ICE ICE baby
Or should it be ICE ICE Barbie?
As we are often wont to do, we took a drive in the country today. The Planet Ann Arbor is a medium(?) sized city (population 122K) in southeast Michigan. It has a LOT of traffic and a bazillion traffic lights. It is *not* a Detroit suburb and from our neighborhood on the western edge, it doesn’t take much time to get OUTTA town. I mean to empty tertiary highways and dirt roads. We went south today.
Because we were going south, we drove through the much smaller city of Saline (population 9K). Like Ann Arbor, Saline is not a suburb of anything. If I were to associate it with Ann Arbor, I would probably call it a “satellite” city. It is close enough to Ann Arbor that many people who live there enjoy a short commute to Ann Arbor.
So, we were approaching Saline and when we got to the main intersection, I was amazed at how many people were out there protesting ICE! I was not really aware of protests but this was a MOB. And I mean a FRIENDLY mob. I couldn’t get my phone out of my pocket fast enough our first time through the intersection so I asked the GG to go around the block and he obliged.
From Cygnus, even though I wasn’t driving, I could not get a photo that captured the numbers of people at that intersection. But as luck would have it, the light was red and I got a few pics. A couple people noticed my phone and must have ascertained that I was friendly (I was waving) because they pushed their signs out in front of Cygnus so I could get pics. In the end, this was my fave with the “peach” (derierre) and orange haired poop. “ICE storms are deadly” is also good. Because yes they certainly are although the usual meaning in the Great White North is a bit different than what happened last week in Minneapolis.
The GG noticed that it was an older crowd. I was like, so what? I’m not sure what he was trying to say and I’m not sure what to say next. Well, except this. I hesitate to say that Trump/MAGA are fascists exactly because I think they are their own damn cult and I feel like this is a little different than the Nazis. But. My dad served in WWII (as a pilot instructor, he never saw action – hey, somebody has to teach kids how to fly planes. Why not a slightly older kid?). A lot of these “older” protesters probably had parents/grandparents who also served in that war. They’ve heard about this kind of stuff and don’t want ICE thugs coming into their neighborhoods to terrorize people, not to mention shoot them dead. I don’t really know why the crowd skewed older but I’m glad they were out there.
Democracy is as messy as all get out but authoritarian rule (fascist, communist or whatever) is much much much worse. What’s going on right now is too scary.
January 12th, 2026 at 9:47 am
Nice report. Thanks. I’ve been to a couple of anti-trump rallies here in the DC area and they were very well attended but I’ve also noticed that my cohort was over-represented. All my friends notice the same thing and I’ve always wondered why younger people aren’t as motivated to protest. I’ll bet if I google around I’d find hypotheses galore. Maybe it IS related to all of us whose dads (and some moms) fought in WWII. A friend who joined a group in DC yesterday also reported to me that the crowds were disappointing. My only guess is that some of us, I include myself, began to give protesting a second thought. None of us wants to be another Renee Good.
January 12th, 2026 at 2:56 pm
I’ve seen younger people at protests, but they can be busy with jobs and kids. They are also more at risk from retaliation from employers. We retired people aren’t concerned about losing our jobs due to political activities.