Peace, Love, and RAGE

Dear readers,

I know I haven’t written in months. And of course one week since Kamala Harris lost the race for President of the USA is when I finally logged into this account to write you. It seems appropriate since the first time I set out to write for public consumption was in response to 2000 election. I have tossed around other ideas for you - a thorough review of both From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire by Sarah Jaffe and Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins, a reflection on the most explosive WNBA season, and other random things that popped in my head. But life got in the way and then THIS ELECTION HAPPENED.

I heard and read that line too many times during the 2024 campaign. It gained traction after the U.S. Supreme Court anointed the presidency with royal powers of immunity. For the most part, the people using that line were not doing the adequate framing. Because yes, this was the most important election for the third, fourth, or more time of my life. 2024 - 2020 - 2016 - 2012 - 2008. Humans are prone to take this as ringing the bell too many times, crying wolf, or sounding like Chicken Little. But those of us saying that in 2008 were those who read the leaves. Who could see the end result of current actions and begged the rest of the electorate to pay attention. To stop the oncoming train in its tracks. Hell, many of us saw this in 1996 or earlier.

Despite what some revolutionaries think, revolutions happen slowly, inch by inch, like the steady progress of water eroding rocks into sand. It happens so slowly that when the dam breaks, we think it is overnight.

In 2008 feminists cried out for us to pay attention to the Supreme Court as an issue. The founder of a very popular lefty site that also has a conference attached to it told me that abortion wasn’t a good issue to run on. That it’s not even a real issue cause it’s protected under privacy. Fuck him. Feminists wanted people to pay attention to the Supreme Court not just because of abortion rights, but to ensure it maintains its independence, its ability to check the other two branches of government. That fell during the first Trump administration. That is why 2016, then, was the most important election in our lives.

Its not that we recycled a message, its that the stakes kept getting higher.

Not enough pundits laid this out for voters. Mainstream media played up the Chicken Little narrative. Even my beloved NPR that I listen to every morning did this.

Underneath the “we told you so!” after Roe fell were references to previous elections when feminists and reproductive justice activists sounded the alarm. But too many never thought that SCOTUS would do this to us. It’s like everyone was Susan fucking Collins.

The accumulation of civil and human rights offenses that we rely on the court to protect is what upped the ante every four years. It was not a campaign message. The Right had a 50-year plan to overturn Roe and other civil rights. They relied on the Left to point fingers at each other, debating over and over if identity politics were really that important, and taking voters of color for granted.

The failure of the Democratic Party and the collective Left to seriously address the impending doom is a failure of the mostly white male leadership. Women of color activists have sounded the alarm on reproductive justice, economic justice, civil rights, war, and so many other issues for years. For decades we were told to vote blue and all will be well.

WELL ALL IS NOT FUCKING WELL!

As we argue about the failure of the Democratic party to win this election, we must also indict leadership for the past 50 years.

Those wiling to throw women of color and poor people under the bus in relation to the Hyde Amendment and welfare reform (RBS, I wrote this before your event!). Those who would do this and then run to Black women to get out the vote. They need to be ousted.

We were not Chicken Littles. We are Cassandras.

Earlier this year, we were still tweeting at President Biden to say the word abortion. There’s a whole website dedicated to tracking this! But the pundits who are getting the attention now are those who are claiming that economics lost the election. That the plight of white men…

RECORD SCRATCH Let’s look at the stats:

need to be addressed if the Democrats are going to win back any part of this country. That we went too far with rights for transgender people. That using the word Latinx pushed the majority of Latinx men to vote for the man who wants to tear our families apart. Oh wait, his deportation czar said he’ll gladly deport the whole family so we’re not separated. Ya get the picture.

If the Democratic Party wants to win, it needs to put a non-white woman in charge who is not afraid of saying the word abortion, who is willing to fight for everyone, and who listens to Black and other women of color when we call bullshit. We had the gawd damn Cheneys on our team and we still lost. Enough with trying to cater to the better side of the Right. Let’s see what we can do when we truly engage and organize with people who actually care about their neighbors, this planet, and making sure no one dies from a miscarriage because the doctors are scared of being charged with murder of a fetus, but not the grown ass woman in front of them.