2025 Life Logs, Day 289: Exploring Public Policy
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Windy, and Cold; High Temp 53 Low 46 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Most of my day was spent working on various aspects of the film series on nonviolence I am organizing. I spent time reaching out the local faith leaders today, asking them to invite their congregations and/or offering to do a special showing of our first film at their places of worship. I am also working on a resources page that will be shared with attendees. Still much to do.
Mid-afternoon I had to change gears and head to the Rec Center for the Exploring Public Policy monthly meeting. I had arranged for Stephanie Madsen, Falmouth’s Sustainability Coordinator, to come speak with us. She gave an information-packed presentation that was well received by all.
Then tonight, I turned my attention to preparations for Saturday’s NO KINGS rally. I missed the weekly call with the national organizers this afternoon, so I watched the recording. There were 5 million people who attended a NO KINGS rally in June, and we are hoping that number will double this time to 10 million. If so, it will be second only to the first Earth Day demonstration in 1970. The George Floyd protests involved more than 26 million, but that was in multi-day protests, not just one day. On last week’s call we learned that the organizers want everyone to wear something yellow. Why yellow? People on the call wanted to know why not red, white, and blue. There were many reasons yellow was chosen, but I think the most important is what Ezra Levin said on the call. “It’s like if those colors (red, white, and blue) stand alone, they’re very much affiliated with, like, Red America, Blue America, in a way that, I think most people here probably don’t want to play into, because what we feel like we’re doing collectively is we’re trying to represent everyone in America across lines of party and across ideology who are opposed to authoritarianism, corruption, attacks on our neighbors. And so, out of that process of trying to reflect back to folks, like, we need to have some kind of unified symbol that we can work with.” So, yellow was chosen as it is joyful, conjuring up images of sunshine and sunflowers. Plus, it has historically been used by many pr-democracy movements around the world to signify solidarity. Of course, people are welcome to wear any color they choose for the rally, but the color yellow will go forward as a symbol for those of us who are pro-democracy in the United States. How very sad it makes me to write those words. I always thought a democratic form of government would never be seriously challenged in this country. But now we are having to stand up for democracy to assure its survival.
