January 2017 – Salt Sweet Bitter

Marching against a mirage

This past Saturday, I was one of ~150,000 people who swarmed the Boston Common–the largest demonstration in Boston in decades. We represented only a tiny fraction of the millions of women and men who took to the streets worldwide, responding to the threat posed by the newly-minted 45th President of the United States.

Women's March protest sign in Boston Determining the extent of that threat is still in progress. Fighting it will be the work of many coming years. We know that his administration poses a serious threat to the health, safety, and agency of women (the gestalt of these protests); to the very life of people of color; to the health of most Americans, but especially the poor ones; to the longevity of human habitat on Earth; to the pursuit of science; to a free press; to truth; and to the American experiment itself.

The most frequently-heard chant at Boston’s rally was to that latter point. Call (from a few throats): “Tell me what democracy looks like!” Response (from many throats, deafening): “This is what democracy looks like!” And it is–or at least, one of its most attractive faces. The vibe in Boston was downright joyful. There was drumming, dancing, laughter everywhere, waves of applause. There was a sense that we were there to be uplifted and damn it, we would be uplifted.

But this was just one day. And democracy for a day, as was made abundantly clear on November 8, 2016, is not enough democracy to make this thing work. Our participation in politics must become consistent, passionate, and supremely well-organized for the resistance to stand a chance against the empire.

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I don’t have the slightest idea how to do this. I’ve been an armchair American for a long time. Fortunately, some thoughtful organizers out there have made it easy for those of us with occasional-democracy syndrome to take some baby steps out into the world of action.

10 Actions / 100 Days: The babiest of baby steps! The first one is sending a postcard with a nice note on it. (I can do this!)

The Big Hundred: Just a few days in, these actions to counter Trumpism seem geared to approachable, be kind to others-type things. Don’t be a jerk! (I can probably do this.)

Call Them In: I don’t even call people I love on the phone. Why would I call people I don’t even know? To save the world? Yes, okay, good reason. But I can’t just…like…do it. So these lovely folks have made it incredibly easy. I don’t even have to pick my own words. So easy. So democratic. (I will work up to this.)

Swing Left: This might be my favorite. Results-oriented planning FTW! These folks want us to take back the House in 2018. Without it, we just can’t have nice things–such as checks and balances! Or an impeachment! Find out where your nearest swing district is and get to work. I get overwhelmed by how much there is to be done; I like that this is not only clear but scope-constrained. (I look forward to doing this.)

And yes, obviously, find some way to support groups like the SPLC and the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and the Environmental Defense Fund, groups that have been fighting this fight for a long time and know what they’re doing.

I’ve seen numerous sources point out that yeah, this whole Trump thing is a disgrace and a catastrophe, but without it, would millions of us have taken to the streets to raise our voices for women, for people of color, for indigenous rights, for gay rights, for immigration justice, for environmental justice, for a better America? Would we have finally realized that a better America means all that other stuff, all at once? (Um. No. In case you were wondering.) Yet these issues have been taking their toll–on real human lives–not just throughout our country’s sordid history, but during the past eight years.

We’ve had a President we could be proud of for the past two terms. He was classy and smart, handsome and charming. He had his heart mostly in the right place most of the time, and plus he had Michelle and Joe Biden backing him up, so, yeah, we swooned. Now we have a President we’re ashamed of–but truly, there was a lot to be ashamed of all along. Our love affair with Barack Obama just made us overlook the flaws.

This is a serious lesson in silver linings. We’re being forced to decide what we want this country to be. We can choose to make this a country to be proud of, which will take an unthinkable amount of hard work and coming together and action and love, or we can choose to wake up from the American dream once and for all.

If the moral universe does indeed have an arc, then justice is the horizon. This weekend’s march made me view what’s happening right now across the world–the regression towards xenophobia and insularity, the desperate last gasp of the reign of the white man–as merely a fata morgana. That’s when our eyes get tricked into perceiving something on the horizon as bigger than it actually is, and unreachable: ships that seem to float above the ocean, or cities in the clouds. But America is not a city in the clouds. We can reach its heart, and lay siege to it, and take it back.

Queen Girls

I’ve been hearing pronouncements and dire warnings about printed books and literacy itself dying out for–decades? Most of my life? A really long time. I was going through old books recently and found an ad from an advocacy group at the back of one from the early 80s warning that by the year 2000, it was estimated that only 20% of adults would be able to read. (Commas and apostrophes may be under threat, but whoever came up with that dark future plainly underestimated the popularity of computers and mobile phones.)

We have a variety of new and newly popular means of reading and listening to books, but the form isn’t going anywhere. People haven’t ceased reading and writing books; there are more than ever. While this has produced some markedly disappointing trends (*cough* Fifty Shades *cough*), it has been a joy to watch people take advantage of these new formats to find books that speak to their personal experience so much more easily, and the number of independent presses and self-published works that have taken off–particularly in YA and children’s literature.

One such effort I came across recently is a new publishing venture called Queen Girls, a currently small outfit that produces children’s books featuring real-life women who were heroes of their time. Their first book is Bessie, Queen of the Sky, about Bessie Coleman, the first woman of African- and Native-American descent to earn a pilot’s license, in 1921.

The kickstarter campaign for this first book is proving wildly successful, and there are plans for further titles in the future. The women running the imprint are focused not only on telling women’s stories, but on the achievements of women from a variety of backgrounds–stories that still aren’t being told as often as they should, because they come from other cultures, other classes, or just periods of the past that aren’t in fashion, so to speak, and are thus neglected. The illustrations are also lovely, which is a definite plus for attracting younger readers.

The books are designed for reading ages 4 to 8, and are available in e-format in English and in Spanish. The publisher is also partnering with literacy organizations here in the U.S. and internationally: For every book that is sold, another copy will be donated, in the interest of encouraging literacy and empowering girls. A limited edition hardback copy of Bessie, Queen of the Sky is available here, for those who prefer paper books. I find the book wholly charming, and look forward to seeing more titles in the series.

Resolution

I’ve never been much for New Year’s Resolutions. I think I’ve made lists a handful of times in the past, but I quickly lost track of where I put the piece of paper I wrote the things down on; the supplies I’d piled up for whatever effort was at the top of the list (usually learning French or Japanese, for some reason) were eventually dispersed, lesson books put back in their place on a shelf and paper requisitioned for other uses. I find myself faced with some gargantuan professional commission or personal task and everything else non-essential gets tossed aside. I don’t like this about myself, but I’ve learned over the past couple of years that changing things is easier if I divide large tasks into smaller, more manageable steps and remind myself of my ultimate goal regularly but not constantly.

New Year’s Day is not something I usually look forward to. This time of year is the occasion of a number of unhappy anniversaries for me, and while I have retained enough of my childhood memories of Christmas to give me the will to make December a festive sort of month, I never gained enough of an adult’s appreciation of New Year’s Eve for the same to be true of today. By the time I make it to New Year’s I’m usually somewhat overwrought and dreading the impending return to work.

This year is different. It is not that there were no new occasions to mourn: Anyone who has been awake this year knows that we have have dozens, even if you leave politics aside. 2017 is going to be a long year and I have no doubt I’ll spend a great deal of it feeling inadequate, tired, ill, grief-stricken, and quite frankly terrified if half of what Trump has talked about doing actually comes to pass. I have always cried easily, and I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of that too.

This year, however, I do not feel without hope. Even in the face of what I expect the GOP and Trump’s cabinet to do. Some of the damage has already been done, and there will be more that we will not be able to undo. Parts of the fight were lost the moment that Trump won the electoral college, because there will be consequences for the environment and for vulnerable populations both domestically and internationally that we can’t roll back. We will only lose more, however, if we give in, and in the midst of the fear and feeling like every champion for equality and intersectionality in the cultural sphere is being methodically taken from us, I, and I think a lot of us, tend to forget that we far from powerless. We may not have David Bowie or Carrie Fisher, but we have their work, their legacies, their memories as inspiration–and we have so very many more champions. President Obama is not going to blink out of existence the moment he steps down from office, and he isn’t planning on retreating from public life to take up painting or womanizing; he’s organizing an effort to support Democratic nominees for the 2018 mid-terms and to stop gerrymandering. We have Lin-Manuel Miranda, Heather McGhee, Rebecca Solnit, Reza Aslan, Sarah Kendzior, so many strong voices and leaders in the cultural, artistic, and political spheres I can’t begin to count them. Those who voted against Trump still comprise the majority, even if you don’t count those who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Clinton either; not all of these people have capitulated. For all of the Republicans who managed to evolve from supporting more rational candidates to accepting Trump obediently or even enthusiastically, there are a great many who have not, and some of them have never ceased speaking out. There are others, even among those who supported Trump from the outset, who are unwilling to stand by silent while Trump openly colludes with Russia. There are governors and other state officials unwilling to comply with some of the measures Trump has alternately threatened and implied that he will impose; there are generals in the U.S. army who have been studying the extent to which the Constitution and the law permits them to disobey Trump’s orders, should they feel it necessary. I have said before, and I repeat again, I will not condone or collude in any act of violence, but civil disobedience is going to be necessary if and when the rights of the LGBTQ community, minorities, and women are rolled back and stripped away.

If we are going to have a real chance of dismantling Trump’s crass, meretricious cult of personality and counteracting the fascist and far right groups he is enabling (e.g. Richard Spencer and his revolting followers, the John Birch Society), we have to be better informed, better organized, more active than we are. This year, therefore, in addition to the usual renewal of my regular vows to be tidier, exercise more, eat less sugar and more vegetables, I intend to write and to read more, and read more seriously, as I did when I was still a student–more politics, more newspapers, more blogs–and to make a better effort to take part in conversations and demonstrations. I still have to earn a living, like everyone else, but there are phone calls I can make, letters I can write, dozens of other actions I can take.

The recent pronouncements that 2016 was the worst year ever are understandable after all the losses the country and the world endured, but they were hyperbolic as far as life in the West is concerned. It was not a repeat of 1937–we are not there yet, and we stand a reasonable chance of making sure we don’t get there again. We still have the means and the opportunity to be more informed, more compassionate, more understanding, better critical thinkers and less tolerant of corruption. Let’s make the most of it.