There have been other resistance rallies in Tucson over the past few weeks, but yesterday's was the first one that I attended. I was happy to see and hear Tucson's RC Bishop Gerald Kicanus speak at the event.
The Bishop's admonition about fear (he was of course preaching to the choir) could have been written by FDR. The other faith-leader speaker at the event was a local rabbi, who can be seen seated in the middle of the back row. To the rabbi's right is a young man who arrived as a refugee from the Middle East about six months ago.
The rally was organized by a local grassroots group called "We The People." They do facebook, which I don't do, so it's fortunate that they also gathered contact information the old-fashioned way. Being the tall guy in back I was among the first to reach the sign up sheets. Many others were in line behind me.
Although the event itself was apolitical, I can't resist some local, national and international political observations. First, there is Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, who is seen in the top picture standing in the background with hand on hip. He was elected eight years ago as a Republican, benefitting from that party's venomous attack ads against an incumbent for whom I had knocked on a lot of doors in midtown Tucson four years earlier. Since then Steve had a "Road to Damascus" conversion. So technically, his support of the rally was as an Independent. Republican watchers of the Supreme Court might consider Kozachik to be Tucson's David Souter.
Secondly, as a "hanging on by a thread Catholic," I blame the Catholic Church in America for Donald Trump's election. There are a lot of good, strong Catholics like Bishop Kicanas, but they make up minorities: among the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in the pulpits and in the pews. The majority simply tune out the minority, instead chanting the talking points of the church of Fox News and Bannon. The rabbi at yesterday's event, in quoting Jeremiah's faith in God caring about migrants, did not feel he needed to add "but we need to consider other viewpoints."
Still, the situation with the Catholic hierarchy and the news media in the United States is not as dire as in Hungary. Since my grandparents were immigrants from Hungary, I regularly read Hungarian Spectrum, Hungarian Free Press and Budapest Beacon. A priest in Hungary advocating for migrants, in opposition to government propaganda, received a severe admonition from his Bishop. Interestingly it seems that although many people in Hungary who are disenchanted with their government have also lost faith in traditional opposition political parties, there is still spontaneous enthusiasm there about issues. It will be interesting to see if the issue enthusiasms can break through, in Hungary and in the United States.
