A November 1, 2020 peaceful protest by approximately 30 local people was met with home-grown violence. The photos below are mine and were taken before the Springfield Trump rally came to rescue the Creswell Trump contingent, 5:1 or so. I stood in front of the BLM line, wandered the crowd as people from both sides mingled. Until the Springfield rally appeared, this expression was a win for Creswell.
Creswell went onto elect its first female mayor, current Council President Amy Knudsen, and Shellie Clark to city council. Ms. Clark sent the equity and inclusion memo to city hall earlier this year, setting into place a conversation about privelege and institutionalized racism that was painful and awkward and nascent.
This is not finished, but the conversations need to come off the street corner and into our socially-distant safe spaces (I use a covered porch and a back yard fire pit.).
I’ll host. Let’s talk about Creswell.
Let’s talk about what we value, and what we accept.
Let’s pay attention, especially now.
Martha McReynolds Jr. - Pix & Thoughts 
Great work, Martha! Your photos show the tension on the two sides very well. I’m not sure what happened when the Springfield rally showed up, but I can guess that it became fairly ugly. I hope no one was injured…
I have been celebrating since Saturday morning when the news broke about the Biden-Harris ticket winning. History in the making!! Their speeches on Sat night were both good, but I thought Kamala rocked it.
Now we have to go back to dealing with the IIC (Idiot-in-Chief) as a lame duck. He’s always been lame, but now he and his evil minions have 70 more days to reek havoc on the land.
I am praying that the two Georgia Senate runoffs go blue, but I suspect they will not. But hey, we gotta try and help however we can…if we can flip the Senate, Joe and Kamala could really get some legislation done and some programs going!
Jackson and I have been in Mesa for about a month. Still painting my new place (I bought a bigger unit just five doors down in the same park) and should move in in a couple weeks. Looking forward to settling in…
Stay well, my friend, and thanks for fighting the good fight. Kelly
On Tue, Nov 10, 2020, 3:04 PM Martha McReynolds Jr. – Pix & Thoughts wrote:
> Martha in the Moment posted: ” A November 1, 2020 peaceful protest by > approximately 30 local people was met with home-grown violence. The photos > below are mine and were taken before the Springfield Trump rally came to > rescue the Creswell Trump contingent, 5:1 or so. I stood in fron” >
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Thank you for your thoughtful, expressive and informative comment, dear KellyKelly! And yay, Biden and Harris for all! We are having growing pains in my little hometown, and a loud, ugly minority think they speak for all of us. Social media has shown us sides of each other that we suspected were there but now are part of an unacceptable new normal. For me, I’ve become accustomed to watching livestream protests elsewhere and seeing things that I can’t believe. Now, that’s happened to me in real life.
I missed the camera shot of the mob pushing onto the small group, but in my mind’s eye I will always remember the image. It was kinda beautiful – a wave of flags pushing southward on our First Street. What I learned later was that at the front of the wave, flags had been furled and the flag poles weaponized to contribute to the linked arm barrier with which the BLM folks – mostly young adults and middle-aged women (a few men, yes), including terrified People of Color and kids born and raised in Creswell, and me – were to be summarily run out of their own town.
A 9/27 BLM protest was cancelled because of the nastiness and the Trumpers held their own on 9/27 to intimidate. We let them have their moment. November 1st’s peaceful protest was a rescheduling, and the Creswell Trumpers (likely a 2:1, maybe 3:1, ratio) made sure to schedule a “flag waving” earlier in the day so they could intimidate and outshout us. They waved flags at us and yelled the Pledge of Allegiance at us as if those were ours, too. It was an attempt to incite civil war, Americans attacking Americans and denying us of our First Amendment Rights, but they failed.
I have resigned from city council, and will have the pleasure of being more free to follow my heart around this issue (and others) and see what I can to do help us all address this – in less loud and, frankly boring (standing on a corner facing another group, just hollering and mingling, is boring!), ways in the near and far future. No one is all bad or good, but we see which instincts people are following. I follow my heart and gut, and am basking in the empowerment that comes with being a wise old lady still learning and chasing a little happiness for us all.
What colors are you painting the new place?! I remember how playful you made the first AZ home. It inspires me, and I only saw a couple images!
Benedictions,
M
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Nice try. I don’t see any evidence of violence in any of your photos. Furthermore, I was there and you are pushing the divide with your lies and misplaced hate.
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Having been warned of the impending violence and feeling the energy of what was coming at us, my cameras were put away. Others got great images of later on during the mob’s attack, which was planned, coordinated, tactical, strategic and not a spontaneous act. We see things differently, don’t we?
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The burden of proof is on you. If you’re going to make wild accusations against people waving American flags and saying the pledge of allegiance, you’d better have something to back it up outside of your false and divisive rhetoric. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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I won’t be arguing with you, Alyssa. If you’d like to hear where else I repeated my experience, you are welcome to find KNND AM 1400 Beeper Show of November 3, the same week’s Eugene Weekly issue had an article in which I was quoted, and I think there are several comments by me on FB threads since our sad event. Likely you could also contact our managing Lane County Sheriff’s Sargent Scott Denham, with whom I also shared my experience on the following day. I’ve also offered him the pre-mob photos that I took that day.
Your urge to squelch a narrative that doesn’t work for you is the same urge that says “All lives matter, so be quiet about Black Lives Matter,” as if the topic should be approved by the Trump side before it can be discussed. You don’t have the right. I’m not needing to prove anything to you.
At this point, the conversation about equity and inclusion have started, and your resistance only strengthens the resolve of those who want to look out for those that might not appreciate a “White Pride” t-shirt worn as if it’s normal.
You are welcome to join the conversation any time your mind and heart open to the idea that some of us have it better than others in our culture (and when you don’t need to call in the Springfield mob to back you up), and advocacy is needed. The violence we were met with in Creswell shows me how scared the Trump side is.
Not my normal. Not accepting that. This is my home town, too. That was my flag, my Pledge of Allegiance folks were waving and hollering at us as if those symbols of our American identity were weaponizeable by them.
It is about the office, not the person. The peaceful transfer of power is plowing over the cult of personality, and the Kool-Aid has lost its power. When you can play nice, we’ll have you back.
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I wish you were at my side escorting some young women home who feared for their lives, being threatened, taunted, and harassed for three blocks by armed angry men.
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