So, yep, called my Senators, emailed my Rep's staffer, have written several letters that I really need to go print out (I will talk more about said letters if anyone is curious)....
And then.
So it just happened that one of the (many, many) groups on whose mailing list I now am sent me an email about an MLK event in my community. And I went.
And boy howdy I am glad that I did. Because. It turns out that my little blue county in a red state is not only a little blue county, but that, among other things, my community has a thriving and active queer community!
And then I heard through my admittedly etiolated excuse for a grapevine about another get-together, this one of concerned women. And I went. And, again, I am glad that I did. I am being vague as to details for everyone's privacy's sake, but--- one of my major takeaways was that all of us had felt alone in our views and our fears. And we had all been living next to each other and we hadn't known we all existed. And we are making plans for Stuff To Do--- there are a few of us planning to attend a local Women's March (and another bunch going up to the one in DC), and we're making plans to meet regularly, etc., and I was able to get information on yet more meetings/groups locally that I hadn't even known existed OMG.
But mostly, I want to say again: we all thought we were alone. And we weren't. And I don't know what the situations are like in your communities but maybe now is the time to find out what meatspace support systems and political groups are actually there in your communities, if you haven't already.
Also, and maybe this needs to be its own separate thinkpiece... but something else I took away from it was: the other side JUMPED THE GUN. They made a MASSIVE tactical error--- or, possibly, more to the point, Trump and his ego forced the Republican party's hand too soon.
Because there are still people around who remember Nixon. And Vietnam. And the Civil Rights movement. (I LOVE YOU, REP. JOHN LEWIS!!!!!!) They've seen this before. They know how to "rebel well". They remember. (As one former Vietnam protestor I talked to said with a laugh, "You haven't lived until you've been tear-gassed at a protest.") If the Republicans had let us have Hillary, we might have gotten too complacent and/or disillusioned by 2020 to do anything about them--- and too many of those old Vietnam and civil-rights protestors with the memory of how to Get Stuff Done might have died or at least aged too much to be able to help the next generation, and we'd have been left flat and flailing. But we're not. They're here and we are and we're getting up and getting involved.
We're not going to make America "great again" (for healthy straight white cisguys at the expense of everyone else). We're going to make America greater than ever--- and stronger together.
There are more of us than we know!
So, yep, called my Senators, emailed my Rep's staffer, have written several letters that I really need to go print out (I will talk more about said letters if anyone is curious)....
And then.
So it just happened that one of the (many, many) groups on whose mailing list I now am sent me an email about an MLK event in my community. And I went.
And boy howdy I am glad that I did. Because. It turns out that my little blue county in a red state is not only a little blue county, but that, among other things, my community has a thriving and active queer community!
And then I heard through my admittedly etiolated excuse for a grapevine about another get-together, this one of concerned women. And I went. And, again, I am glad that I did. I am being vague as to details for everyone's privacy's sake, but--- one of my major takeaways was that all of us had felt alone in our views and our fears. And we had all been living next to each other and we hadn't known we all existed. And we are making plans for Stuff To Do--- there are a few of us planning to attend a local Women's March (and another bunch going up to the one in DC), and we're making plans to meet regularly, etc., and I was able to get information on yet more meetings/groups locally that I hadn't even known existed OMG.
But mostly, I want to say again: we all thought we were alone. And we weren't. And I don't know what the situations are like in your communities but maybe now is the time to find out what meatspace support systems and political groups are actually there in your communities, if you haven't already.
Also, and maybe this needs to be its own separate thinkpiece... but something else I took away from it was: the other side JUMPED THE GUN. They made a MASSIVE tactical error--- or, possibly, more to the point, Trump and his ego forced the Republican party's hand too soon.
Because there are still people around who remember Nixon. And Vietnam. And the Civil Rights movement. (I LOVE YOU, REP. JOHN LEWIS!!!!!!) They've seen this before. They know how to "rebel well". They remember. (As one former Vietnam protestor I talked to said with a laugh, "You haven't lived until you've been tear-gassed at a protest.") If the Republicans had let us have Hillary, we might have gotten too complacent and/or disillusioned by 2020 to do anything about them--- and too many of those old Vietnam and civil-rights protestors with the memory of how to Get Stuff Done might have died or at least aged too much to be able to help the next generation, and we'd have been left flat and flailing. But we're not. They're here and we are and we're getting up and getting involved.
We're not going to make America "great again" (for healthy straight white cisguys at the expense of everyone else). We're going to make America greater than ever--- and stronger together.