Thursday, February 16, 2017

Activist Fatigue

Lawd, I don't know about y'all but I'm feeling the burn of working my activist muscles.  It feels like we're being bombarded from all sides with horribly hateful bills at a state level and just pure incompetence at the national level.  The question I get over and over is, "What can I do to help? I just feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start."

I hear ya.  Sometimes it's good to stand still for a minute and let your mind calm.  Take a moment to evaluate where you are, the information you have and determine what you believe will have the most effect on your life and/or what you can affect the most in your life.  I liken this political season to walking through a carnival.  You are hammered by every carnival barker begging for your attention and the sound gets overwhelming.  Before long, you hear nothing except the ringing in your ears.  That's when you find someplace quiet.

Think.  We have a totally incompetent ass in the White House and he's surrounded by cockroaches on every side.  Maybe I should liken them to flies because flies eat shit and that's what these people are doing...feeding on Trump's shit.  I digress.  You have people in the state legislature who are taking this moment of seemingly triumph on their part to propose and pass bills that will hurt a lot of people in this state.  Unnecessary bills.  Discriminatory bills.  Awful people doing awful things.  Sometimes I think that if Mae Beavers had just one really good orgasm she'd turn into a different person.  But who on earth would want to poke.........ugh.  Sorry.  I digressed.

We have people on our city council who (while not bad people) act out of ignorance and fear.  We have people on the county commission (while not bad people....except for one bloviating, spittle--spewing, hate-filled, unhappy human who also desperately needs to have a orgasm--heyyy....maybe we could hook....dammit--I digressed AGAIN) who also act out of fear and ignorance.  For them, we must make this personal.  We must put a face to their actions and show who would suffer the consequences of their decisions.  We must be out and active.

Yep, we're tired and I believe our legislators use that to their advantage.  I heard a state legislator say that a strategy is to keep rolling bills because eventually the people will stop showing up.  We can't let that happen but we also can't work ourselves to the point of activism fatigue.  The is a marathon, not a sprint and we must treat it as such.  We MUST keep showing up.  We MUST continue to support the work of the people and organizations that are out there everyday putting a face to the consequences.  We MUST help those who are shutting the press conferences down or challenging the lawmakers to answer our questions and we must persist until they do give those answers.

The fat lady hasn't sung.  We are not finished.  We will rise up everyday and tilt with each and every windmill that pops up in our path.  We are smart, kind, caring, thinking, pissed off humans who have right on our side and right will carry this day but we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and pick our battles carefully and strategically.

Hang in there.  We got this.