#sorry for all the talkingtalkingtalking today uggggghhh

[6stronghands]

ok, I guess today is the day I talk (and talk) about my political activism:

I have been pretty much the same person my whole life, politically. I’ve made Dems and GOP people in my life mad or uncomfortable, equally, since I was young. I’ve been told I’m radical or too political, but again, I’ve just been the same person with the same basic ideas about how people should be treated and how they should treat each other. I’m a lot smarter now about a lot of things; when you are raised by religiously insane apocalyptic cultists in the West, you are gonna have problematic opinions and ideas about race and gender and so on. So I’m smarter and wiser but essentially the same. I am very, very social but I also have always had a ton of anxiety. You know the Kenny kid in South Park? With the coat? I wore a coat through the entire school year of third grade, with the hood up, natch. Very. Anxious. So the idea of being an activist has always seemed nightmarish to me. You know the crazy guy who warns people in a horror movie? Like the old weird farmer or the impassioned old lady or whoever? Or the scientist in a movie warning about stuff? Even watching that kind of thing gave me severe second-hand embarrassment, I’d forward it if I could. There was a guy on our little main street who was a hemp activist; he’d stand on a busy corner on the weekends, dressed all in white, with a giant hemp lei around his neck, and he’d hold his Legalize Hemp sign and wave to people and cars. He did it every weekend for years. I hated seeing him when I first moved to Lawrence, he embarrassed me. I’m telling you this stuff so you understand that when I say I hate activism, I’m just not kidding. I hate it. I was like, if you’re smart enough and articulate enough and work hard enough and support smart, articulate, good people, then that’s all a good citizen can do and it’s all they should HAVE to do. 

The night T*ump was elected, my gnc kid was devastated. Like DEVASTATED. This kid is so goddam smart, they’re the type of person who reads about the French and Russian revolutions for FUN. They came out of the womb that way, with an incredible brain and a knack for connecting the dots for pattern recognition, and a brilliant grasp of psychology and the humanities. They’re really really nice, a hell of a lot nicer than me, they used to be so cheerful and hopeful, like they’re everything you hope the future generation will be. And they were in such a bad way on election night. It broke me to witness that. I promised both my kids that night that I’d fight for a different world. I have had lupus for two decades now, so I don’t make promises lightly. I say things like: I’ll try, or maybe. I’ve broken too many promises because of shit health, so promises are a big deal for me.

The pictures of immigrants in camps broke me some more. There was this one pic of a toddler wearing nothing but a saggy diaper. Someone had cut up one of those gold thermal blankets and had wrapped them around their baby feet, for shoes. The pic broke me, like I literally felt something in me change after I saw it. There were and are so many horrible things, historically and currently, I don’t know why that pic killed me, but it did.

I went to my first anti-concentration camp protest with some experienced activist friends. I felt really uncomfortable with the crowd and the noise and the chanting. There were a lot of aggressive cops. My friends talked me through it on the drive home, talked about how activism was a marathon, not a sprint, how going outside your comfort zone was a learning experience, how to keep trying to find my version of activism, how it was a lifestyle, a philosophy, how there are a lot of ways to be part of the resistance.

That’s all backstory. Here’s what I need you to know, why I’m blathering on someone else’s post. I’m a double dropout (high school and college). I’m a broke, sick single mom with no impressive connections. I’m a middle-aged metalhead who works odd jobs for shit pay. I’ve also been a decent writer (wish this wasn’t steam-of-conscious brain-puke type writing, uggh) and thinker and reader and I’ve always adored science and in particular, I’ve always, for decades now, been obsessed with Climate Science and the Climate Catastrophe. I got involved in local environmental issues and movements, but was frustrated by all the gatekeeping and snobbery, and especially frustrated by the lack of power building and utter lack of accomplishments by all the local and state politicians and non-profit orgs. I have really learned to detest NGO’s. Don’t give environmental orgs your money, please. Give it to grassroots movements that will actually support real people and help real suffering. 

Anyway. I supported a lot of movements and orgs and causes and finally was like, geeeez, it’s all politics, so I’m gonna focus on that. So I applied for and was weirdly accepted onto the local Sustainability Board. Some of the board members are lawyers or university professors or architects or heads of NGO’s. I’m the only (double) dropout. You would think that these people would all be smart enough to understand politics or solidarity or movement building or climate science but they’re literally not. It has been STUNNING to see, up close and personal, how goddamm stupid some of these people are. I worked my way up and I’m now the Chair of the Board, which is hilarious to me, like oh my god. Hilarious. And these professional people are so mad about it, which is even funnier. They’d rather die than be an activist but they sure as fuck spend a lot of time canvassing and campaigning against me. (for real, you cannot believe how much snobbery and gatekeeping is in environmentalism. it’s one of the reasons we’re so fucked. like all the anger that everyone is starting to have about Dems? that’s gonna happen soon to career environmentalists, and they don’t have a clue. one of the main and first things I have to do with climate outreach is to apologize to people because so many environmentalists have shamed or gatekept them; these snobby fuckers have made so many messes like omg). 

Just because someone is super trained in a super specialized way, it doesn’t make them smart. Just because someone is booksmart, it doesn’t mean they’re street smart or smart about politics or people or power. The board members are bad at pattern recognition, bad at trends, bad at risk analysis, bad at connecting with regular people, because they’re insulated. When you work the jobs I work, you see everything, like EVERYTHING. It makes me good at the political and environmental stuff. It’s easier to talk to a co-worker who’s selling hot dogs at a football game with me about the Climate Crisis than it is to talk to some of the board members about it, because a lot of them are bound in arrogance and it blinds them to a lot of obvious realities. They don’t want to listen to a metalhead dropout, even though in this specific realm, I’m always right. You don’t get to where I am if you’re not, I’m just stating a fact. I’m sad and scared and outraged about all of this, I take no joy in being right. It breaks my heart. 

To conclude: please get involved in your local Climate Action Plans. Please get involved in local politics and boards. I PROMISE YOU that you’re smart enough. The bad actors on schoolboards aren’t there to be the smartest one in the room, they’re there to disrupt stuff. We need people like you to fight them. Whatever talents you have, whatever wit or insights or resources you can give to the resistance, OFFER THEM UP NOW. If you have good fighters on your boards, ask them what you can do to support them, and go to the meetings to keep them safe and uplifted. 

I can do a lot of things as an activist now that I NEVER thought I could do. You can and do build tolerance for anxiety, and you can use it as a lever, or motivation. I’m still not thrilled with activism and I still have a hard time with public speaking, but I’ve learned that I CAN do it, it’s not gonna kill me. You should get involved while you can, you should get out of your comfort zone while you can. You’re as smart as they are, for real, YOU ARE. 

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