by Nika Ripkin
Saturday November 22nd, 2025, Good Grief, Vermont, USA
Here in Good Grief, we gathered this morning for our own little Remove the Regime Rally. As Good Grief is a smallish place, a border town with a population of only about 7588 folks, we were elated to see more than 3000 souls show up today. They did not all come from Good Grief alone. Rather, they came from a wide area surrounding our town, mostly from the American side of the border. The Quebec side that I live on is called Bon Sang; Good Grief forms the American side, which most of my property extends onto, and represents two-thirds of the town. But most who live here, on either side of the border, just call the whole town “GG” for short. The closest American city to Good Grief is Westport [42,000+ people] an hour to the west in the USA; whereas the closest Canadian city is Magog to the north [29,000+]. Both cities are situated on freshwater lakes. People were to gather in front of our historic library by 11:30 AM - as our protest was set to begin at the same time as the Remove the Regime protest in Washington - 12 noon.
THat morning, I sat in The Alamo cafe with my 3 closest friends Tawa [Tawanda] Barry, Tom Madeira, and Lark Paige. Tawa and Lark are my partners running a global thinktank for women, SisterTHINK, and Tom and Lark own this local intimate cafe-bar in Good Grief, living, in fact, on the top, third floor of The Alamo. But Tom, Lark, and another couple, Lola and Ozias de Sosa also own together 6 other restaurants: all of them called The Nucleus - 3 on the Canadian side in old Montreal, in Old Quebec City, and in Magog, and 3 on the US side, one in the city of Westport, Vermont, an hour away, one in Burlington, Vermont [one more hour], and one in Plattsburgh, New York. Lark, Tom’s partner in life, spends much of her time working between these 5 smaller operations to keep things running smoothly in the southern branch of their eatery empire, along with Ozias, who is their chef wunderkind, and Lola, who is their service and accounting queen. Ozias and Lola reside in Montreal, travelling moreso between the Montreal and Quebec City larger restaurants. Lark’s involvement with our non-profit SisterTHINK is therefore part-time. However, her razor-sharp business mind significantly impacts our organization every single day. Tom sits in on our meetings whenever he can; he too possesses a brilliant mind for business, handling all things financial for all 7 restaurants.
Tom or Lark are not much interested in having Chump ruin their countries nor their businesses on both sides of the border, while we three, Tawa, Lark, and I are laser-focused on what this Fascist regime has planned for women across America and around the world, actually - because if you are a woman from anywhere travelling in America, it seemed abundantly clear from the get-go that women‘s rights were under direct attack, particularly reproductive rights. If you travel as a woman, this means you might not be safe at all, particularly if you are a young woman, and probably not for any woman. This entire administration in Washington and their loathsome agenda have proven themselves absolutely hostile to womens’ rights. Yet in 2025, reproductive rights are everything to a woman’s freedom of choice–a woman’s right and basic need to choose when to have her children, whether for financial, emotional, psychological reasons, or for her own health. It is a woman’s human right to choose IF or WHEN she will have children. In today’s world, where so much is going wrong, and costs are out-of-sight, many youth feel having even one child is becoming a long-lost dream. They simply feel they cannot afford children, and even if they could, they don’t see their prospective children as having any future. At all. Forget any American dream of ye olde picket fence - they struggle to dream of a thriving life. Having this administration actively destroying their human rights even further is beyond disturbing to them. They begin to see that billionaires are bent on stealing what is left of their futures, bent on enslaving them - the 99%.
Youth see an abyss.
We met up at The Alamo for brunch prior to walking down the street to the library where the rally was to start. The Alamo sits overlooking the Tomifobia River, which Tom likes to call the Tomi, in a play on his own name. What physically renders The Alamo utterly unique as an eatery is that it is constructed from solid limestone rock three floors high, with a surrounding sturdy cedar deck, where the Tomi river falls just behind the building in a mesmerizing, narrow, 75 foot waterfall, flowing over the rock ledge above and on down into a ravine below. Just stunning. The sturdy cedar deck on the entry floor juts out towards the falls, offering a spectacular viewpoint to diners.
Not large, the cafe seats only 70 people using both lower floors, perhaps 100 with the deck seating. But with large casement windows on both floors facing out to the waterfall and to the surrounding hillside views, it is hard to imagine a more intimate and gorgeous setting for a cosy cafe. A huge fireplace on each floor boasts a red Vermont Castings Resolute woodstove to keep the stone walls warm through the icy winters. On this windy, crisp day, we were reluctant to leave as the doors to the wood stove were open, with a cheery fire blazing within.
Lark sighed, “Who knows, but at least we are busy here at the Alamo! She glanced around. The restaurant was packed. And it normally was at noon, on any given day.
“I wonder how many here are walking down with us to the Library? I am more than tired of it all. Can’t he just decide to die already?” She tapped an elegant finger on the table. “It is particularly galling to an American taxpayer that this cretin, this utter failure of a human being, is now 201st on the list of Forbes 400, and has actually accumulated 3 billion MORE in wealth in the 10 months since he first parked his formidable derrière on his imagined throne in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, he has COST the American people, through all of his destructive moves, far more than the 7.8 trillion increase in the national debt load from his first disastrous four years, in addition to all of these areas where he has actually stripped away our social programs and fine, democratic institutions - while shredding our very Constitution - while he golfs, fully intending to ride around in his new refurbished Qatari jet - that’s another billlion of our money to refurbish that thing alone! - sending out evil, and frankly stupid messages on his social media platform, all night, every night. And he will dance in his brand new ugly ballroom, with all his useless sycophants attending to his every depraved pleasure. With nary a thought for the Americans they are supposed to represent. They simply must go - the lot. ‘Nothing, after all, will come of nothing.’”
As she spoke, she pulled her long, curly, red hair up and twisted it into a easy knot at the nape of her neck. “And I am thinking Ozias could make him a truly divine meal fit for a ruinous king here at The Alamo.” Lark flashed her trademark grin, laughing wickedly from her gut. “I’ll buy the key ingredients myself.” She paused.
“Oh bloody, you know I am joking.”
She laughed again, but not with pleasure this time; her green eyes were serious. “I cannot continue to live here if we do not defeat this regime. I will become ill. And so many women will opt to leave, including our own daughter.”
I breathed, “Who knows where all of this is going? One sick hallucination, all of it. I could not have conceived of anything more nightmarish in my fictional mind, except perhaps a Chump who was actually intelligent. It is entirely off-the-charts galling that he is not. I keep thinking of Hannah Arendt, and why she called her book on Eichmann, in 1963, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report On the the Banality of Evil. Jews were furious that she seemed to be calling someone they believed to be truly evil, who had delivered a horrific end onto their loved ones - sending them by train to their deaths - merely “banal.” But they either did not read the book, they were so angry, or they simply misinterpreted what they did read, or allowed others to convince them that she was saying something she was not. Because what she had meant is that it did not take such a great evil will in a human to produce nor cause tremendous evil, even as evil as the Holocaust - it simply took many people acting from sheer ignorance, hatred for hatreds sake, or from mere moral cowardice - or blatant greed. Or the presence of all four elements. Hannah Arendt did not find that Eichmann was a particularly intelligent human, nor impressively evil. He simply said he had obeyed orders and he clearly expected or hoped that this lame excuse would pardon his unbelievably murderous immorality. Mass murder. Genocide. ‘I was told to do it so therefore I had to obey my orders from Hitler.’ Hannah was calling that lunacy out. And I won’t go into it now, but Netanyahu is actually not so very different than Eichmann in our times. Were Hannah alive today, there is no question that she would be calling Barbarous Bibi out. Not enough people are - not publicly. They need to read her book - so relevant right now.”
Tawa smacked her hand sharply on the table, “Well let me tell you, Trump and Netanyahu and Putin and Trump’s billionaire bitcoin backers have bit off more than they can chew attacking 99% of Americans on all fronts.”
Her eyes and face, fierce, flaming with emotion, turned to each of us, one by one.
Tawa had lost both of her parents to Chump during Covid. Her mother and father had supported Chump, believed in him, and had gone off to attend one of his rallies in 2020, not masking as they had said they were mocked when they did so. They had foolishly believed Chump when he had said the danger from Covid-19 was exaggerated. Tawa buried them together in mid-October of 2020 shortly after they had attended a Chump rally near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in late September. Obviously, that personal tragedy, which she fully blames Chump for, not surprisingly, with his irresponsible actions causing many, many unnecessary Covid deaths, still entirely colours her emotional world. Five years later, she is still grieving their loss.
She stood resolutely to her feet, turning to us, her dark features passionate.
“When he is dead and gone, I am going to tour all over America. I cannot do it right now. Not alone. But I am gonna talk to women across this entire country - to people of both genders in each state - and find out what they REALLY were thinking while all this horse manure was being flung around by these idiots in power. What a travesty, all of this. What an enormous waste of time - and all of our money - for an entire decade of our lives - and long before - and far into our futures. Molly Ivins was absolutely right, it is the people NOT voting who are deciding our elections. Do you not realize how long we will be enslaved, and our kids enslaved, to pay the gargantuan deficit this asshole and his treacherous snakes are racking up?! We will be paying for it with our blood, and the blood of our progeny, that is what. All of this is nothing but a blatant heist by the superwealthy. They care about nothing but more and more money for themselves. Zero morality! Fascists!”
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