Event debrief: 21 January 2017

Venue: Louisville, KY – The Rally to Move Forward
This was a ‘sister event’ for the Women’s March in Washington, held on post-Trump’s-inauguration day.
Myself and 3,000 other attendees braved the early morning chill to hear some inspiring speeches and music from local activists, groups, and politicians, and hobnob with other like-minded folks. (I did see one other person whose sign had a rainbow Rebel starbird).

Since I didn’t have a dedicated, conspicuous ‘Rebel’ outfit at this point, I wore my old summer tunic with my black jackboots and black belt with oval buckle. To ensure I wasn’t attending as just another warm body, I stuffed my M17 satchel to the brim with first aid supplies, and dusted off my old red cross’d hardhat: the prodigal Street Medic had returned! The event turned out to be completely peaceful, however, and I never had to hand out so much as a band-aid…but it always feels good to be prepared.

Because there’s never a bad time to broadcast your political views with handmade signage in public (and because Star Wars is inherently political), I took a break from painting propaganda and made up a simple ‘Jedi Against Trump!’ sign, with purple Venus symbol and rebel starbird. As usually happens whenever I wear something besides jeans and a t-shirt in public, I got photographed many times!

When the rally was over, I went home and selected a young maple sapling to carve my gadderffi from…because having a new Head Cracker seemed like a good excuse to make myself a New headcracker.

Take-aways/What to change?:
I needed to add something to the backside of the sign above, so I could hold it up and show a message to folks behind AND in front of me. I whipped up the following a few weeks later:

I also went ahead and added some yellow to the front side, simply for ease of reading from a distance:

Also, I probably should add some squishy insoles to my boots, since my usually-bare feet are becoming less and less boot-compatible the older I get, and standing in place on hard surfaces for hours at a time during a rally is a recipe for extreme discomfort.