They just killed a young man in Wisconsin. In Menominee. He was attending college at a UW. He was Saudi. He died of his injuries.
I don’t need to be told it was a hate crime.
A father of three killed two Des Moines police officers while they sat in their cars. He was upset at the way he was treated at a game when someone stole his confederate flag.
I don’t need to be told he was white or mentally ill and had easy access to guns.
I am scared for these United States, scared for my students of color, for the visibly queer, for Jewish friends, and for women.
I am scared for what will happen no matter who wins the Presidency or how they do.
I am immobilized by the fear that there is so little I can do besides offer some sanctuary, some reassurance, that most Americans are better than this. I am immobilized by how mean the world is getting.
But lately, I’m not so sure myself that these things are true.
I am sad to see anyone talking about the “lesser or two evils” or shaming any progessives for voting for Clinton. Sometimes it is heroic to tow the line, to maintain the status quo. Sometimes it is all we have. Presidents are rarely actual Dems, rarely progressive, almost never Left, and yet there are people out there playing radical politics, more radical than thou shit, who will tell you that a vote for Clinton is a vote against the Pipleline Protestors. Newsflash: Of course it is. The President is still an American, and they are all capitalists, and now, neoliberals. This is not news, Bernie supporters. This is not news, young progressives. My entire life I’ve voted for Not the Other Guy. You’re a little spoiled; you grew up under the only president I’ve been happy to vote for, in good conscience. But Obama is the exception, not the rule.
What is news is that we are right now staring down a fascist America that does not resemble any vision of the world we want. They are burning black churches and the Klan has endorsed Trump. They don’t even need their hoods now; they’ve come out of hiding and they’ve Made America Hate Again.
& Sadly, this bullshit about emails means that Trump now has a path to victory. I’ve never read any news that made me more sick than that.
So if you want to do the radical thing: watch people’s kids if they need the time to vote. Ask all your friends directly, and without flinching, when and where they are voting. Bring a few friends with you to vote. Help them register. Bring snacks and water for people waiting on long lines, or camp chairs or coffee.
GET OUT THE VOTE. It’s the most radical thing you can do this year.
This blog post was edited at 8:34PM. The first news sources I saw seemed to indicate the student had been killed in Madison, so the original text was “In Madison, to be exact, our liberal stronghold, state capitol, city of bike lanes and food co-ops.”
Corrected by facts. As the student who wrote to me commented, “that is a very different context that creates a whole separate set of upsetting repercussions and realizations about this state.”
It’s going to be OK Gail, I promise.