Democracy Out Loud #413:Preparation

Dear friends,

The new Congress of the United States will be sworn in on January 3rd, and the new NC General Assembly on January 8th. Until then some of us will not even have contact information for the people who will be representing us, so I want to suggest that this week we take as much of a break from politics as we can. I wonder if we can regroup, take care of possibly neglected personal care, and get ready for what is to come.

Last Tuesday we brainstormed alternative news sources and came up with a huge list. It is so amazing that between us we are monitoring news from so many places. If your favorite news source is not on this list, you can add it. Now may be a time to cancel some subscriptions and pick up some new ones.

This feels like an important moment to realize our strength and our power. Sure, Trump won the election but he only won by 1.4% of the vote, and out of 245 million eligible voters, 90 million did not vote. Nonvoters were the largest voting block. An election bought by disinformation, lies, indifference, and billionaires’ money is hardly a mandate.

Protect Democracy offers extensive resources on how to protect our democracy. Marc Elias’s Building the Opposition is brief and to the point. Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and others are teaching us how to resist authoritarianism. These are things we have to seriously study.

The people who think they rule the world now are people who are scared and weak. They have money, and a certain kind of power, but they are devoid of magic, love and freedom. We have these things, and can expand all three.

I wonder if we can be grounded in the courage Alphaba displayed in the movie “Wicked” who was asked if she should be afraid of the Wizard now that she had defied him. She said, “The Wizard should be afraid of me.” (She went on to defy gravity,)

We don’t know yet the ways we will be called upon to use our power to protect undocumented people, but we can be ready. Trans people are going to need our support as well. Working people and poor people need a living wage, housing, health care and a social safety net. All of these things are in escalating danger. We may not be able to stop the devastation of our environment and climate collapse, but we sure do need to keep trying.

Now we know this, too: We are going to have to organize year-round to win elections so that the legislation and the legislators we need are possible. For the foreseeable future, we have a two-party system, like it or not. We have to pressure Democrats to fight for us, and we must find ways to back them up, because some of them do this at great cost, and others are silent.

I have no doubt at all that we are ready for all of these challenges, and that we can rise to this occasion.

Everyone is invited to join us this Tuesday December 31 and every Tuesday from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm for our weekly zoom call (“doors open” at 11:15 am) and for our 7 Homecomings Meditation every Thursday at 10 am at the same zoom link. If you need the link, email Jewel at DemocracyOutLoud@gmail.com and tell her just a little bit about why you want to join us.

I’m holding off for now about things to do in January except that January 5 is coming up quickly and it is something you might really want to know about.

Also I am really happy to report that Marci offered to restart our book group on Wednesday January 8 at 3 pm. Everyone is invited to bring a book they want the group to read and discuss. She is willing to lead the group every other month on a book that is voted on by the group, and suggests guest hosts who pick their own book for every other month.

Thank you so much for reading this and for doing the hard work of facing what is going on around us and doing something about it. May we all be supported by the ancestors who came before us and fought even harder battles, and by our determination to create a better world for our descendants.

love, Karen

“You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.” - Sarah Kenzior, We are Heading Into Dark Times. This is How to Be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump, November 18, 2016 (thanks, Karen and Joe)

“We are the midwives. Here is the promise we each must make, if we are to get through this time and bring forth a new day. Labor is hard, and we have much hard work ahead, many waves of contractions, many moments when progress seems agonizingly slow. But we are strong. We have endurance, we have vision, and we have faith—faith in the common, everyday miracles we see all around us: a wound that heals, a seed that sprouts, a red dawn breaking through dark bands of a gathering storm.” - Starhawk, The Promise of Solstice, 12/22/2024. (source of photo)