A friend of a friend (I found out this last week) is the co-owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. I am incredibly proud of what she did, how she interrupted the narrative that says we have to be docile in the face of those who want us to die by neglect or malice, who want our voices to be silenced by stripping our names from voter registers and keeping us quiet and “civil”-all while lying to our faces about what is happening.
The owner who asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave did so respectfully, privately, and with as much care to all parties as one can when confronting the lying mouthpiece of a horrific administration without losing site that she is also human.
Sanders could have let the incident go, but instead decided to make an example of the Red Hen, that how dare anyone, no matter how thoughtfully and carefully, interrupt the the comfort and entitlement of the people in power. She, by announcing what happened, sicced her followers on the Red Hen, sicced the President on the Red Hen. They have had death threats and chicken manure dumped on their doorstep. Anti LBGTQ bigots camped out in front of the place.
My question is, if this administration really had all the power why would one person refusing one member of the administration a meal (in a way that let her maintain dignity as she left) require the full force of the President’s platform? They were trying to make an example of the Red Hen, to show the rest of us that we better not speak up. Instead the Red Hen is an example to us-that disrupting them works. Disrupt, irritate, slow down what they are doing, be a thorn in their side, a rash that makes it uncomfortable to sit wherever they please.
The stakes are very high right now, I am I so dismayed by rank and file Democratic senators who are chastising the Red Hen (and Representative Maxine Waters) for disrupting the system. There is a quote by Zora Neale Hurston I am reminded of, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
We are at that stage. 5000 people died preventable deaths in Puerto Rico. We have children in internment camps.They have tried to gut healthcare and providing food to poor children while starting trade wars and stripping environmental protections. We left the UN’s Human Rights Council for God’s Sake.
I have included a link to the Red Hen. (Click on the name) If you are so inclined, you can buy gift certificates and ask that they not be sent, that the money just be put back into the business to help them get back on their feet and to show support for how they stood up for what was right.
Thank you.
Kristin DeMarco Wagner 