The long game and the short game

We can play both

I did voter registration at naturalization ceremonies yesterday. It gave me hope – 75 people who have gone through the apparently very long and difficult process to become US citizens.

Part of me did want to yell at them, “Run while you still can!”

But the other part of me was happy to see them and to think that maybe they will join us in the fight against tyranny.

And I was happy to see them so happy. People came with their entire families. One woman wore a dress with blue sequins on one side and red sequins on the other.

Behind her was a woman in a black abaya and with her face covered. But – her scarf had little black sequins on it.

I asked the USCIS official who conducted the ceremonies – and maintained his enthusiasm for all three of them, despite having to use the same script each time, if he ever gets tired of doing this.

He beamed and said no, he does not.

From that, I went to a protest about Judge Hannah Dugan, whom the trump regime has targeted and arrested (with dubious cause, it seems).

There were hundreds of us at the federal building in the cold and the wind. Most of us were older, but there were a few college-age kids there.

I mentioned invisibility as being one of our superpowers – those of us who are Women of a Certain Age.

Availability is another.

We have time. We can show up on a moment’s notice.

And showing up is important. This was the fourth or fifth protest I have been to in the past few weeks and this is the first time that I saw a lot of media there. The story made the national news. (They said there were “dozens” of protesters, but I can tell you that there were a lot more than that.)

Bodies matter! The more of us who can go to these things, the more coverage they will get and the more it will show others that they are not alone and anger trump, who does stupid things when he’s not angry and does really stupid things when he is.

Show up if you can.

(Here are some organizations that have been publicizing these events:

(Also. There are some good things happening.

Well, some bad things are being undone, I guess I should say.

But still.

Read Amy Siskind’s list from this week for details.)

Why don’t we just relax and enjoy it?

Screw everyone else amirite?

When my friend LuAnn’s husband, a Vietnam vet, became paralyzed, she advocated for their children’s school to become accessible to wheelchairs. When the school wouldn’t do it, she ran for school board, won, and made it happen.

LuAnn is now 70 years old and has run for the state assembly several times (unsuccessfully, sadly, even though Mr T and I spent hours and hours campaigning for her). But she continues to lead the fight for progress by speaking at protests, including a recent protest at the VA, and going to Washington DC to meet with legislators.

A friend of hers asked, on facebook, why LuAnn doesn’t just relax and enjoy her grandchildren. Why does LuAnn continue her activism?

When the friend was told that Elon Musk had told LuAnn’s husband’s VA physicians to resign, even though there are already staff shortages at the VA, the friend said that her husband didn’t have any problems at their VA.

I am old enough that I won’t need an abortion. I am sort of retired, so sexual harassment in the workplace doesn’t affect me personally. I have a passport (and a birth certificate that matches the name I use now), so I could easily register to vote under the horrible proposed SAVE Act.

So why should I care?

I will be fine, right?

I just finished reading the brilliant Rebecca Solnit‘s book, Recollections of my Non-Existence. (She wrote “Men Explain Things to Me.”)

When Solnit writes about recognizing sexual harassment only in retrospect, I thought about the corporate VP at my first job out of college who was fired for sexual harassment. (His behavior must have been really over the line for him to be fired.)

That phrase didn’t even exist at the time.

We didn’t even know.

We didn’t even know that such behavior was something we women had a right not to experience.

Even when we did – reluctantly – report such things to our bosses, things like “This (married, old enough to be my father) client kissed me I don’t want to work with him anymore,” we were discounted.

When Anita Hill testified about Clarence Thomas, my grad school classmates and I were livid that her words were dismissed. We had all spent some time in the workplace already and we knew. We knew she was telling the truth because we, too, had experienced it.

But nobody believed us.

Solnit writes that nobody believe her. They didn’t believe she was reporting accurately her own damn experience.

I don’t want any woman after me to be dismissed.

I don’t want any woman after me to suffer from pregnancy complications or an unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t want any woman after me to be denied her rights.

I don’t want women to have to scream that their experiences are denied and dismissed. I don’t want them to have these bad experiences at all.

How could I possibly relax and enjoy my life if other women are being denied their rights? How could anyone?

Badass women – and scared women – all of us – can change the world

We have a responsibility

I have been going to protests.

I don’t like it.

It’s cold and it’s really really boring to stand around outside, trying to hear what is probably not a very good speech, when I could be at home lounging on the sofa.

But – the very fact that the only thing I worry about is boredom is the very reason I need to get my ass out there.

Other people – people whose skin is not white – have to worry about protesting. They know that the cops are looking at them way more than they look at middle-aged white women.

Even some white women are concerned – not for their physical safety but for other reasons. I met a woman who has her own business. She attended the 50501 protest last weekend, but was masked and wore sunglasses.

“I can’t afford to lose customers,” she said. “I don’t want jerks as customers–“

“But you have to meet payroll,” I finished.

She nodded.

The women in the image above are in their late 70s. Unlike the masked protesters, they were happy for me to take their photo. (I did not take photos of the other protesters.)

I asked about their openess and they laughed.

“What are they going to do to two little old white ladies?” they asked.

We little old white ladies owe it to everyone else.