Mount Pleasant's Trump-Harris Halloween Parade debacle: A parent's reflections

Search "Mount Pleasant Halloween" and you'll find national articles pointing to my hometown. My current town. The town that my husband and I moved our family to this year -- for a break from the fast-paced crazy we once found in our former lives in Texas.

Are you laughing yet? I am -- in a sad, exhausted way.

We moved to a swing state during one of the most vitriolic election years in American history.

My younger son learned the word "rape" from a political advertisement that played during his kid-topic YouTube videos. My older son asked on the way to his gym class whether, indeed, as the advertisement said: "Did Bob Casey FAIL us?"

Then, in the middle of the Mount Pleasant Halloween Parade last Wednesday, my two little kids saw a woman depicting Kamala Harris chained/tethered/handcuffed/leashed to the back of a golf cart with two men (one dressed as Donald Trump) wielding a sniper rifle on a tripod from the top of the vehicle. The vehicle was "protected" by several others flanking the vehicle and dressed as federal agents.

I saw the gun first. 

My initial thought was for the safety of my kids, in front of me, gathering candy off the street. My little boys wear Asics. The little one sometimes wears Velcro sandals when he can't find his Asics. I didn't remember just then what they were wearing, but my mind instantly went to identifying them if needed. In a real-life morgue. 

I was at a Halloween parade. This suddenly got really sad, really fast. But isn't that how this all happens -- over and over in American public spaces? Fun at concerts. Fun at the mall. Being together. Little kids learning their ABCs. My mom and sister and cousins were just down the street. 

I turned to my husband and said, "Breathe. Just breathe."

It's a refrain I immediately turned inward, as I always did as a journalist when reality hit too hard in the moment:

"Just breathe": The Capitol is locking down. January 6.

"Just breathe." A shooting in Uvalde. Several fatalities. Likely juveniles.

"Just breathe." Matthew McConaughey tearfully holding up a pair of sneakers necessary to ID a little girl gunned down in her classroom.

"Just breathe." Police called to an active shooter situation at Sandy Hook Elementary.

As this editorial notes, parade watchers were pulled from the fun of the Halloween festivities into election politics. For a few minutes, all I saw was the gun. Was it loaded? (Open Carry is lawful in Pennsylvania, but it doesn't make it any less jarring to see.)

I eventually saw the Donald Trump mask. It was a political statement. I shook it off -- as most people can do. As we've had to do to keep on going. To be normal when all is definitely not.

A political tableau. OK. That really didn't make any of it better -- especially as I saw what was bringing up the rear: a woman dressed as Harris who agreed to be shackled to a golf cart and paraded through town. What was her involvement? What was her damage to be agreeing to such a thing? How long had this whole thing been planned? Did anyone think -- and even scarier -- what had they thought? Did anyone have misgivings and then say, "whatever," and continue down that road (Death Bed the Bed that Eats People-style)? Who let them onto the parade route?

The mayor and others have issued statements. I've read them. I've processed them. However, the only thing that is staying with me is that visual and my reaction: "Just breathe." Have I -- have we -- been reduced to just surviving through all of this crazy? It seems so. Upon reflection, I've found I helped normalize a scene that could have been pulled directly from "The Handmaid's Tale." This is NOT OK.

And that's just one aspect of this. I'm a white woman. What did Black and brown people think who saw this? It's just cruel and terrible and so embarrassing. My town. 

In a statement, Daylon A. Davis, president of Pittsburgh’s NAACP branch, called the act “harmful” and racist. 

“This appalling portrayal goes beyond the realm of Halloween satire or free expression; it is a harmful symbol that evokes a painful history of violence, oppression, and racism that Black and brown communities have long endured here in America.”

This kind of representation does real harm. And the target audience of a Halloween parade is children. This is how you chose to represent a Black person in a Mount Pleasant parade? Seriously? 

What will be the benchmarks for inclusion in the parade going forward?

I was happy to see people's outrage in the videos circulated and in news reports in the days after. That's the Mount Pleasant I know and am proud to be living in.

We'll likely see changes to next year's parade: Some process. Applications. Vetted parade entries. Maybe. We'll see who wins the election. 

As for me, I'm standing with Mount Pleasant's mayor, as she noted in this NBC report: "This needs to stop. In this country, this needs to stop."