So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately, now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country — join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and offer to volunteer.
- –Â Molly Ivins, in a nationally syndicated column
- published two days after George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004
Thanks to Julia Rosen, tireless organizer and Online Political Director for Courage Campaign, for getting these words into my inbox today before I went to the nearest lobster emporium, blasted that B-52’s song, and did things I would later regret.
And for additional moral support, there’s this trenchant post from Kate Kendell at NCLR on her blog this morning: “The Day After a Hard Night.” She closes with these words:
We have the privilege of living in the midst of our own civil rights movement. The cost of that privilege is the same cost it has been in every movement–our humanity and dignity is attacked and undermined and we stand tall, never give up, and never lose faith. Today is a test, and we must be the measure of it.
The picture tells it all. Sigh. It looks like things here in Washington will go better, although no thanks are due the majority of voters in my county.
I’ve declared it “take a gay to dinner night” and am going to enjoy the company of my best friend for a few hours. I hope you and yours can find a way to smile, laugh and love through this sad, enraging day.
Lots of Love and Hope!
Oh! We WILL NOT be eating lobster!
I just put my head down for a minute when I saw this. What in the hell is wrong with us?
Thought about you, and hoped you weren’t TOO discouraged. But, how can we all not be? Just drives me insane.
Sigh. Thank you for that Ivins quote.
I am deflated.
I talked to my students extensively today about political obligation and when they are obliged to step up and put themselves into the fray.
I think I was just reminding myself why…
I think the most important part of this picture is your ring. Today, I choose to keep my eyes on that.
Ugh. And another ugh. A friend emailed me today, saying that she couldn’t tear herself away from the computer, yet couldn’t get any work done: “I’m just sitting here waiting for a news break that the numbers have changed and all is well with the world. That IS going to happen, right??”
I don’t know what else to say, except that I am extremely discouraged by my fellow Mainers and beyond – BEYOND – furious with the Catholic Church, which ran $^&! second collections for this campaign.
You are so kind. I’m ready for secession! Divide the country in two and be done with it. We are already divided so let’s just divvy up the land. Let’s take California – I hear the weather is lovely and they have vineyards.
Back to the computer today after a day away from it, with my Pops.
Thank you folks — Dimplecheek, SJnky, Tigs, hatched by two chicks, michaela, Vikki — for checking in and commiserating. Words fail, and instead it’s abstract rage (for many of us in & outside of Maine), and probably shell-shock and depression too, near and far but especially in Maine.
I recall being leveled by the Prop 8 vote, even though I was dreading it for months, watching the polling numbers and understanding how we had to clear the “bar” by a minimum of 8 or so percentage points, to make up for the shame people feel (!) in admitting the depths of their homophobia to a pollster. Frankly I haven’t totally recovered.
I also was unable to go straight to rage, since the shock and fatigue were so intense. Particularly when so much of the work entailed either sheltering my kids from the hateful messages, or trying (utterly unsuccessfully) to shelter them from my rage and fatigue and inattentiveness as I focussed on what I firmly believed was the good fight in their best interests. It feels like an untenable position for parents especially.
No question, we in CA had nine months to experience (and imagine the longevity of) the state recognition/protections, and 18,000 of us were able to retain them. I’ve given that a lot of thought when I’ve wondered what the LGBT people of Maine are feeling right now.
It’s true, hatched: the third part of the trinity in that image is one of the remaining assets we have right now from my state’s chapter of this battle. Aside, of course, from the political strategies one hopes we’ve learned. But we in CA have the opportunity for 18,000 of us to give the lie to nearly every lie perpetrated by the hate groups that mount the anti-gay marriage campaigns.
And by god they are hate groups. Twenty, thirty years from now they will be seen as as an anti-gay (hetero supremicist) analog of the white supremicist White Citizens Council (now under the more palatable moniker Council of Conservative Citizens): KKK lite. Same effective impact, with a bit less raw terror and blood.
Here on out, the gloves have to be off. This crap is hetero supremacy, plain and simple, hiding behind a curtain of lies. No more.
Here are two interesting (in some ways divergent, in other ways just modulated in tone) pieces on the election aftermath:
David Mixner: “Election (Part One): Enough, No More, Enough”
and
Andrew Sullivan: “The Pain in Maine II”
Also do note there are
Rallies in support of Maine nationwide