This was one week ago, exactly. I was surrounded by peace and doling it out by the handful. I was marching with 10,000 of the 50,000 person population in my city chanting and hugging and standing for peace. But now I’m home, alone on my couch, as I’m reading about our latest tragedy in the news. If you’re reading this after 1/28/17, you may be asking “which tragedy?” and I don’t feel the need to specify. It doesn’t matter which executive order was MORE of a violation of the constitution than the last, that would offer an excuse, a pardon for the lesser.
I am alone and I am angry. I’m processing the millionth wave of anger-rage-heartbreak that has arrived this week, trying to channel hope. Trying to remember Obama’s words that this is a “pitstop” in our history, that hope will overcome. But I still seethe here, reading. I am angry that there are people that AREN’T angry but then I remember the effectiveness of remaining calm. I am at a crossroads of love and anger that I’ve never experienced, seeking and offering solidarity to this juxtaposition I feel more passionately than ever before.
He is not alone. He has advisors and politicians that are letting this happen. Is it their own job security that holds them back? A blind fear? Insecurity? Please, dear God, just tell me what it is that is stifling your integrity and leading to you jeopardize American lives. I will write the essays, the poems, create all the art to move you and share all my meager savings if it could better your judgement.
This tyrant is not alone. He is moving forward with fear and power and he is not being stopped for reasons I cannot fathom that leave me regulating my internal anger on an hourly basis to stay level-headed enough to calculate my own decisions. He is operating because he is not being stopped. And that falls on you. Anyone who is not angry, anyone who is not standing up to fight, anyone who is masquerading as perfectly fine because they don’t like to discuss “politics.” Fuck. That. This stopped being about “politics” months ago. This involves every fucking one of us and if you are privileged enough to be unaffected right now, you are privileged enough to contribute to the survival of the rest of us.
I am not alone. I feel alone, but the protesters outside JFK remind me otherwise. I am one of many. I am an American who stands for love. As a kid who never thought much of history, I am now swearing my allegiance to this nation of hope and vowing to defend the freedoms. Press, Speech, and Religion, you have my voice.
