After four years, a hundred and seventy-five thousand miles, two DC marches, thousands of honks and thumbs-ups, hundreds of protests, countless David Perdue ghost rallies and a UPS driver jumping out of his truck while I was stopped at a red light on John Lewis Freedom Parkway to run up and ask, “Where did you get that bumper sticker!,” I am overjoyed and grateful to never again have to say, MY PRESIDENT IS A DICK.
In all those miles, the trips to Washington with Adrian and Rob and Katherine and James, no one once shot me the bird—probably because, deep inside, Donald Trump’s supporters are what he called his vice president Mike Pence in an oval office meeting during the beginning of his end: pussies.
At the Science March in the spring of 2017 just after Donald J. Trump had taken office, an old hippie was standing in his yard near Emory giving these bumper stickers out to marchers as we walked by. (The one I took off the back window of my Lincoln for the last time on January 20 was not the original; despite the Velcro for quick removal in emergencies, like a ping on my Uber app to pick up a passenger—or a trip to Buckhead—quite a few got gone over the four years of the Great Trumpulation. Some were lost to car washes (I was a hero at Mister Car Wash on Ponce, where Antoine once shouted out while walking across the lot looking at my “MY PRESIDENT IS A DICK” bumper sticker, “Mine is too!”), most to bitter soon-to-be MAGA insurrectionists, ripped off while the Lincoln was errantly unattended in a parking lot in a wealthy suburb, or a trailer park. It would be months before I actually got it, after my cousin David casually remarked one day, “Oh yeah, from Nixon.” Oh yeah. You could get arrested in the seventies carrying around a sign that said, “MY PRESIDENT IS A DICK,” unless it was really his name. What the fuck they gonna do then?)
Originally planned as a climate change protest, that year the Science March became a demonstration against something more threatening and immediately existential: the United States’ nascent collapse into insanity.
Despite the turnout, the signs, the chanting and the thousands of people yelling about the embarrassment that had just been elected to the highest office in the greatest country in the world, the organizers and speakers at the Science March that year could not openly criticize the Trump administration. As America would witness with dropped jaws and outrage, throughout his presidency to its deadly Covid-19 riddled end, scientists, professors, CDC officials and even his own head of infectious diseases couldn’t tell the truth for fear of losing their jobs, couldn’t say out loud that humans had anything to do with climate change, or that wearing masks could prevent mass casualties.
As the march from Freedom Park through lovely historic Atlanta neighborhoods approached its end that sunny afternoon, my friend Cebo and I decided to celebrate the camaraderie and hopeful optimism of the day with a beer and a burger at the Vortex. Waiting on the deck for our table, a blond woman from the suburbs or Dalton or anywhere but here looked at my Embarasser In Chief sign, Donald Trump emblazoned with Satan’s horns, and admonished me, “You need to show respect for the president!”
Looking out over the masses of tattooed young people and happy liberal families walking Labradors with peace signs, I said to her, “Lady – do you know where you are? You’re in the middle of Little f**king Five Points in Atlanta. At a Science Rally.” I think Cebo spit her beer out laughing.
Jackson Faw 