed satisfied, then went and got two carloads of older people who positioned themselves at a corner where they were visible to cars joining the main traffic from a feeder route. 

Minutes later, a gray-haired woman approached us from behind and pulled out two signs. When my companion told her about the bikers, she pushed her signs back in a bag and said, “I’m going to get my bike and ride over to Springfield.” We grinned and said, “Go for it!”

Out on the road, cars began honking and waving when they saw us. Soon I began noticing that small groups of cars were coming off the feeder road onto the highway. They had their lights on and were honking as they passed. These appeared to be self-organized groups who had figured out a common parking spot in Springfield from which to walk to the rally. 

As noon approached, our arms were getting tired, and we were thinking we had probably done enough. Another gray-haired lady came up behind us with a sign that said, ‘Not Your Oyster Bed’. As a caregiver for her husband, she explained that she couldn’t go far and for very long, but she really wanted to make her voice heard. Our site would work well for her. 

We left her in charge of our rally site and dragged our tired hips and aching arms back to our car at Alton Baker Park. My sign is parked on my back deck, a blister on my left thumb carries evidence of all the times I waved it to people about to cross a bridge into the future.