What's Next?

a few thoughts about the election

The first thing I want to say is that if you are feeling traumatized by the election of Donald Trump, if you are feeling in a place of shock and grieving, I totally understand. If that’s the case, this newsletter may not be for you, at least not right now. It’s possible that thinking about “what’s next” is not even possible yet, and I totally understand. I encourage you to do whatever you need to take care of yourself, including not reading the rest of this article.

The second thing I want to say is that I did vote for Kamala Harris. I believe things will get materially and life-threateningly worse in the real lives of millions of people under a Trump presidency, and those lives feel much more important to me than any abstract argument. I do not believe they are the same, in terms of the material impact on real people’s lives right now. I know that lots of folks don’t agree with me, but that’s what I think and that’s why I voted for Harris. THAT SAID, and this is really my second point, I think no one is to blame for her defeat other than the Democratic Party. I think it will be easy to point fingers and engage in a collective circular firing squad because dividing and conquering and placing blame is the best way to prevent collective organizing and movement-building.

So once more for the folks in the back: I DO NOT BLAME Jill Stein or people who voted for her, I DO NOT BLAME Arab-Americans and their allies who could not bring themselves to vote for a perpetrator of genocide, and I DO NOT BLAME radical anarchists who spent a lot of time lobbying for people inside their sphere of influence not to vote at all.

The blame for this loss sits squarely on the shoulders of the center-right, neoliberal Democratic Party which refuses ever to tack left and offer real, material alternatives to billionaire-funded fascism.

part of a mural I painted in my home, after Alma Thomas. For no other reason than it makes me feel hopeful and calm

So those two things are the preambles to what I actually want to say (if and when you are ready to read them). Yes, I am now feeling a terrifying sense of doom hanging over me, but also, this election has at least been clarifying. No one can ever again say “This is not who we are.” This IS who we are until we—WE, not some politician, or some political party, or even some charismatic individual—change who WE are.

I’ve been following electoral politics closely for almost 50 years—I was seven and in second grade and cried when Nixon beat McGovern—so I’ve seen a lot of elections. I do believe this one is dangerously different. Trump is unprecedented. But he is also the logical conclusion of an ideology that is pretty baked into our electoral and economic systems, and which has become more and more blatant since at least Reagan. I started worrying about fascism over twenty years ago, but then I got lulled into a false sense of security by Obama. I admit I was swept away by his hopey-changey bit, and I let myself become complacent and comfortable. So many of us did.

Leftists are terrible at the long game, maybe because so many of us absurdly believe there will be a revolution. I feel very confident in declaring that there is no revolution coming, certainly not one we want to be part of, anyway. There is only the long long game of collective change, of community-building, of culture-making, and yes, of politics in the broadest sense. The right has been brilliant at this, agreeing to disagree and keeping their eyes on the prize for decades. While the left runs completely ineffectual third party candidates every four years, the right was electing their candidates as dog catchers, school board members, county commissioners, small town mayors, and other really unsexy positions that form the framework of civil society.

This election is as loud of a call to action as I can ever remember. Once we have moved through some of our grief and fear (and, hopefully, avoided engaging in a no-win blame game), I hope we can rise collectively to building a long-term collective vision that begins here and now.

I have some ideas that have been swimming around in my head for awhile, about peer support, art making, community-building—but now it’s time to get these ideas out of my own head and to begin working with my friends and our communities. (I know this is sort of vague, but it’s all still quite vague in my mind, and will be until it’s no longer my individual initiative but a collective, community-based one. When it is, I plan to write more about it.)

You may not yet be ready to move on to “what’s next,” and I so understand that. But if and when you are, please consider sharing in the comments your thoughts about moving forward. I’d love to hear from you and be inspired by you.