A microcosm of the United States’ partisan friction was on display Thursday in the Monroe County Public Library.
Signs taken to the Women’s March on Washington and sister marches across the nation were hung on walls leading to library conference rooms in the first ever Grassroots Good Guys art show.
Signs ranged from artwork mocking President Donald Trump to posters about alternative facts, a phrase Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway used in an interview Sunday about lies from the new administration.
On the other side of the walls with nearly 60 signs the Monroe County Grassroots Conservatives met for their monthly meeting. Unfazed by the greetings of “health care is a basic human right” and “Trump is a rump,” the group planned its own forms of mobilization, including calling members of Congress asking them to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, for U.S. Attorney General and whomever is chosen as the next Supreme Court justice. There was no mention of the art display at the meeting.
The Grassroots Conservatives meeting was not the only motivation behind the art display; rather, it was the timing of the group’s monthly meeting and last weekend’s marches, organizer Mike Adams said. The Facebook page for the art show, however, called Grassroots Conservatives an “anti-American hate group”.
“After my wife came back from D.C. she kept talking about the positive vibes from the march,” Adams, 34, said. “We want to keep it alive as much as we can.”
Co-organizer Addison Rogers said he hopes the Grassroots Conservatives and anyone who sees the display see there are multiple sides to an issue.
Rogers, 31, also said he hopes this is something fun for people.
“No one has had a good time since November,” he said.
No one associated with the art display attended the Grassroots Conservatives meeting.
At the meeting, civics educator Robert Leming lectured on James Madison’s Federalist 51 essay, in which Madison says government is necessary because men are not angels.
“Women are not angels, either,” Leming said. “When you put them in power, be careful.”
Attendees of the meeting applauded at the news of Trump’s recent executive order to stop Syrian refugees from coming into America and the proposed restrictions on immigration from certain Middle Eastern countries.
Jennifer Whitacker folded post cards to pass out for people to send to their members of Congress.
Whitacker, 45, attended the Indianapolis march last Saturday. She said her postcards are part of keeping up the momentum of mobilization from the movement and organizing other demonstrations.
Whitacker said she tries to do something for the cause every day.
“I’m here for women’s rights, my LGBT friends, my African-American friends,” she said. “I’m pretty much here for everyone in the country.”
One side was on the offense against the American carnage. The other was on the defense for their rights.
