I gave a speech at the 50501 No Kings Rally in Pittsburgh on Saturday, and it’s heartbreaking/frustrating to continue giving speeches on the City County Building steps because our elected officials are still so out of touch. We assumed that we would get a thousand people to speak, but was overjoyed when there were so many people at the rally that the police officers asked, “Where are the people coming from?” Here is my speech and some of the amazing photos from a day that we will remember in history.

Good afternoon,
My name is Chardae’ Jones and the last time I was on these very stairs, giving a speech, I was advocating for women’s reproductive rights. It is heartbreaking to have to keep climbing these very stairs and asking the government to treat the working-class like human beings.

We should not have to beg to be seen and treated with dignity and gaslit when we call the government out for their blatant corruption. American Government in its current state is broken, and no, fascism isn’t knocking on our doors; fascism was here as soon as we started allowing corporations to corrupt the White House.

This administration is anti-American, and the people who keep saying that “we’ve survived Trump before” don’t realize what’s at stake. His Big, Ugly Budget Bill is set to decimate the working class. Now is not the time to be passive, now is not the time to be afraid to pick up your phones and call (yes, call) your elected officials and let them know how much you are against what this administration is doing to our constitutional rights. This timeline feels surreal, but it is very much real. People are being arrested for their political views, and Americans are being deported. This part of history that we’re living in will leave a stain on American History for eons to come.

The worst part about this administration is that they are undoing things so quickly and putting them back together may take generations but we won’t stop!

We won’t give up because there are more working-class citizens than there are millionaires and billionaires. We will continue to annoy our elected officials to do their job and stop allowing corruption to run amuck. We will continue to rally and host events. The fact that everyone is here today shows passion. In just ten days, I’ll be hosting a rally at Schenley Plaza at 4:30 PM to rally people to fight back against the ultra-wealthy tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. This administration might be great with chaos, but this crowd today shows that our voices are louder and we’re organized. As a writer, I collect quotes, and this one by Justice Louis D Brandeis just felt right.

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

America is at a tipping point right now. We can either band together to advocate for order, or we can play the violins on the Titanic as the ship goes down with democracy.