When I joined the protestors across the street from the Portland courthouse on President’s Day, I made sure to select a sign denouncing policies, not people nor party.

Initially, I worried the turnout would be small. One hundred protesters feels like a company of malcontents, 10,000 a voting bloc. I wanted to be one anonymous body in a sea of bodies, a sea big enough to prompt politicians to ponder: a president’s actions or reelection? (I prefer: a president’s actions or the Constitution?)

Shortly after my arrival, hundreds of protestors marched from the waterfront to the courthouse. Our new compatriots were joyful, dancing, laughing, their signs yo-yoing to heaven and back. I was pleased. I felt safer, too. In America’s ICE Age, safety in numbers might deter taxpayer-funded intimidation.

And safety was a concern. I am timid by nature, which too often engenders a shameful silence. My timidity is exacerbated by a president’s favorite lever, fear, which I combat by evoking Mark Twain’s observation that courage is resistance to fear or mastery of fear, not the absence of fear. When I raised my “Pro Constitution” sign, I wondered, “In a year, will federal troops be deployed to silence protesters?”  My fear has antecedents. A president pardoned approximately 1,270 convicted Jan. 6 rioters; ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a legal immigrant, for peacefully protesting.

A president’s whims have hijacked justice.

Which is scary.

Another way I tame fear is by conjuring Martin Luther King’s exhortation: “Silence is complicity.” My grandsons, 13 and 15, motivate me, too. It is painful bequeathing them a planet in distress, but to passively witness the dismantling of democracy provokes “a coward dies a thousand deaths” wound.

Shortly after President’s Day, I attended an Oregon Ecumenical Ministries letter-writing gathering to support immigrant rights. The Rev. Dr. Rodney Page, OEM’s former director, paraphrasing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said, “If one shows spine, others will grow one.” Congress, incapacitated by a Neville Chamberlain contagion, and the Supreme Court, which immunized a president from justice, seemingly prefer one man’s whims to protecting the Constitution. Several business barons, newspapers – – “Sixty Minutes,” too, universities and law firms capitulated, leaving much of the “spine growing” to American citizens. And though Bonhoeffer’s resistance to tyranny led to his execution, Rev. Page’s alluding to “growing a spine” inspired me to join a “Hands Off” protest on April 5.

I was heartened as protesters spilled into Naito Parkway. My heart swelled at the peaceful, purposeful voices, their colorful signs supporting education, LGBTQ rights, abortion access, social security, justice, the EPA and more, and lamenting an administration with 13 billionaires, a car manufacturer chainsawing programs and its persecution of the powerless.

When seven sunglass-wearing police on motorcycles shepherded thousands of protestors across the Burnside Bridge, I proudly thought: Some of the officers may have voted for this president, but they are doing their jobs, safeguarding the First Amendment.

Then I contemplated ICE with its badge-free, mask-wearing agents questioning, detaining and spiriting people (without due process) to anti-immigrant jurisdictions. I considered Bonhoeffer declaring “…the church must not simply ‘bandage’ the victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke in the wheel itself.”

Recently Harvard, 200 college and university presidents and a patchwork of judges and law firms chose to become “spokes.” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently said the state “will not be bullied to deport people or perform immigration enforcement.”  Portland Mayor Keith Wilson promised Portland will continue to be a sanctuary city. I hope other patriots follow suit. To that end I joined Act 3, a group of “spokes,” 60 or older, responding to tyranny’s shapeshifting.

Sixty-eight years ago, a Republican president deployed federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to stop a state from denying its citizens their rights. Today, a Republican administration promotes erasure and oppression. To wit: the Naval Academy removes Maya Angelou from its library; it retains Mein Kampf. Something worth weighing when selecting my next protest sign. Then marshaling grandkids, Mark Twain, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rodney Page, John Lewis, I will march with other — as-yet uncaged — birds, opening our mouths to sing.

Bob Balmer is a Portland resident.