Local Democrats regroup after election.

In the days after the election, a mile from the Weekly’s office, graffiti appeared on the wall of a shopping center with red letters that said, “Go back to Mexico.”

Protesters for and against President-elect Donald Trump have clashed, sometimes violently, and protests have resulted in highway shutdowns in Los Angeles and Oakland. (When asked on 60 Minutes what message he had for his own supporters inciting protesters with racist or inflammatory remarks, Trump said: “Stop it.”)

In Monterey County, where 28 percent of voters went for Trump, the reaction has been more outwardly subdued, but still electrifying in its own way.

When the Monterey County Democratic Central Committee decided to hold a post-mortem on the Saturday afternoon following the Nov. 8 election, they expected a few dozen people. In part, they needed help eating leftover snacks – cheese and crackers, carrots and hummus – that no one had enough of a stomach to consume on election night.

Around 130 people crammed into the party office in Seaside, and overflowed into the alleyway out back. Dozens of them had never been there before.

The event, called “Moving From Grief to Strategy,” was designed to give people a chance to unload their feelings – everyone broke up into small groups, where they were allowed up to three minutes each to vent – before reconvening to set some future goals.

“We assume you’re here because you want something to happen, you want something to change,” Democratic Central Committee Chair Vinz Koller told the group.

My group wanted to vent. One person cried, another talked about how her husband couldn’t understand and one talked about how she’d never been involved in a campaign or a cause before, but Trump’s victory shocked her and moved her to show up.

Even with all that emotion coursing through the room, the “strategy” part didn’t feel revolutionary. They’re primarily working variations of the same issues they have been for years: trying to turn the House of Representatives blue in 2018, building coalitions with other groups, educating youth.

Organizers are planning a march in Monterey Sunday, Nov. 20 at 3pm. People are wearing safety pins – a symbolic show of solidarity with victims of racism and messages of hate that Trump spewed.

But marching and donning safety pins and even political phone-banking aren’t going to fix the system.

There’s a lot of anger, distrust and confusion, and no obvious, meaningful place for all of that rage to go. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, but despite the message #notmypresident, he is going to be my president. There’s a place at the bottom of Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s webpage, www.greatagain.gov, where they invite members of the public to answer a question: “How do you want to make America great?”

I put some of my rage there, and typed in some ideas: shrinking the income gap, relief from crushing student debt, easy-to-access abortions for women everywhere, and assurance free speech and press are protected.

I got an automated response: “We are a government of, for, and by the people, and it is your voice and the voices of millions of Americans that will help make our country great again.”

I have no illusions that Trump cares about what I have to say. Think of it as another form of venting. Instead, I’m hoping we channel the anger into big reforms like campaign finance and the Electoral College.

In the final weeks of her political career, retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer filed a bill Nov. 15 that would abolish the Electoral College, which gives more weight to swing states, diminishing California’s significance. Boxer’s bill calls for a constitutional amendment to abolish the system that lets us elect presidents who lost the popular vote. Her bill is a longshot.

But there is a more accessible and attainable campaign: the idea of an interstate compact, which California has already approved. It means that electors would pledge their votes to the candidate who won the national popular vote, rather than the candidate who won their state. It’s a start. And it would make California count – or at least get on the map.

SARA RUBIN is interim editor of the Weekly. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com or follow her on Twitter @sarahayleyrubin.