Taking the lead from a similar protest in Ocean Beach, San Francisco, a well-known Obecian activist has campaigned on Facebook to have people spell out “Impeach” on the beach Saturday, March 4.
It’s a plea that’s prompted the claimed participation of some 400 San Diego supporters.
Last month, President Trump protesters in San Francisco used hundreds of people to spell out the word “resist.” Former James Gang member and longtime community activist Mike James, who co-founded Ocean Beach MainStreet Association, said he wanted to follow suit.
“I contacted San Francisco’s organizers to pick their brains and have them give me some ideas,” James said. “We decided to go ahead and replicate what they were doing up there.”
Conveniently, there was already a beach cleanup planned for OB on March 4 starting at 8 a.m.
“Since a lot of people were already coming down to do the beach cleanup, we decided it would be a good time to create the word impeach as a human sign,” James said. “Everybody’s going to actually create the letters.”
James said Dave Ish, of La Jolla, who has a text-messaging service, Club Lemeno, is pitching in to aid the protest.
To join in the texting component of the protest, Ish said participants should text the key word “obresist” and send it to the number 444999. James said organizers will then use that text message to “coordinate all the people getting them in the right direction, telling them where to stand, etc.”
Once the human-sign “Impeach” is formed, James said, “We hope to have a photographer there to record it and turn that out to the media with our mission statement.” He added a drone will also likely be utilized in recording the event, which is expected to take place about 10 a.m.
Trump demonstrators will march up from Dog Beach spelling out impeach in hundred-foot human letters. Their end point will be just north of the Ocean Beach Pier, where the annual Christmas tree is positioned.
“Welcome to the resistance,” states the OB Facebook protest page’s mission statement. “The March 4 Impeachment is just one of thousands of events to promote the efforts to resist the Trump agenda. We resist his misogynistic, xenophobic and climate-denial policies, to name a few.”
Of Trump opposition, James noted, “This is part of all the other resistance movements that are happening across the country. Our main goal is to have Congress actually do a real investigation of possible impeachable offenses that we feel the president might be involved in.
“We don’t want the Russian connection swept under the rug,” James continued. “We think it could be a real issue, a real impeachable offense, after the investigation is done. We want to see that investigation done.”
James believes Trump is “not fully divested from his business interests, and that he is not following the Constitution. We believe that by being president and going against the Constitution, that his companies are taking advantage of his presidency.” To learn more about the March 4 human protest in Ocean Beach, check out the Facebook page “Ocean Beach Trump protest.”