Something happening here ...

Sunday afternoon we made the long, smoky drive past Tuolumne Meadows, north of the wildfire at the entrance to Yosemite Valley, and across the smog-hazed Central Valley. We stopped off for lunch at an unprepossessing roadside Mexican restaurant among the strip malls of Oakdale. Cocina Michoacana was friendly and the food tasty.

While we were eating, a woman came over to say how much she liked the text on my shirt (right). We explained we'd gotten it while protesting the Trump/Republican migrant family separation policy near the border in San Diego. We told her about chanting outside the prison, then keeping silent, and hearing women locked within shouting back to us. She told us the thought almost made her cry.

Then she told us how proud she'd been that, right there in the Valley community of Oakdale, they'd had their own protest about the child-snatching and refusal of asylum seekers. "It wasn't so big -- but it was right here in our little town."

"I keep telling everyone they have to vote in November. They all have to!"

She lives in California Congressional District 10 where the Republican incumbent is thought to be one of the most endangered in the nation. The aspiring Democrat is Josh Harder. She and her neighbors intend to put this Democrat in office and send a message to Washington. They just might do it.

As George Packer insists: "All That’s Left Is the Vote."