We’re going to have to struggle, from the ground up, and it will take much longer than we want it to. And our side tends to get discouraged easily. It doesn’t help that we seem never to get out of the loss column.
Please consider the Indivisible movement. One of their best bits is to meet, physically, with our reps. House, Senate, and in many cases, at the state level. Face-to-face, at least with the staffers, who take notes and ask questions, and acknowledge, and engage.
I tell you, dear Orrex, the solidarity is like balm for the soul. As I write this, I’m about 20 minutes from driving over to my Indivisible group’s chair’s house. Every weekend our little sub-group gets together to write the Call to Action email that goes out the following Tuesday to all our members and friends in other local/regional groups. It features an action-a-day about which to call our reps, and also a list of events and campaign activities during the We now dovetail with the state Indivisible group on Tuesdays, and more.
It’s a lot of people of like mind, and in my experience with two different Indivisible chapters in two different states. It’s also majority female, as I’ve discovered. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some (or many) of them are survivors of sexual assault or abuse. The movement is a direct outgrowth of the huge nationwide Women’s Marches in January 2017.
And they DO things. Since I’ve joined Indivisible, I’ve participated in, and even set up, meetings with our state assemblyman and also one of our Senators. I’ve canvassed for candidates. I’ve joined Postcard Parties where we send postcards to our reps about various issues, and to other voters in other states to remind them to vote. The last time I attended a Postcard Party, we also wrote out postcards that had been supplied to us by the ACLU.
Seriously. DO IT. It’ll help lift you out of at least a few of your doldrums. It will put you in touch with other activists who share your frustration and discouragement, and are resolved not to be passive about it. It will make you feel like you’re doing something to effect positive change. When our chair was preparing to be interviewed on local radio, she wrote up an outline about our group and what it’s accomplished. I was really surprised at how long the list was - of bills in which we turned our DINO congressman’s vote OUR way instead of what he was leaning toward doing.
And it will confirm to you that you’re NOT alone in how you feel. Heartily recommended!
But we’ve got a BIG job ahead. What the bad guys are accomplishing now, they’ve been relentlessly working toward for 40 years. They have a 40-year head start that we need to reverse.
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