The American Spring

The tyranny had become palpable. Tanks were roaming the streets of the capital. White supremacists were marching openly in the streets. Congress had abdicated its responsibility. Patriotism had turned into a cult of personality. Everyone was living inside of their own digital bubble. The Land of the Free was a tinderbox.

Jamal looked down at his Instagram following. He’d acquired almost 50,000 followers the last few years as his hip-hop career had slowly grown a livable audience. He felt down, crushed. He lived in Washington D.C. and knew that a good portion of his fans were from the region. He wanted to let the corruption at the top know that things had to change. The images of concentration camps in America for the first time since Japanese internment during World War II made his blood boil. He felt like he had a responsibility to speak out, to do something with his audience.

He thought about starting a concert, but he didn’t want to promote his music. He wanted to do something more meaningful. After some thought, he came up with a perfect idea. He turned his iPhone facing him, pressed record and said, “Yo, this is Jay-Mall. Shit in this country is bad. Real bad. I think as many of us as we can gather should show up at the white house next week and silently surround as much of the property as we can silently for six hours. Let our silence speak for us. No shouting. No signs. No masks. Just people silently sitting. Yo, I’m hoping to get a thousand of my biggest fans to join me in this. Seriously, we can do this guys!” Without watching it again, he posted it to his Instagram account.

Jenny looked at her phone in silence. She lived an hour away from DC, and was a huge fan of Jay-Mall. And she hated the administration with a deep and abiding passion. She thought the silence and lack of signs and masks was a nice touch. Just sitting there would prevent anyone from being a distraction. After thinking about it for a while, it just seemed like the perfect idea. She began texting her friends to check their availability, and soon had a full minivan of women excited to go to the sit in. People were already managing bottled water and snacks for the group.

After a few hours talking to her girlfriends, Jenny decided to share Jay-Mall’s post to one of her women’s groups online. She explained that Jay-Mall was a social warrior in hip-hop, and she hoped that his message would inspire more of those women to attend.

No one could have predicted the viral nature the idea would have. Historians would refer to Jay-Mall’s Instagram post as the beginning of the ‘American Spring.’

William looked up at his phone. He had been tagged in over a dozen tweets. #SITINDC was in all of the Tweets. After a few minutes of looking into it, he traced it to some hip-hop artist he’d never heard of wanting to go to the White House and have a sit in. As he looked through his feed of friends, he noticed that lots of them were already making plans. Looking at his watch, William saw that it was almost five in the evening. He hadn’t checked his Twitter feed all day. He was surprised that this could get so much traction in only 18 hours.

He began to look into the sit-in on the Internet, and soon found that there were groups organizing buses, Go Fund Me pages for people raising money to go. Huge numbers of celebrities were planning to attend.

William quickly did a mental check of his work schedule, and realized he could escape for the weekend to DC if he took a red eye flight both nights. Totally worth it to stick it to the administration.

While he was booking his hotel room and car rental, he lamented the plea for no signs. He could think of a dozen hilarious ones off the top of his head.

By the fourth day, every hotel that wasn’t owned by someone in the administration was completely booked within 50 miles. Every flight into the capital was full starting the weekend before the sit-in. Every car in the rental lots were all spoken for during the event. The capital was about to benefit from a windfall of commerce and tourism.

Then the administration sent out the head of the National Parks Service as a sacrificial lamb.

The Director of National Parks Services stood in front of the microphones in front of him facing the dozens of cameras and journalists awaiting his speech. He didn’t want to do this. He hated those people as much as anyone else, but he knew that if he resigned over this, he’d replace him with someone who’d do more damage. He was the dam against the worst of the administration's impulses, of which these days were many. He took one final deep inhale, held it for a moment, then began. 

“My fellow Americans, the sit-in scheduled for next weekend cannot take place. No permitting has happened, there are security risks, facilities management issues, and therefore must go through normal process to peaceably assemble.” He took another inhale, having finished the cue card the administration had written for him to use. He knew he was the sacrificial lamb, but in that last moment he just couldn’t swallow his own bile. “However,” he said to the sudden perking up of journalists, “nothing can prevent ordinary citizens from coming to the capital, just not organizing in one group. Thank you.”

Reporters were exchanging glances, asking if everyone heard the not so subtly implied message. As the news networks began to cover the store, the State Run Media neglected to air or mention the second half of his statement.

“Are we seriously just going to drive from Massachusetts to DC, then drive back and forth to a hotel near Pittsburg?” Dave asked.

“Look,” Abby told him, “you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. I can bring someone else, babe. It’s no big deal.”

“Seriously, you know that Antifa and the Proud Boys and all of those other psychopaths are going to show up and mess things up. That’s the point we’re at. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“They’ll be easy to identify, they’ll be the people standing up and the officials can easily identify and remove them. Seriously, love, you need to know the history of your social justice movements. These are the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior. This is a very effective way of inflicting social change without violence,” Abby explained.

“Do you understand how many people it looks like will show up? This is enormous. There’s a lot that can go wrong with that kind of numbers,” Dave pleaded.

“Then don’t go. It’s no big deal to me. I just want to be there, to show that this has value to me.”

“I’ll go,” he conceded.

“No, seriously, you don’t have to,” she smiled and kissed him.

“No, I do. Because if it’s important to you it should be important to me.”

The message boards across the Internet were ablaze with people condemning the sit in and supporting it. #SitInDC had been the top trending hashtag on Twitter for the last week. Russian trolls were moving the Antifi and White Supremacists to a boiling point, encouraging and warning both of the other. However, neither group had come up with an effective counter to the sit in tactic of just sitting there silently without signs or slogans.

Without agitators, they knew that they’d just be caught on camera like their previous experiences had taught them. However, if they wore masks they would also be showing themselves to not be part of sit in. Even the Russian trolls balked at solutions to these problems.

That did not stop them from stirring the flames.

On the eve of the sit-in, the administration declared martial law on the capital and rolled in the National Guard. Soldiers with automatic assault rifles and armored personnel vehicles flooded the streets by morning. As the participants in the sit in began to arrive, the military began to try to turn them back. Soon, there were growing crowds flooding the streets. More and more busses were dropping people off. Soon, the National Guard members were simply small squads left with plenty of room as masses of human beings surged around them towards the white house.

Footage from the drones and news helicopter showed the complete story. From above, as far as the eye could see, human beings surged forward towards the White house from all directions. The National Guard had secured the area around the premises with countless soldiers. The people, all began sitting down. And then there was silence.

People wrote things on their social media from their phones, took pictures and video of the event. People as far as the eye could see in any direction simply sitting in silent protest against an administration that had created a new level of corruption in the American lexicon.

Antifa and the White Supremacists never made an appearance, or simply sat unmasked and silently with the crowd, for there were no reports of violence. They would instantly realize they are too greatly outnumbered. It was difficult to get a count of how many people had come. A level of civic participation had been achieved that no one had seen in the country in generations. 

Two hours into it, the President took Marine One on leg one of a trip to escape to one of his private properties on the taxpayer dollar instead of facing the crowd of millions assembled. He was a coward at heart, and not even his worst flaw.

After six hours of silence, people began to rise. Some of them hugged, some of them began crying, and others just stood there in solemn contemplation about what they’d just experienced. No one knew if anything would change, but with the mass of people that showed up and surrounded the White House everyone was optimistic.

“Yo, Jay-Mall here. Just want to give a big thanks to everyone who came out for my event. I had no idea that anything that crazy could happen just by making an Instagram post. Seriously, we need to all brainstorm, stay connected, and strategize for how to hold our politicians accountable. This is just the beginning of the American Spring.”