{"id":28470,"date":"2025-10-29T11:38:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T11:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28470\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T11:38:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T11:38:31","slug":"fighting-fire-with-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28470\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting fire with fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tatiana Haddawy wore a crown, carried a torch, and donned a teal robe and sash emblazoned with the words, \u201cNot For Sale,\u201d as she walked through downtown Oakland during the national day of protest for the No Kings movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy purpose in dressing as Lady Liberty is to represent America and say, \u2018We are not for sale,\u2019\u201d Haddawy said. \u201cI feel like our current administration is for sale to the highest bidder, and it scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haddawy, in her 50s, is the mom of a senior in high school and a college student\u2014and she\u2019s a student herself. \u201cAs I explained to my children, sometimes protests do nothing. But sometimes the sheer number of people standing up for something does have an effect,\u201d she said. \u201cI love to protest. I love being surrounded by likeminded people. The energy fills me with hope for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haddawy wishes more people from her children\u2019s and classmate\u2019s generation were in the streets with her and the thousands of elders who seem to be leading the No Kings movement. Even as Haddawy finds herself protesting mostly in the company of moms, grandparents and community elders, she says she\u2019s fighting for all generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to tell myself everyday not to look [at the news] because I know it\u2019s going to make me sad,\u201d Haddawy said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take more than an election to undo all the damage being done by Trump\u2019s presidency. I have children, and someday I\u2019ll have grandchildren. I would like them to have the freedom to breathe and walk in a world that is free and livable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haddawy fears losing her rights as a woman, and the impacts of climate change being ignored. She\u2019s mad about her tax dollars funding neverending wars. \u201cI don\u2019t mind giving tax dollars to save children, or giving food or health aid or money to help with housing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m very unhappy about my tax dollars going towards destruction and genocide, and things that I would never approve of or vote for.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Haddawy doesn\u2019t have an immediate fix for those things, she finds agency in being able to cast her vote in November. And she\u2019ll be voting \u201cyes\u201d on Prop 50, the Election Rigging Response Act initiated by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Prop 50 proposes temporarily redistricting voting areas into what Newsom says are more fair and representative districts, until the year 2030. Newsom reportedly put the measure on the ballot in response to Trump-led, Republican efforts to redistrict Texas to tilt the election in favor of Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey call it gerrymandering, but Texas is doing it so Republicans can have more say in what goes through and what doesn\u2019t,\u201d Haddawy said. \u201cGavin is responding in the only way the Trump administration seems to know: Fight fire with fire. Even if it\u2019s illegal we\u2019ll do it, too, because we deserve to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Weamer is in his 80s. He protests along with his wife, Lynn MacMichael, as often as possible. \u201cIt feels really good to be out there doing something with people who share common values,\u201d Weamer said.<\/p>\n

Weamer says that while Prop 50 might not be fair, he can\u2019t see a way around it at this moment in time. \u201cThere are a lot of things about the electoral system that aren\u2019t fair,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not one person, one vote. Fair was what the state decided before Texas changed the rules. California will go back to that, but in the meantime we can\u2019t throw away a chance to diminish the power of the bandits who are running Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/a>ONLY QUEENS Tatiana Haddawy of Oakland (not pictured) says the energy of protests fills her with \u2018hope for the future.\u2019 (Photo courtesy of Tatiana Haddawy)<\/p>\n

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around in Washington for the government shutdown, which threatens services like CalFresh while ICE agents continue raids and construction crews press forward on demolition of the East Wing of the White House in preparation for a massive ballroom.<\/p>\n

Assemblymember Alex Lee thinks that\u2019s a crazy irony. \u201cRepublicans control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the presidency, so it\u2019s crazy for them to blame the minority opposition party,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Republicans passed the big BS bill, which gave unprecedented tax breaks to billionaires and cut social services, healthcare and food for millions of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the shutdown, Democrats tried to renegotiate some of the cut healthcare benefits, but Republican lawmakers didn\u2019t come to the table. They didn\u2019t rule out looking at healthcare benefits in the future, but urged their Democratic colleagues to sign to avoid a government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that Democrats don\u2019t cave into weaponizing the federal government against the people of America,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIf they want to continue to hurt Californians and Americans, I think Republicans have to do that on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says he feels hope in the number of citizens coming to the streets and in a higher-than-usual voter engagement for this period in an election cycle. \u201cVoter turnout is on par with the voter turnout for the presidential election in November, which is highly unusual for an off year,\u201d Lee said. \u201cPeople are turning out to vote because they are so frustrated by President Trump. Realistically I think Prop 50 will pass, and that will send a strong message to Donald Trump that the voters and people of California are tired of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Lee understands why Californians are taking the \u201cfight fire with fire\u201d approach to Trump\u2019s gerrymandering and redistricting practices, he abstained from voting to put Prop 50 on the ballot and he\u2019ll do the same this election cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have strong concerns that we\u2019re triggering a larger gerrymandering war,\u201d Lee said. \u201cIf Californians want to do harm mitigation, let\u2019s do harm mitigation. Right now, a lot of people want to fight with fire but ultimately we, as a true governing left coalition, have to come up with ways to put out the fire or else we will all live in the ashes of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Prop 50 passes as Lee suspects it will, he says the important work will start the day after the election. \u201cWe must put that same amount of energy and fire into fighting for independent redistricting across the country, and work on rooting out all corruption in the system,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is the only true way to restore democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if Prop 50 isn\u2019t perfect, protester Will Newart fears what will happen if it doesn\u2019t pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn that case, the Congress will likely have a Republican majority in the next cycle which will not be great for those of us that dislike this regime,\u201d Newart said. \u201cIf that happens they\u2019ll have even more power to pass legislation that strips money from really important parts of the country and gives money to ICE and tax cuts to billionaires at the expense of Americans. That\u2019s not good for our democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tatiana Haddawy wore a crown, carried a torch, and donned a teal robe and sash emblazoned with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[7733,143,145,144,1362,2058],"class_list":{"0":"post-28470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-no-kings","9":"tag-oakland","10":"tag-oakland-headlines","11":"tag-oakland-news","12":"tag-prop-50","13":"tag-protest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}