‘Ides of Trump’ Action Aims to Send More Mail Than White House Can Ignore

Published on Monday, March 13, 2017 by Common Dreams

We “will overwhelm Washington…and we will bury the White House post office in pink slips, all informing the president that he’s fired!”

“So sharpen your wit, unsheathe your writing implements, and write from the heart,” the organizers say. (Photo: Ides of Trump)

A new movement is aiming to mail at least 1 million postcards to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 15—historically dubbed “the Ides of March” and known as the day Julius Caesar was assassinated—to show “the man, the media, and the politicians how vast our numbers are…to make it irrefutable that the president’s claim of wide support is a farce.”

“He may draw a big crowd with empty promises, but the crowd of those that oppose his agenda is exponentially larger. And we will show up to protest, to vote, and to be heard. Again and again and again,” the group, which calls itself the Ides of Trump, explained on its website and Facebook page.

The group outlines five steps to participate:

  1. Write one postcard. Write a dozen! Create your own cards, buy them, share them, it doesn’t matter as long as you write #TheIdes or #TheIdesOfTrump on them somewhere.
  2.  Take a picture of your cards and post them on social media (tagged with #TheIdesOfTrump or #TheIdes, please). This will help us verify our numbers.
  3. Spread the word! Everyone on Earth can let Washington know their opinion of the President. They can’t build a wall high enough to stop the mail.
  4. Then, on March 15th, mail your cards to:
    The President (for now) 
    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
    NW Washington, DC 20500
  5. Get ready for the NEXT postcard campaign, and the next, and the next—because we’re not going away. We will make ourselves heard by joining together. And together, we will wield the kind of political clout that can’t be ignored.

As Leslie Evans, an artist and printmaker who produced about 900 postcards for the event last week in Watertown, Massachusetts, told the Boston Globe on Monday, “Obviously, numbers matter a lot to [Trump.]” Her postcards feature slogans that paraphrase chants commonly heard at anti-Trump protests, such as “Compassion, not fear, immigrants are welcome here,” and “Hear our voice, you are not the majority choice.”

The Ides of Trump also makes clear that while the basis is comical, the impetus is not.

“So sharpen your wit, unsheathe your writing implements, and write from the heart,” they write. “All of our issues—DAPL [the Dakota Access Pipeline], women’s rights, racial discrimination, religious freedom, immigration, economic security, education, the environment, conflicts of interest, the existence of facts—can and should find common cause. That cause is to make it irrefutable that the president’s claim of wide support is a farce.”

“[W]e, in vast numbers, from all corners of the world, will overwhelm Washington,” the organizers write, “and we will bury the White House post office in pink slips, all informing the president that he’s fired!”