Election Aftermath: Post #3 - Fighting back.
Originally posted November 3, 2004:
Right. Okay. This is Post #3.
My roommate made me go to McDonalds and Wal-Mart in between post #2 and this one. Which was good in the sense that, um, this is the only post I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to say yet, still, so I had a chance to think about it more. And bad in the sense that I was going to Wal-Mart and McDonalds and thinking, this is America. Man. America sucks.
Um. human nature, I guess, tells us that we are prone as humans to react. My mom wrote me today, and I thought, but... weren't all you people over 40 who are sick of the democratic party now the ones who were protesting at Kent State and getting it on at Woodstock? Will I be a staunch conservative when I'm 40?
And the answer of course is no fucking way.
You wanted to hear me give you encouragement, and you asked me, what the fuck do we do now? My encouragement is this, and it's simply that when I look at who I am now and who I was four years ago, I can see very clearly that I have grown and matured under Bush and his abysmal presidency. One year ago I never thought that anybody would care what I had to say about politics. 2 years ago I never thought that I would be educated enough on the issues to be able to speak out about gay rights the way I wanted to. And 3 years ago, I never thought that I would be a volunteer for the Democratic party on election day 2004.
My encouragement is that if I have grown this much, I will grow that much more in the years to come. We will grow together. Adversity makes us stronger--and this will be adversity. But it will make us citizens of the land of the free; it will ask us to forge our citizenship and our patriotism through fire. We will do it. We will not leave the country, because that would be running from the challenges that democracy asks and expects of us. Democracy asks us to dissent. Democracy asks us to stay informed and to speak out and use our voice whenever we can. We have been vocal but we will be more vocal. We will earn our citizenship in the next four years, the way that once in a generation Americans are asked to. The GLBT community during the AIDS epidemic. The civil rights movement. The Vietnam protesters. The World War Two veterans. The suffragists. The abolitionists. We have not endured all that these people stood up for in order to run away now just because some shrub with an attitude and an inability to speak in proper sentences has been elected to office. We are not dishonoring them by leaving the country when they stayed and fought for freedom against circumstances we can't even imagine.
I want to start this post by linking to this. Because I don't know if you know it but
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reenka is a first-generation Russian immigrant, and to hear her say, sincerely, "this land is my land," throws this entire issue into perspective in a way that has been making me cry even harder all day. Because in the end, America is freedom. America is the vast horizon of possibility and discovery. America is about the dream and not the waking. America is beautiful that way. Even as trumped up and full of herself as she is.Visualize the Underground Railroad. Just close your eyes and really try to grasp what that flight to freedom must have been like. And ask yourselves if you are willing to honor that flight by doing whatever you have to do to secure your liberty and the liberties of those around you--or if you are ready to turn tail and run, to give up now because the country has moved backwards a little since 1865.
Now visualize the effects of change, of being here to see change happening in our lifetime.
Visualize the supreme court protecting Roe v. Wade. Visualize the time when men can say with pride--with true, non-appropriated cross-orientation pride--that Abraham Lincoln was the first gay president of the United States. Visualize the inauguration of our first female president. Visualize the time when, because of the debates and the discussion that have taken place during this election, our next president does something extraordinary--and offers peace instead of war. Visualize giving the world proof that we can unite behind progressive principles, like having a minority as our leader, having a president actively support unilateral peacemaking instead of war, and having socio-economic reforms that put the needs of the poorest and weakest at the top of our lists. Visualize universal healthcare, for fuck's sake.
Visualize Barack Obama for president in 2008. Visualize having yet another reason to throw your heart and soul into an election year the way you threw your hearts and souls into this one. Visualize just being able to keep fighting, because, my friends, nobody earns respect quicker than someone who gets right back up again after they're knocked down. We will get right back up again. Because we can, because we know that what we are fighting for means more than what Bush and his supporters want. I keep thinking of Morrissey: but when the president is never black, female, or gay, you've got nothing to say.
But, oh, we as Americans have so much to say. And now is the perfect time to really say it from our hearts.
It only takes one journey and one person's growth to change the world. It only takes one person being enlightened, one person coming into contact with the right people at the right place at the right time, to make the earth shake with change.
This election year we have all been shaken to our cores with the changing. We are defeated, yes, but we are still standing. And where Bush's supporters can only either continue on in their oblivion or wake up to their mistakes and the mistakes of the presidency, we have the ability and the advantages that they do not: the access to more information, and the chances to learn from this year's results and use it to reach out to the voting public.
The reason that I spent post #2 talking about conservative christianity is because, despite all that we did in this election, the immediate aftermath and the attacking Bush voters underscored something I have always felt: that until we can learn to see people as people first and not as conservatives or liberals, we will never be able to stop talking across the issues and really affect one another on a personal level. Tthe way you reach out across ideological boundaries is not, ultimately, through preaching, but through connecting to one another. The elation of shared experiences and one-on-one interactions where people really talk to one another can change elections more than any amount of ad campaigning. One of you has asked "how can we find any common ground?" And the answer is the same way you find common ground with strangers every day. You laugh at the same jokes, you watch the same movies, you root for the same baseball teams. You guys are looking at this from the standpoint of Us/Them, when really it's so much simpler than that. You are talking about people. And people are always going to have things to learn from one another. Yesterday, the rabid Bill O'Reilly fan who was monitoring the poll I was watching had a good discussion with me about "Lost." I love that Dominic Monaghan, she said. He's such a cutie--I'm excited that tomorrow night will be Charlie's night. (I have, incidentally, completely missed that ep so if someone wants to, um, send me a copy of the ep I would be overjoyed, hint hint.) Anyway, the point? She loves Bill O'Reilly and Lost. I love Michael Moore and Lost. We had a very pleasant day together, and my point is that if you see the world in terms of Lost episodes and Red Sox pennants it's so much harder to feel animosity towards people. We can always learn from the values of people who are different from us. All you liberals. Get out there and talk to your republican co-workers. Get to know them. Make connections. Seriously. They're probably just as afraid of you as you are of them. Prove them wrong. The opportunity has never been more ripe to do this. Above all things, let this be a challenge to every one of us to continue the discussion, and hopefully stop talking just among ourselves, but start talking to each other, across the great ideological divide, as well.
You guys want encouragement? Look at the voter turnout. The highest in recorded history. That many people made this election the most hotly debated in American history. It is because of each of us that there was discussion, and debate. And yes, weeping. But that debate is crucial. That debate means that our freedoms are still alive. Yes, we had trouble with the ballots and the polls. But we can prepare. We can join action groups. We can start fighting now for a free and unchallenged election where every vote counts. We can promote election reform, and we can begin working for change in this area--because now that we have all really had a taste of what the worst can be like, we can fight it.
We can mobilize behind the groups working to protect our freedoms: the HRC, the ACLU, NOW, and MoveOn.Org. We can volunteer locally. We can support charities that work to fight poverty. We can support Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Unicef, and a lot of other enviro-friendly organizations I can't think of right now. We can contact our senators and our representatives and let them know that just because Bush won the movement is not ending. We can do everything
mirabellawotr said here and everything zmonsta said here. More importantly and above all, we can speak out. And I don't just mean that we can talk to each other on livejournal. I mean that we have to keep finding new ways to reach out across America and touch people of all backgrounds and classes and religions. We cannot unite if we keep talking over each other, and especially not if we don't understand and respect each other's values.
I am going to go out on a limb and say something here, and I realise that many of you given the present environment may feel this is unsafe and unwise, but I have to urge it anyway. If you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, the single best thing you can do for yourself, your community, and the awareness of those around you is come out of the closet. You cannot change the hearts and minds and opinions of the people around you if they don't know that the evil homosexual they've been dreading and hearing so many awful stories about is the buddy they watch football with or car pool with or attend church with. Come out, come out, wherever you are. And whoever you are. It may be the hardest thing in your life but if you don't come out and make yourself visible your rights cannot be acknowledged and the way people think about gays and lesbians can't be changed.
The one thing, the biggest thing, that I have learned during this past year, is that my voice is important. I have had so many people tell me since I started discussing politics that I have encouraged them to speak out, that I have prompted a discussion or a debate, or that I have helped them see an issue differently. When you speak out, this is what happens. Speak with respect and love and understanding but most of all from your heart, and know that your voice is just as important as anybody else's. The election hasn't changed that. If anything it's only made it more crucial that we not give up.
What the fuck do we do now?
The answer is: the same thing we did 2 days ago. With more fervor and more determination than ever.
Because we want to. Because we can. Because we love our country. Because we believe in our country--and in ourselves.
Ultimately, this election is about change. Change in every way, from inside out. I can accept defeat, and I have--but I cannot accept despair. And I refuse to accept that the same sweeping changes that brought about the conservative movement that elected Bush cannot be rolled back by a new, sweeping change of progressive politics, the likes of which have never, ever been seen before.
If it can happen anywhere, it can happen here.
In America. The land of dreams.