Fighting Back

Raindrops add up, I am finding out.

A friend of mine posted that for their birthday, they would really like to know what everyone is doing in this current political climate in order to fight back. At first, I was like… I have done nothing. Not enough, at least. But when I really thought about the things I could list as having done, it was NOT nothing.

In the past two weeks, I have:

• Taken over the childcare so that B. could go to meetings with a local political action group (she’s much better at the people-facing stuff than I am. I’m good with acting, but I get overwhelmed quickly).

• Helped B. draft a statement for the schoolboard meeting, and took over the child care so she could attend the schoolboard meeting and give her statement.

• Participated in a poscard writing campaign to the local school board. The two facists who got elected are trying to claim that their flag banning resolution is something the community wants. We are trying to show that the ACTUAL community doesn’t want this, and we collectively (with the political action group) gathered over 1200 postcards to deliver to the district office in the space of two weeks.

• Continuing to raise a joyful kiddo who loves the world and has a strong sense of right and wrong.

• Bought corrugated metal raised garden beds for the backyard, so I can start a bigger garden and so the garden infrastructure holds up longer (my current precarious wooden and block beds are not great and need replacing, and the gophers get anything that isn’t appropriately chicken-wired at the bottom). I joke around that it’s for the global supply-chain collapse, but I’m not 100% kidding. And if nothing else, I am hoping the surplus of zucchini will let me meet more neighbors. We already know most of them though, thanks to B., who is a social girl and also takes a lot of walks around the neighborhood.

• I’m attending a queer book club once a month and making connections with people I can help and who can help me if we end up needing it. But also, queer books are awesome and I’m having a lot of fun.

• I am researching companies that have values that more closely match mine, and am spending my money accordingly. I haven’t spent a dime at Target since they announced they were rolling back their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts and pausing their partnerships with Black entrepreneurs, and I usually spent $100-200 dollars a week over there prior.

• Reworking my teacher pages so that my diversity statement is less artsy and more blatant.

• Sending the ASL kiddos vocabulary for Black History Month. We are still celebrating diversity in my classroom!

• We are living our life in public, attending the Y, going to community events, being affectionate with each other, and in all ways showing that we are a normal family who love each other, wide out in the open.

That’s a pretty big list! Bigger than I would have thought given the circumstances. I still feel overwhelmed most days, and I still feel like these things are a drop in the bucket compared to the entire world setting on fire, but here we are. And we’re going to keep going.

If you want to share what you’ve been doing, please do! Maybe it will make you feel like you are, in fact, doing more than you thought you were.