I froze my credit today. It costs nothing, it won’t affect your credit score, and it might help keep those mf Elmo mitts off our money.
It takes 10 or so minutes and can be undone any time. If you are interested, here are some links:
Here are some songs that bring a smile to my face and warmth to my heart.
Here’s something we can all do–or not do, rather. Spend nothing this coming Friday and grind the economy to a halt for 24 hours. The oligarchs who run this country care only for money and power so let’s show them what we care about and the real power of solidarity.
If you have to spend for whatever reason, try to shop locally if you can (always a good idea any time of the year) and if at all possible, boycott Amazon always. And speaking of Amazon, if you own a Kindle, be sure to download your books before February 26. After that, you’ll still be able to read them on Kindle, but you won’t be able to transfer to any other device. Going to save the profanity-laced tirade against billionaires, but just know I’m thinking it.
I’ll try to end each post with something I love because while things are bleak and scary af, I still want to take time for joy and creativity. This lovely man’s home and his passion for creating and curating make me smile. Enjoy!
Because his last reign of awfulness was so much fun, we (in the US) decided to do it again. Smart! And I decided to keep my blog posts from the last round to preserve a record of how I felt and what I did in 2016 and 2017. Some of this didn’t age particularly well, and some of it is depressingly familiar.
This will be a place to park the resources I find/use (see the link above) and hopefully, a place where you can share what helps you to take action and get through what promises to be an absolute–I want to say shitshow but that doesn’t cover it. It will be a time, I guess.
Feel free to rant or cry or whatever. I plan to do the same. Let’s help each other, let’s resist, and let’s make the world a little better.
Since the election, I’ve heard from many overwhelmed with the horror that is the Trump administration. People want to help, but where to start? I get it. Women’s rights to make the most basic decisions about their heath are even more threatened, immigrants and refugees are being scapegoated, hate crimes are way, way up…I could go on. It is overwhelming and exhausting and scary, and it makes me cry. Every damn day.
The idea, expressed many times over the course of the convention weekend, that there is a lane for each of us especially resonates with me.
Every one of us is needed in this movement. You have something to offer, even if you haven’t been active in the past. There are many ways to help. Not everyone will do the work of Carmen, or Linda, or Tamika, but we can all contribute. If you’re shy and the thought of phone banking gives you a rash, you could try text banking. I’ve done this—with people and alone at home in my jammies. It’s the perfect resistance activity for introverts. Or, if you like to cook, feed the resistance. I was at a rally in Berkeley a few months ago where people were giving away water and food that had been donated by local businesses. Another group set up a meditation area that was an oasis of calm for me and many others, I’m sure. There are so, so many things we can do.
If you’re overwhelmed and have no idea where to even begin, I can say this: just start somewhere. Yes, it’s scary, and everything is urgent, but you can pick one issue that means the most to you and work on it. Because your passion will lead you to your most heartfelt work. So that when you’re talking to someone, for example, about the need for a clean Dream Act, your sincerity and compassion will show and hopefully inspire others.
Some threads/themes running through my mind before, during and after the convention. I’ll elaborate more in the coming days and weeks, but here is where I start.
Ok, that was a rather long break. I’ve been resisting but not writing about it, other than the occasional tweet. So, I’m back and will post more soon, especially about the Women’s Convention.
Sometimes I think I have to write an essay, or even an essaylet, and sometimes, after a tedious/grueling day at work, or just the general shittiness of the news, those thoughts exhaust me. But a wise man said “Forget your perfect offering,” and I have things I want to share, so maybe my writing, cracks and all, will allow a bit of light in.
Some thoughts on the my visit to DC and the march, a month later. (Upon returning to California, I got strep throat and then a horrible cold, but it was so worth it.)
My group went in to DC Friday afternoon. What struck me was how quiet the city seemed that day and the dead, soulless eyes of the Trump zombies wandering the streets. Ok, kidding about that last bit, but I was expecting a livelier bunch. Their guy won after all. In my view that’s debatable, but Trump voters believe he did, so I’d have thought they’d be doing cartwheels. Many looked glum and dour to me even in their bright red MAGA caps. And sparse on the ground, an hour or so after the inauguration ended. Sad!
It was my first visit to DC, and I will be back to this beautiful city. We visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a searing and heartbreaking experience. And it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could visit and not see the similarities between Hitler’s rise to power and our current situation. I wondered, too, what was going through the minds of the MAGA-capped visitors.
The morning of the march, we drove from Baltimore to the last metro stop outside of DC, but we couldn’t even exit the highway. Never have I felt so heartened to be stuck in traffic. We parked near Howard University and walked the two miles to the march, where we couldn’t get anywhere near the stage. Again, I was glad to see so many people, not even caring that I couldn’t see Gloria or Kamala up close. We eventually got close enough to at least hear Alicia Keys, where I promptly ugly cried behind my sunglasses.
I am somewhat claustrophobic and don’t always handle crowds well. One of my favorite protest signs found online reads: “So bad, even introverts came out.” That pretty much sums it up. although I don’t let my shyness keep me home, at least not where fascism is concerned. This was by far the largest crowd I’ve ever seen, and I felt completely at ease, a testament to the power of people who come together for a larger, humanitarian purpose.
The vibe was loving, peaceful, and determined. People were polite, respectful, helpful, and hopeful. Trump and his people have characterized protestors as angry, sore losers, violent (wtf?), and my favorite, paid. So much projection! And where is my check?
Here are a few photos from the march.
I was sure I’d seen the word “lie” used in a Times article recently, but I couldn’t remember where. (I’ve been sick, so we’ll blame my faulty memory on a fever.) The word jumped out at me because media outlets are loath to use it, sometimes with reason, other times preferring weasel words like “equivocate.”
Tonight’s NYT editorial explains the thinking behind their choice. I especially like this:
To say that someone has “lied,” an active verb, or has told a “lie,” a more passive, distancing noun, is to say that the person intended to deceive. In addition, Mr. Nunberg said, “a certain moral opprobrium attaches to it, a reprehensibility of motive.”
Reprehensibility of motive, indeed. Please keep up the “muscular terminology,” NYT,
A friend recently made what I consider dismissive remarks about safety pins and protests, essentially saying they are not effective. The timing stung because I was wearing a safety pin and had mentioned going to a march, but I try to be open minded and curious, so I asked myself some questions. Are these just facile, feel-good gestures, proverbial drops in an ocean of do-gooding (that is so a word :P)? Perhaps, if I just put on my pin and thought, “Activism completed; I’m good.” But like so many, I want to do more. Those of us who are able to can: march, write, boycott, donate, volunteer and come up with dozens of other creative ways to resist. As I told my friend who was doubting the power of marches and boycotts, we’re just starting to resist Trump. New movements will begin, leaders will emerge (maybe someone you or I know), and there will be so many ways to get involved.
My friend’s remarks also called to mind something I wrote more than 10 years ago, a reminder to myself that I believe small acts of resistance do matter.
I’m reading the best book: The Impossible Will Take a Little While. It’s a collection of essays about hope, about keeping the faith in trying times, and about how even small gestures can have great impact.
In the introduction, editor Paul Loeb tells the story of a friend who took her children to a vigil to protest nuclear testing. In the pouring rain, Lisa stood with about one hundred other women in front of the White House, feeling dejected by the small turnout. Lisa attended a much larger rally a few years later, where Dr. Spock spoke of what inspired him to get involved with this issue. He had been in D.C. at the same time that Lisa was at her vigil and saw the group standing in the rain. “I thought that if those women were out there,” he said, “their cause must be really important.”
I really needed this story. It expresses ideas that are close to my heart and that I too often forget. We rally, protest, write, blog, etc. in the hope that we will make the world a better place, but we can’t always be sure of the outcome. But the gesture, whether dramatic or tiny, matters.
Before our country preemptively and needlessly attacked Iraq, millions of us all over the world gathered to say “Not in our name.” For this, we were dismissed as “focus groups.” We didn’t succeed in preventing the war, of course, and if you look at the pictures from that day, you’ll see that many of us look like little dots. I was one of those dots, and while I knew that we wouldn’t change Bush’s mind, I also knew that we had to be there. I needed to be there: to say “no,” to add my face and voice to the millions of other focus group dots, to tell the world that not all Americans were bloodthirsty imbeciles, to do anything I could to resist the madness. And who knows? Maybe, collectively, we inspired a future Dr. Spock, or a Nelson Mandela, or maybe we just changed a few minds.
This is a wonderful, inspiring collection. Here are some other excerpts that I particularly like:
“When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.”
Eduardo Galeano, from The Book of Embraces“But to feel the affection that comes from those we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and our solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.”
Pablo Neruda, from Neruda and Vallejo“I do not believe the wicked always win. I believe our despair is a lie we are telling ourselves. In many other periods of history, people, ordinary citizens, routinely set aside hours, days, time in their lives for doing the work of politics, some of which is glam and revolutionary and some of which is dull and tedious and not especially pure — and the world changed because of the work they did. That’s what we’re starting now.”
Tony Kushner, adapted from talks at Chicago’s Columbia College and New York’s Cooper UnionJesus’ Third Way
Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.
Meet force with ridicule or humor.
Shame the oppressor into repentance.
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.
Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.
Walter Wink, from Jesus and Nonviolence: The Third Way“Sometimes only untamed irreverence can heal our bodies or souls.”
Paul Loeb, from the introduction to the chapter “The Flight of Our Dreams”
I so love this book. Since I wrote the above, the book has been updated, most recently in 2014. It makes a wonderful gift for a loved one — or gift it to yourself.
I’m still reeling from the election and still very rusty as a blogger, but I can recognize and link to intelligent and thoughtful commentary.
We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump is chilling, but we live in chilling times. I’d rather face the truth and use my voice than live obliviously. There is too much at stake.
Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.
Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.
Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.
Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.
…
But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. If you find yourself doing something that feels questionable or wrong a few months or years from now, find that essay you wrote on who you are and read it. Ask if that version of yourself would have done the same thing.
And if the answer is no? Don’t do it.
I will try to post my thoughts is the the coming days or weeks, but for now, I can say this:
I will never believe that any group of people is inferior to another and deserving of scapegoating. There is so much more to say, but it starts with the assumption that every human deserves a life of dignity, free of discrimination and cruelty.