Thousands Of People Are Taking To Street Corners In Powerful Protest -- And You Can, Too
Stand On Every Corner is a powerful grassroots movement against Donald Trump
One man’s spark of an idea for an effective way to protest as an individual has spread across the country and now includes thousands of people doing something so simple — but so important. They’re taking to their own streets for the #StandOnEveryCorner movement — and every American should be joining them.
In 2004, Bryce Tache and his partner Van Donaldson moved to Canada when it became clear that George Bush was going to be re-elected president. Bush’s anti-gay rights platform frightened them, and they stayed in the Great White North for ten years. The couple is back stateside now, and this time they’re sticking around to fight back against the Trump administration with a powerful grassroots movement.
Every day for the past 56 days, Tache has stood on the corner of Diamond Lake & Portland in South Minneapolis and protested Donald Trump. The idea was born during a trip to Barcelona, when locals expressed their surprise that Americans weren’t out on the streets everyday, fighting back against the president’s policies.
“On the plane ride back I just made the decision: I feel so empowered by the marches and these other events when I go to them, but they’re once a month or once every two months. I needed to do something every day,” Tache told Southwest Journal.
He decided to post a message on Twitter, letting people know that he’d be protesting on a street corner the following night and invited anyone interested to join. “The idea was to make it easy for people, so you don’t have to travel far from your neighborhood. You can do it in a park, a sidewalk, a corner, anywhere,” Tache explained. “And it just kind of grew. The first night we had eight people. This week we got 32 people.”
The movement isn’t about pitting parties against each other, Tache told the podcast Two Broads Talking Politics. “I think the Stand On Every Corner movement isn’t all about politics, it’s certainly not about left versus right, but it is [about] how do we all stand up about policies we believe are harmful, regardless of our political affiliations.”
His message has started to spread. Tache created the hashtag #StandOnEveryCorner, and people across the country followed his lead. Pictures sprung up of people holding their own mini protests, handmade signs in tow. Some stood in groups, others protested alone. Each photo is incredibly inspiring and deeply heartening.
Tache recently spotted one woman protesting alone and tweeted out a picture of her. He wrote that she has been cursed at, flipped off, and had drinks thrown on her, but is still standing there. The snapshot of her quickly went viral, with almost 100,000 likes on Twitter.
“I invited her to my nightly protest or others in the area. She’s good on her corner, on her own,” he noted. “My family will visit her tomorrow & show her this tweet – I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. And she’ll want YOU to protest daily too.”
Tache told Southwest Journal that this whole experience has been “empowering”and he’s mostly only gotten positive feedback while out on the streets. “Our hope is that with every honk comes the commitment to vote,” Tache explained. “We can register people to vote here, and we’re trying to get people to realize they have to take local action to make change.”
On Tache’s 51st day of protesting, he returned to his usual corner, at his usual time, sign in hand.
“I’ll again be at Pearl Park at 6pm,” he tweeted. “I protested on the 4th of July and my birthday and my kid’s birthday. I’ll protest on the 1st day of school and every day until Election Day because yes, things are that bad. It’s up to us to save the USA. It’s up to us.”
