Charlotte retirees tried to keep ‘patriotic marches’ simple. That’s proven hard.
They’re asking for honks via their wearable sandwich-board signs, and they’re getting them.
Honks punched out by passing drivers in, more often than not, a rapid-fire staccato rhythm — beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep — routinely with a drawn-out exclamation point at the end: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
It’s become a familiar sound on Wednesday mornings along Park Road near Quail Hollow in south Charlotte during the height of morning rush hour, that of car horns, delivered in blast patterns that somehow make it pretty clear they’re friendly and supportive in nature.
Only once in a reasonably long while does someone driving by roll down a window to angrily or dismissively extend a middle finger.
Maybe that’s because many of the signs strapped to the fronts and backs of the people wearing them are decorated with slogans — “Honk for Democracy,” “Honk for Establishing Justice,” “United We Stand,” “I (Heart) America” — that are tougher to disagree with than those of a blatantly partisan nature.
However, one could also surmise that there’s a little bit less negative blowback than there might otherwise be simply because the dozen or so regulars wearing the signs are all older people.
60s, 70s, 80s, even 90s.
“I have no idea,” says 78-year-old Jean Ritok, one of the organizers of these “weekly non-partisan patriotic marches,” when asked whether she thought passersby might have a more nuanced reaction to her group and their messages simply because of the advanced ages of the people doing the marching. What she does know, she says, is that as retirees, all, “we’re free to do it. We have the time. We have the world experience to know that this is a fraught time.”
In any case, this small but dedicated band of folks — bonded by their residency at the Southminster retirement community — is out there, every Wednesday from 8 to 9 a.m., showing off those signs and showing out for those honks.
And, as it turns out, it’s not just occasionally being flipped off that has kept them on their toes.
‘The things that pull us together’
The idea for the marches grew out of a grassroots community initiative, co-founded by Ritok earlier this year as “The Citizen Project,” aimed generally at “contributing to the public good.”
It started to crystallize in June, when the members headed into the city to join protesters at the ‘No Kings’ rally in First Ward Park.
Then — inspired by the “democracy-versus-dictators” movement and having determined, Ritok says, that “the best antidote to anxiety is action” — they took their opposition to President Trump and his policies to the sidewalks along Park Road, just beyond the confines of Southminster. Wednesday, July 16, marked the kickoff.
After just a few weeks, however, they decided to pivot away from partisanship. At least in the most obvious regard: The anti-Trump messages were scrubbed from their signs.
“It didn’t take very long for us to start feeling like, Mmmmm, it’s better to be pro than against,” says Becki Vaughn, 81, one of the group’s most active members. “It’s better to gather people together and unify. ... Do you know (Yuval Noah) Harari, who wrote ‘Sapiens’? He talks about how people unify with a common myth. Our common myth is the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
“All of those are the things that pull us together, and that, we decided, needed to be our emphasis.”
In fact, when a reporter spies an anti-Trump message on the back of the “Protect Medical Care” sign hanging all the way from Ritok’s neck down to her shins during one of the marches in early October, she hugs the board closer to her body as car horns sound around her.
“Noooo, I don’t want you to see it. ’Cause we don’t do that now. ... We don’t want to fight each other. ... We’re for anybody that cares about the Constitution.”
To be fair, the veil is fairly thin. And that veil can be lifted, at least a little, depending on current events. On the Wednesday after the Border Patrol launched its immigration blitz in Charlotte, for instance, Ritok and her cohorts drew up a handful of new signs alluding to the operation — with slogans like “Make America Kind Again” and “I Like My ICE Crushed.”
After all, they say, sometimes it will make sense to color outside the lines they’ve drawn for themselves. They just have to be careful not to stray past the ones Southminster has drawn for them.
All views are their own
The retirement community’s roughly 500 residents, of course, don’t all share the same views on politics. Or, to put it in more nonpartisan terms, the same ideas about activism.
There is an underlying sense that some of the people who live there would prefer a slightly more politics-free environment. As such, Vaughn says they’ve done their homework and try to engage only neighbors they feel confident will have an open mind about their “Citizen Project.”
As further proof that wading into politics these days can be as sensitive an issue as ever:
In early October, Ritok and Vaughn drafted a press release to announce the launch of their “Citizen Project” that mentioned Southminster nine times, since the whole of its membership consists of residents of the retirement community. Southminster’s front office reviewed it and asked them to make it clearer that the group was organized by the residents, not the company.
The two women complied. But the second draft didn’t get approved by Southminster, either. The final, official draft — which did — mentioned Southminster zero times.
It was sent to The Charlotte Observer by Susanne Shaw, communications and public relations manager for Southminster, along with a separate statement that said, “The Citizen Project reflects the personal views and actions of individual residents in our community and is in no way sanctioned or supported by Southminster.”
Shaw took a warmer approach in person, when she did a quick drop-in during a recent post-march interview with Ritok and Vaughn. “I love the fact that you guys are civically engaged,” she said to the women, “and you’re doing something about what you believe in. That’s such a big part of what Southminster is about, in general, is life with purpose. It’s just very unfortunate that the situation is what it is, and whether it’s partisan, bipartisan, nonpartisan, it is a political issue.
“And for that reason, Southminster can’t say, ‘Yes, we support it!’”
After she leaves, Vaughn and Ritok say they were miffed, at first, by how adamant Southminster was about being involved in conversations about a project it apparently wanted nothing to do with.
But they say they’re at peace with it now. “It’s not about me, and it’s not about Southminster,” Vaughn says.
“You know what gets us motivated?” Ritok adds. “Our kids, and especially grandkids. Until you have grandchildren, you cannot realize the care and the concern that you have for that generation. ... We don’t want our grandkids to grow up in a certain kind of a country.”
So they’ve kept going out there, for a streak that was extended to 19 weeks on Wednesday, to patrol the sidewalks just to the north and west of Southminster — doing their best to avoid a cranky crossing guard along the way.
‘What is it you don’t agree with?’
This is an ideal place for something like this, if you want a high-traffic area with lots of visibility.
It’s on a major commuter thoroughfare leading from south Charlotte to uptown, and during the school year it has the added benefit of being smack in the center of an educational-institution triangle whose three points are South Mecklenburg High, Quail Hollow Middle and Smithfield Elementary.
Drop-off for the latter two schools happens between 8 and 9 a.m. There’s no way, if you’re a parent who does morning carpool at either or both, that you haven’t seen this collection of silver-haired demonstrators with their signs — and often, their flags.
Ken Hungate, a Southminster resident who comes out semi-regularly, is among those waving a small American one on this particular October Wednesday.
It’s historically been a nonpartisan symbol, but when he talks about why he’s brought it, Hungate does clearly reveal his political colors: “We feel like the other side, they kind of hijacked the flag. And we’re saying, ‘No, you can’t have it. We believe in the flag as well,’” he says.
“If you drive by here — and you may be a Republican or unaffiliated, but — if you read most of these signs, how do you not agree with the signs?” says Hungate, whose front-facing one reads “We Love America and Rule of Law” and whose rear-facing one says “Honk for Promoting General Welfare.”
“I mean, somebody gives you a thumbs-down or the finger, and you’re thinking, What is it you don’t agree with?”
As for whether he feels like these marches are leaving any sort of impression on people who see them?
He hopes so. He also emphasizes that the marches are just one of the myriad ways “The Citizen Project” is promoting voter education, legislative advocacy and civic expression. “We’ll go out and canvas and knock on doors, drop literature,” he says. But “we won’t know if this particular thing is making a difference.”
Fifteen minutes later, the clock strikes 9 and the group starts to make their way back to Southminster.
No one has shed their sign yet, though, and with traffic still heavy, a cacophony of honking continues to fill the air. The only noise that can come close to competing is the sound of a shrill-voiced school crossing guard, who is screaming at cars to slow down and clearly irritated by all the horn-blowing.
“I’ve got a mechanical valve and a pacemaker and you guys are about to kill me!” she yells, her vitriol seemingly aimed at both the motorists and the marchers. “I’m not against what you’re doing, but it’s dangerous for me!”
Once across the street and out of earshot, Becki Vaughn says, quietly, “She actually is.”
Then the group fans out toward their respective homes, with the core of it promising to be back next Wednesday, then the Wednesday after that, then the Wednesday after that, and so on, with no clear end in sight. For as long as they’re able, Ritok says — or until they see the change they want to see in the world — they’ll keep coming out, and for as long as it takes, they’ll keep asking themselves the same question:
“What can people like us, who are in our elder years, do as good citizens in these times to make a difference?”
