Fighting Fascism

This is the Place de la Republique, Argelès-sur-mer, a small village in the south of France. Once the Hotel de Ville, it is now a music school. Summer nights, people dance in the square. There are two cafés where people sit and talk. Wednesday and Saturdays the square if filled with stalls selling veggies, clothes, wine, oils, cheeses and more at the marché.

It wasn't always that peaceful.  During two days in April 1942 about 50 women protested the Vichy government. The people of Argelès were French and Catalan. They were laborers, farmers, worked the vineyards, the sea. They still went to the washing shed along the river to wash their clothes. In some houses, animals still lived on the ground floor.

 

In the United States fascism, like a Hydra, has raised many ugly heads. April 5, millions of Americans turned out in all 50 states to fight the many rights and services being destroyed. It varied: abortion, education, social security, libraries, weather services--every aspect of U.S. decent life is under attack.

 

Maybe those 50 women in that tiny village represented the same proportion of the population as those protesting on April 5. They risked their lives. 

 

Those protesting in 50 states might not stand out in the same way as those 50 women but they all stood up against the evil of fascism.

 

What a shame it is a battle still being fought. There's the last line of the Peter, Paul and Mary hit, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, "Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?"