The numbers are a lie–and I don’t care who printed them. Seven thousand people outside the Nevada State Capitol? That’s not just wrong—it’s delusional.
Try 1,000 if you count the dog walkers and lost tourists. But the media machine needs its dopamine fix, and nothing gets clicks like an army of progressives with picket signs and portable megaphones.
Let’s call this what it was: Hands Off, a pre-fab, plug-and-play protest with all the subtlety of a roadside fireworks stand–organized, promoted, and attended by the usual suspects. At least 92 percent of the folks were serial attendees, the kind of people loitering around Harris/Walz rallies during the last election cycles.
You could pick them out by their professionally laminated signs and matching Patagonia vests. So much for grassroots—this thing smelled of diesel and charter buses.
Four local organizations supposedly spent two weeks cooking the stew, which begs the question, what do they do the other 51 weeks of the year? Folding flyers? Arguing over the font? Either way, the result was a long afternoon of recycled slogans shouted at indifferent buildings and traffic cones.
Kimberly Carden of Indivisible Northern Nevada rattled off a list of grievances like a cranky pharmacist reading the side effects from a pill bottle: “Hands off Social Security, the Post Office, Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals…”
She stopped short of “hands off my vodka bottle.”
Darcie Smith gave it the old “middle-class unity” line–bless her optimism.
“If we work to regrow our middle class, we can solve all the problems we have today.”
Sure. And if I flap my arms hard enough, maybe I’ll fly to Barstow.
Then there was Veronica Frenkel, laying out the immigrant rights argument like a law professor who accidentally wandered into a Denny’s at 3 a.m. “Due process,” “constitutional rights,” “inhumane and illegal”—all very compelling, but I doubt the guy holding the “Trump = Satan” sign understood half of it.
The most honest moment of the day came from Caty Burkett, who admitted she had no personal stakes. “I’m privileged enough…I have insurance, I’m not transgender, I’m not gay,” she said, acknowledging she was there out upper-middle-class noblesse oblige.
She could’ve stayed home and crocheted a protest scarf, but no—she showed up. Points for effort, I suppose.
As for opposition? Sparse.
A few passing cars honked and flipped birds, but no organized counter-protest. Probably because it’s hard to counter a tantrum when you don’t know what it’s about. Medicare? Trans rights? Immigration? Middle-class rebirth? Maybe all of it. Maybe none. That’s the problem with a protest buffet—you get heartburn, and no one remembers the entrée.
The streets lined, signs waved, and everyone went home feeling very righteous in the end. But if this is the shape of revolution, it’s looking familiar and tired.
Stay tuned. There’ll be another one next week, same signs, same chants, same damn faces.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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