Times — Are They A-Changin'?
I have wanted return to writing but I’ve been fixing my life after years of being far sicker than I realize, it turns out.
I had major surgery May 6th. I am still trying to get my health sorted, and with it, finances and other responsibilities fell to the wayside during my health’s decline. In the cloud of all that, writing was impossible. Of late, I’m starting to feel the writing urge, and I know I’ll be back soon — but my health is still a work in progress and your patience is appreciated.
Being a writer is core to who I am, and not being a writer these last couple of years is reflective of how poor my health really was — but things are changing. Soon.
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Did Someone Order A Big Box of Hope?
I don’t even know where to begin on Kamala Harris and the news of the last 24 hours, from Biden resigning to her gaining the most political contributions ever in a day — what a whirlwind. There’s so much to say!
But what I feel today is a strange feeling — it’s hope.
45,000 Black and Brown women hooked up on a Zoom call last night with a very simple plan: To save the world from a fallen America, to elect a Black woman through community organizing, coast-to-coast.
The call was made possible by the Southeast Asian COO of Zoom, Aparna Bawa, who got the IT team to support the historic call that might just be the framework to save democracy. During the call, those women also raised over $2 million for the efforts.
It really can’t be expressed how important Zoom’s efforts to create community for Black/Brown women may have been last night — it created space for their defiance and dreams.
On TikTok, I hear, the youth vote is overwhelmed with optimism. They feel heard, they feel hope, and they are fuckin’ ready to go.
And me?
Well, I’m a 50-year-old woman who spends her nights walking, listening to alt-rock and punk and all kinds of music that I’ve been dialed into for as long as I’ve been alive, during which I’ve always, always been angry. I have shouted truth to power my whole life because there is so much to be angry about, and I love music that thrums that into my brain.
On those long walks, I pass an inconspicuous stone with a plaque, tucked over by a thicket of trees on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
In the spring, it’s surrounded by wildflowers blooming, including daisies, bluebells, crocuses, and camas, in various turns. In December, it’s surrounded by yellow roses — because it’s the memorial to L’ecole Polytechnique’s December 6th massacre, where 14 women got murdered for having the sheer audacity of wanting to be engineers.
That was the day everything changed for me, for nearly every teen girl I knew.
We grew up believing feminism was a thing our moms needed. We thought we were ‘there’ on the equality playing field, and we could be anything we wanted in university or the world beyond. Glass ceiling? Fuck that!
I was 16 when that blood spilled andI learned that everything I believed about having equality was a lie.
Within a couple years, in the 12th grade, we had our first all-school walkout, something I’d never seen in my educational life, to protest Bush and the Gulf War.
Then we spent a few years shouting along with Kurt Cobain as he screamed into the ether. We turned up Rage Against the Machine and said “fuck the man.”
Generation X were angry, and we wanted to change the world.
But the Boomers outvoted us. Every time a candidate thrilled us, we got outvoted.
My whole life, I have waited for this day.
In 2016, 60% of TikTok users couldn’t vote, and Hilary Clinton still got 3 million more votes than Trump. Today, those TikTokkers can vote.
Kids today may think my generation is “being lazy” and counting on them to save us, but Generation X has been alone, shouting into the wind, for 30 years. We’ve tried. We were outnumbered. You can’t math that math. We tried.
So, if you’re Gen Z — welcome to the party, kid.
Today, we have a viable woman candidate, a riled-up Black-and-Brown base of women (and men!) ready to organize on her behalf, just 3.5 months left to run, but with enough momentum to run through brick walls.
There’s so much to write about the last 24 hours… but I just wanted to stop and take a moment to salute my inner-rocker 20-something woman who feels HEARD today.
I want to salute the 16-year-old me whose heart broke as she realized there would always be men who felt it was justified to murder women because we threatened their success.
And I want to salute Joe Biden who knew Kamala Harris shouldn’t have to face 18 months of misogynoir from the pettiest, smallest, most pathetic men, and the ignorant women who love them — the same Joe who apparently had a brilliant plan to resign after the GOP spent four days shouting every name they could at him — and not against Kamala Harris. Joe taking the brunt of the GOP’s attacks for the whole campaign so far, including the attacks against his son, has been an act of incredible grace.
It has been 24 of the most exciting hours of my life as a political junkie.
This whole time, I’ve been of the opinion Biden couldn’t step down now because it was too late and the Democratic Party could never get their shit together in time — and I have never in my life been so ecstatic to be so wildly wrong. We have seen a political masterclass (and I can’t wait to see the movie of it).
But there are 3.5 months to come in which we will see the vilest racism and anti-Blackness we have seen in our lifetime. How you stand against that — if you do — will speak volumes about you as a human.
There’s a right side of history — and the lineup to get on it begins behind Kamala Harris.
[Please don’t believe you get free speech on my soapbox. If you’re anti-Harris, anti-Black, pro-Trump, or otherwise an asshole, I’ll just block you. It’s my superpower!]
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