Candidates and other speakers address protesters, call for action
OCEAN CITY — Citizens groups picked one of the hottest days of the summer season so far to raise some “Good Trouble” Thursday afternoon, protesting President Donald Trump’s policies and actions while listening to a host of candidates running for county, state and federal offices.
It was brutally hot at noon July 17 when roughly 150 people gathered in the gazebo park at the Ocean City base of the Route 52 causeway, where they spent more than an hour listening to speeches, holding up placards for passing motorists and then adjourning to march along the causeway to the Welcome Center and back.
The rally, matching others that were taking place across the nation, was organized by Indivisible Ocean City, which held a massive “No Kings” rally just weeks ago with a crowd that Ocean City police estimated at 800 but organizers believe numbered more than 2,000.
Indivisible Atlantic County and Fight Against Fascism Org (FAFO) also took part in the rally dubbed “Good Trouble Lives on: A Day of Nonviolent Action.”
The “good trouble” theme comes courtesy of late Congressman John Lewis, a towering figuring in the Civil Rights movement who advocated peaceful but powerful civic unrest.
The groups holding the rally say their “movement is rooted in peaceful, nonviolent resistance — and grounded in the belief that democracy is something we build together, in public, in solidarity, and in defiance of tyranny.”
Jasmine Johnson, founder and co-director of FAFO, explained that “nonviolent does not mean non-disruptive.”
She said Lewis, who chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was a driving force behind Freedom Rides and voter registration across the South, “didn’t believe in comfort. He believed in confrontation — with dignity, with discipline and without backing down.”
She explained that nonviolence isn’t weak or soft, that instead it is a form of power and that Lewis put his own body on the line “for what was right. And neither should we because let’s be honest — fascism isn’t creeping. It’s here.”
Johnson cited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “tearing families apart in broad daylight,” books being banned while history is rewritten, stripping away health care and rolling back rights and pushing aside veterans.
“They want us silent. They want us scared. They want us divided,” she said.
Johnson, who said she “refused to stay quiet,” implored the crowd to act. She told those gathered not to wait for the perfect moment or when they feel qualified to join.
“Let this be the day we stop admiring the movement and start living it,” she said.
Retired U.S. Marine Bill Davenport, who served in Vietnam, talked about the criticisms Trump made about members of the military.
He reminded the protesters the president criticized former U.S. Sen. John McCain, who was a POW during the Vietnam war, for being captured after the plane he was flying was shot down, that Trump got in an argument with a Gold Star family and said former U.S. Congressman John Dingle, a World War II veteran, would be going to hell.
Davenport said he wasn’t offering opinions but facts that could be verified, such as the president saying traumatic brain injuries suffered by service members were headaches, that children of service members born overseas weren’t automatically citizens, and that he was taking away educational benefits from disabled veterans.
He pointed out how the president fired top generals and admirals because of his political whims and then is cutting the top ranks by 20 percent, a move that will hurt military planning.
Davenport also said the reduction of tens of thousands of employees of the Veterans Administration means firing a lot of veterans and that services to veterans will be cut.
He also singled out U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who represents South Jersey, for voting four times against veterans and military bills that fortunately passed without his support.
“There’s only one way to change the trend that adversely affects our veterans and the community and that’s the vote,” Davenport said. “Everyone must get out and vote. That’s the only way we’ll make a change.”
Lou Stricoff, of Indivisible Ocean City, introduced a number of speakers, all running for office. They included Carolyn Rush, who is running for a District 1 Assembly seat in New Jersey, now held by Republicans Erik Simonsen and Antwan McClellan; Terri Reese and Bayly Winder, who are both running for the congressional seat held by Van Drew; and Eric Morey, who mounted a write-in campaign to get on the ballot for the Cape May County Board of County Commissioners. He is facing Republican incumbents Bobby Barr and Andrew Bulakowski.
Rush, a resident of Sea Isle City, blasted Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that includes massive cuts to programs including Medicaid and provides a few trillion dollars in tax cuts.
She said the “shiny name” distracts from the damage it is doing to public education, workers’ rights and the environment. It eliminates the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and “kills every DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) program tied to federal funding.
“They want to erase decades of hard-fought progress toward racial and gender justice,” Rush said. “They’re not just pulling us back to before 2020, they’re dragging us back to before 1965.”
She noted that the bill isn’t a bomb but a slow leak, with many of the cuts and rollbacks not taking place until the mid-term elections.
“They think if they hide the pain long enough, we’ll forget where it came from,” she said.
Rush said the bill is a transfer of power from the people to the powerful, from the public good to private greed. She said people are not powerless and can push back by demanding their legislators attend town halls, demanding legislators don’t rubber-stamp legislation, and above all by voting.
Reese, a lifelong resident of Atlantic County who lives in Northfield, said the “Big Beautiful Bill” puts “the super wealthy and immigration enforcement first, while families, seniors and workers get left behind and yet, Jeff Van Drew supports it, choosing special interest over South Jersey’s future.
“We deserve leadership that fights for us, not a congressman who sells us out,” Reese said. “It is time to stand up, demand better and protect our communities.”
Like Rush, Reese attacked many of the features of the bill that narrowly passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Trump on July 4.
She talked about the cuts to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that helps low-income families not only get help buying food but helps them learn how to budget for groceries.
Reese said key tax credits passed under the Biden Administration that are being eliminated will increase utility bills.
“When Jeff Van Drew says he’s fighting for lower electric bills for us, that’s not necessarily true because due to these cuts two affordable energy programs and initiatives” are being eliminated, she said.
Reese blasted the extra spending for immigration enforcement and the border wall, and billions of dollars set aside to “pressure” local police departments to enforce federal immigration law.
“We need humanity and dignity, not detention and deportation,” Reese said.
Winder said he wouldn’t repeat much of what was said as the rally-goers stood in the heat and drivers passing by honked their horns in support of the rally, while others yelled their support for Trump.
Winder said he swore an oath to the Constitution, working at the State Department, the FBI and USAID.
“When I saw what happened at USAID, I understood the stakes here and we know it was just the first domino to fall,” Winder said about the administration decimating the office that provides aid around the world.
He called the actions by the administration unconstitutional, causing self-inflicted wounds. “It’s reckless and it’s hurting our country in so many ways.”
“Now’s not the time to take our foot off the gas pedal. It’s our time to go for it and make our voice heard …. This bill, it’s reckless and it’s harming working families. And if government is not working for working families, then it’s not working at all.”
Winder also took a shot at his opponent in the November election.
“Jeff Van Drew voted for it. Hundreds of legislators abandoned their job …. What I think is clear is that if you voted for this bill, your priority is one man in Washington, and billionaires at Mar-a-Lago, it’s not your constituents, who are your actual boss.
“It’s abandoning your oath and your responsibility. Van Drew is not so much a representative as he is a rubber stamp for the executive branch. He is a lobbyist for the Trump agenda. And I think South Jersey deserves so much better than what we’re getting right now,” he said.
Morey, the last of the political speakers, thanked everyone for showing up and withstanding the heat. He said the county isn’t as involved in state and federal policies, but about the local level — fixing bridges, paving roads and operating the technical school.
However, it’s more than that, he said. “Its about being able to support our communities.”
“I’ve been going around all over the county meeting great people already doing great things, and finding out what they need from us. There’s a lot of opportunities here that I feel like we’re not capitalizing on in the county,” Morey said. “We have opportunities to care for our homeless population, which has been growing. We have opportunities to care for our veterans. As much as our existing infrastructure is in place, there’s more we can do.”
Lorraine Fitzpatrick, chair of the Sea Isle City Democratic Party and a former history teacher, said her favorite part of teaching history was about the beginning of this country.
“I am truly inspired all the time by the Declaration of Independence,” she told the crowd.
Fitzpatrick read the preamble to the Constitution “because even though we don’t have the most perfect government in the world in this country, I am very, very upset at what is being done to our Constitution. And here is what the Constitution was meant to do. That’s not happening right now.”
The preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
