Lively Protest Downtown on Threats to Mueller Investigation

Above: Michael Zimmerman and Anna Fisher

East Lansing activist Anna Fisher was one of more than a thousand local organizers across the country who pledged over the course of the past year to organize a rally on 24-hours’ notice if President Trump’s White House threatened the Mueller investigation. After the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions the day after the midterm election, the national organizers pulled the trigger, calling in these pledges for public protests in all 50 states.

In response to the call in East Lansing, 250 to 300 people rallied on Thursday starting at 5:00 p.m. at the Grand River Avenue median, near the main entrance to Michigan State University, to protect Robert Mueller’s position and insist that “Nobody is Above the Law.”

Eight to ten people had been asked by Fisher to speak, and by the time the hour-long event concluded, about double that number had taken the bullhorn – or just raised their voices as loud as they could after the bullhorn batteries gave out.

Rabbi Michael Zimmerman, of the Kehillat Israel Congregation, said one doesn’t need to write a speech for this moment, since what needs to be said was already written long ago. He read part of Psalm 75: “I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’ and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn; … All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.”

Zimmerman then surprised the crowd by asking if anyone had brought a horn, and then pulled out a shofar, or Jewish ram’s horn, from his bag. He blew it with gusto.

Will Lawrence, a leader of the national Sunrise Movement who grew up in East Lansing, urged the crowd not to put their faith in the Mueller investigation, even though it had gathered to protect it. Rather, the real fight will be the battle to defeat the President in 2020, he said, which requires that people keep going out and talking with people, as they had during the last two years.

Other people also spoke about having worked hard on the election. Several speakers mentioned canvassing for the Voters Not Politicians (VNP) statewide anti-gerrymandering ballot question that won with 61% of the vote, or by almost one million votes.

David Hopkinson, a lead organizer for VNP in this region, said his experience of knocking on doors convinced him that voters were not as polarized and uncivil as many people thought.

Anne Paquet-Howard, who had canvassed regularly at the CATA bus station in downtown Lansing, talked about having organized from her MSU dorm room for the Bobby Kennedy campaign in 1968, when she was an undergraduate student.

Nichole Biber, Librarian at Pinecrest Elementary School and a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, spoke about the need for people to work together.

“We breath the same air; we stand on the same land,” Biber said

Nadia Tyson, an MSU student from Grand Rapids, drew applause when she took the bullhorn to say she was 18 years old and had just voted for the first time. Her activism started, she said, when she attended the Women’s March two years ago and the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C. in March 2018.

Eric Leazer also was applauded when he told the crowd this was the first protest he had ever participated in. He had come from Heartland, 45 minutes from East Lansing, to attend.

Organizer Anna Fisher closed the rally with a call-and-response chant inspired by Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams, who still is fighting to see a count of all votes in that state, which could lead to a run-off election: “Our vote matters. Our voices matters. This is our time.”

Word about the rally in East Lansing spread via Facebook and emails through the networks of local sponsoring organizations Indivisible MI 8^th District – Ingham, Sunrise Michigan and NextGen America that are mobilizing young people, and long-time community peace organizations Greater Lansing Network Against War and Injustice (GLNAWI) and Peace Education Center.

People brought signs reading “Fire Trump,” “Stop Trump’s Interference in the Russian Investigation,” “Facts are Stubborn things. Nobody is above the Law!”, “Protect Mueller Investigation,” and “Don’t Mess with Mueller.”

Drivers along Grand River Avenue sometimes honked, sometimes briefly drowning out speakers.

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