More than one of my family members–the people who raised me, encouraged me to spread my wings, watched me bloom into this magnificent woman that I am–would like for me to just be quiet. They have unfollowed me, disengaged from me, are disappointed in me, afraid of me.
I will not be quiet about my disgust about what is happening in my country right now. I will never be quiet about the ideals I wish my country to uphold. I will never be quiet about demanding respect for the disenfranchised and marginalized.
I will not be quiet. Even if you aren’t reading this anymore.
I will not be quiet.
Bystanders are quiet. Quiet is how genocides happen. Polite is how holocausts happen. Nice is how evil gets in. We fight evil with love, not with nice. For anyone who has been a parent, you know that love does not always mean nice. Tough love. It’s not only hard on the recipient.
You should be ashamed of yourself if you aren’t speaking out about the horrors happening here in our country. Students resuming classes the same day a fellow student is killed. Jews being shot and killed in their place of worship. Black people continuing to be murdered for being black. Fuck this shit.
You should be outraged about the things our people are doing to others. We destroy each other in so many ways over and over again. We have to stop. We must be better ancestors.
I don’t care if I make you uncomfortable or if you stop following me, or whatever. I will search for every single way to say this until people start to listen. I will not be ashamed for my actions. I do not feel shame to tell every single bit of my truth. I have made the offer before, and I will do it again. Ask me anything. I am an open book. We have to be open to telling the truth to each other. I believe that is our only way forward. I know I am nobody from nowhere, that people don’t know my name yet. Why should you care about my truth? I admit that I am fallible, and making mistakes is normal, but that we must always do our best, for that is when goodness is returned to us.
When I say goodness I do not mean politeness. I do not mean niceness.
I mean honesty, kindness. Fucking dignity. Polite is bullshit. Polite is what got so many of us to think Obama’s being President meant we weren’t racist anymore. Polite is what drove those KKK motherfuckers, those fucking neo-nazis underground so the rest of us could not HATE on them. Instead, they have been infiltrating our system from within. They have had the time and space to redesign their brand to make it more palatable.
Being nice can suck my balls.
If you’re reading this, you have one week to get your ballot in. We must put an end to this nonsense.
Vote for black women in this coming election. Vote for women of color, Indigenous women, Mexican-American women, trans-women.
Follow black women. Support businesses owned by black women. Invest in them, personally. You say you are too busy and don’t have time to get involved, but would just ”write a check” if you could. Here’s a link. Did you donate?
Here’s another.
I know I’m being bold right now, and if you’re reading this, maybe you are nodding in agreement, or maybe you don’t like my tone, but fuck that shit. We women have been too polite, and it costs us too much; We need to speak up and say every. single. Thing. We need to do a better job of educating everyone about their options and make participating in this so-called democracy easy. We are at the place in history when it is time to get America right. WE, The PEOPLE are stronger than The government. The government is broken. I think most of us can agree that neither “SIDE” has it right.
The system is broken.
Don’t be part of it by subscribing to “your party” without thinking about what they really represent, who represents/sponsors them. Choose people who will support democracy, will support your values.
The most fundamental part about being American is WE THE PEOPLE.
THAT’S why we have the 2nd amendment, so we can defend ourselves against our government. Not against our neighbors.
Let’s make sure to raise up the people who are going to be best for each state government and come together to make real changes happen. There are so many ways to support leaders, and now, when we can activate and engage and elect the best leaders for the future of our nation. The future we want our children to be brought up in (not the one our parents were brought up in.)
People want us all to be polite and PC instead of being honest and kind. Fuck that shit. You know what honest and kind leads to? True compromise. Uncorrupted compromise. If we were all honest and kind, (instead of hiding behind being nice and polite) we could actually promote and achieve equity in our society,…….instead we are encouraged by our leaders (in both parties) to to be mean and cruel and evil and unhealthy. They want us to fight with each other. They want us to feel desperate so they can control us with their money and their hidden agenda. WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!!!! Take our country back from career politicians, white nationalists, from old men.
I believe so much in a better world. I can see it. I daydream about it. I write about it. Yet, when I check in with my body, I realize my shoulders are up next to my ears in stress or my breath is caught in my throat with worry. When I look at the world around me, the society around me, I know that we are a far way from that world of my dreams…when I think about our history, I see that we have changed, but I am not convinced we are better, so maybe it’s just that we are still changing. Still evolving.
It’s like the United States is a person in their late teens/early 20s, someone just beginning therapy, trying to break their bad habits/survival techniques while simultaneously finding new ways to self-sabotage and occasionally relapsing back into some truly terrible behaviors like being a racist, and realizing that they were abused by their uncle (Sam) and might have sort of pushed someone too far by not taking no for an answer soon enough. (Kavanaugh, cough, cough)
I’m a pretty fucking positive person, but I also have some dark/morbid fears about our world. I’m a realist, and my door is cracked open to conspiracies; People are fuuuuuuucked up. I’ve been through some shit, but I don’t let it get me down. I carry on with my head held high. Some say high-horse high, but all the better for them to kiss my ass. I’m tired of being polite. Let’s be real.
I am positive it’s the only way we are going to get over this shit. I could carry on about my ideas to save the world all day, but I’m out there trying to do it instead. Sometimes it doesn’t look how we expect it to, but one thing I’ve learned is to let go of expectations and follow the path. I know my path has been far less difficult than many because I was born a white woman in the U.S. I know most people can’t take time off work to explore their path and recharge after just 8 years of teaching. I worked very hard throughout school and won many generous college scholarships. Because of these awards, as well as need-based assistance, I was able to graduate college with far less debt than most people of my generation. I have no children and no pets (though I really want both!). I don’t own a car, so no car insurance, nor any property, and I live in a small apartment that’s attached to my father’s workshop/garage (he’s a farmer), so my expenses are quite minimal.
After Trump was elected, I fell into a depression. I didn’t think it was really going to happen. I really thought Hillary Clinton would beat him. A fear nestled and an anger hatched inside me that morning. I had moved to Brazil just 4 months before the election, before President Trump happened, and after I got through the sadness and the denial, I got angry, and I wanted to move back to the U.S. to take action. I couldn’t though, because I was there on a two-year contract which I would not break. I made the most of my time there, but I felt very far removed, far away from a great many problems which I wanted to….want to… be a part of solving.
I wanted to be there marching on Jan. 21, 2017. I wanted to attend the Black Lives Matter meetings, the NoDAPL protest, all of it. I wanted everyone to understand how terrible I felt about a country which could elect just a bad man. I don’t care if you don’t like Obama, but you cannot honestly say that he was bad unless you are brainwashed.
He had to be extra good in order to win that seat because no black person could get anywhere in this country with a record like Trump’s.
There was this illusion that the U.S. wasn’t racist anymore. Hooray. And then we turned around and gave the seat back to a bad white man, whose past we would have never forgiven on the transcript of a black man. Black men have been murdered for doing far less disrespectful things to white women than Trump has done to his own daughters and wives.
If you do not support Kaepernick’s stance, you are a coward who would have also probably supported slavery. Punishing a black man for a peaceful protest and calling it protesting disrespect of the flag/soldiers when white people break the flag laws all the time, is downright racist.
Punishing black people or any people of color more harshly for anything a white man does is racism.
Insisting Kavanaugh was just a kid at 17 and shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions but consistently charging black youth as adults for a variety of broken laws, is fucking racism.
I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of the polite people who have paved the way for the world we live in now. Wake the fuck up. Get engaged. Vote those racist assholes out of office. Take back the House. Speak out to and against the racist and bigoted people in your life. We must stop them.
Be not quiet.
#vote #votethemout #fuckingvote #fucktrump #fuckwhitesupremacy #votefuckers #notyourmamaselection #trump #blacklivesmatter #supportwomen #democracy
