Think About It: A worried Sequim

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Bertha D. Cooper

I attended an election event recently which was held to encourage people’s interest and participation in the upcoming elections. An estimated 72 people attended.

The gathering was organized and run by Indivisible Sequim. The primary objective of the meeting was to organize for the upcoming election.

Many of you will recognize the name “Indivisible” as the group that formed as an effort to “stop the rise of authoritarianism in the United States” and to demand a real democracy. Indivisible Sequim is a local chapter of the nationwide grassroots movement Indivisible, where thousands of groups and millions of people have come together engaging in sustained, strategic, non-violent protest against authoritarianism of any kind and to elect leaders who are committed to establishing a real democracy “of, by, and for the People,” according to Indivisible’s website.

Although national and Sequim Indivisible eschew political affiliation or being associated with or governed by a political party, it can be and has been construed to lean more toward the views of the Democratic Party.

It is not entirely clear to me why that is the case because I do not know anyone once informed who would support our conversion from a democracy to an authoritarian form of governing.

There may however be many who simply do not believe our country is vulnerable to an authoritarian takeover.

Those that come to believe there is high risk of losing our democracy — some say we have already lost some aspects of it — are focused on stopping the rise of authoritarians or even a hint of same can draw people from most political persuasions.

I have yet to attend a Sequim public meeting or rally that did not draw a surprisingly high number of people, especially given we are nearly a year into this and people are still coming.

The issue at hand and what is bringing so many people out on a late Friday afternoon no matter the weather to line Washington Street and rally against the current administration is the growing fear that our country is vulnerable to becoming governed by an authoritarian regime.

When I asked people at different events why they were there, the answer was some version of “I had to do something.”

Many were attending a political gathering for the first time.

The number of people that continue to attend rallies one year later tells us that the sense we are at risk of losing our democracy is not going away. Sequim people are not going to let it happen. Resistance is a positive trend.

As President Donald Trump said of a rally a few years ago in which the protesters carried tiki torches, “there are very fine people on both sides.”

I wish we could have more conciliatory comments and actions from our President and other leaders of both parties. Neither political party can claim to have sufficiently tried to unite our country in these emotionally loaded areas that directly affect our sense of choice, safety and security.

Yet we know that name-calling rallies people and contributions faster and longer than peacemaking. I call it toxic campaigning.

Sequim is beginning to see these toxic seedlings of division planted in our political arena.

So-called inflammatory statements are and bring out the worst in us.