The online celebrity, legal woes, and final liberation of the irate, ICE-defying DC resident known throughout the world as Sandwich Guy seem tailor-made for late-night TV wisecracking. But given that we're presently slogging through the world's stupidest fascist timeline, the Sandwich Guy set piece can give us some surprisingly useful lessons in how to mount protests that can deflate the Mussolini-style self-regard of the MAGA power elite.
We must ask ourselves: how would the heroic suffragettes or the remarkable Greenham Common women be regarded if active today? The answer is simple: they would be locked up. Just as they were locked up then. A century ago, women chained themselves to railings, set fires, endured prison and changed the world, and we celebrate their victories without thinking too hard about their methods. Yet today's laws would criminalise them on sight.