Where to put your rage when you live in a Democracy (Or hope you still do)

A friend knitted me a pink hat for the March. She couldn't go and she knew I was planning to. She wrote me a card. Please wear this for me, and I immediately burst into tears. We have a shared history of sexual assault, but that was in the past and we were over it, healed, we thought, but the new president's election brought it all back, fresh, his disdain for women, his mockery and bullying, and worse, and infinitely more painful,

-- all of these people cheering him on and turning a blind eye to it. I was back where I started, dazed and scared, angry too, which was a feeling I didn't have when I was a child being sexually assaulted. You know what? Let's call it rage. I was enraged. Honestly, I was a little scared of all of that rage.   

I mean, where do you put it? How do you let it out, without hurting others? Because, let me tell you, the anger I felt when I saw that man brag about grabbing women by the pussy and then watched people I know, friends, family members, neighbors, shrug it off-- well, that rage had better go somewhere. I made a cardboard sign. 

I cut it to look like a stop sign and I painted it red and pasted letters on in white: NO. I went to Washington with another friend. She was mad too. But the drive there felt more like a road trip. 

Rest stops. McDonalds for lunch. We stayed with one of her friends on Capitol Hill. There were other women there, friends of the host. None of us knew each other but we all immediately clicked. No one had to explain to each other why we were there. In the morning I put the pink hat on, and the truth is, I felt a little silly. 

I had never been to a protest rally before, unless you count this one time I went to the board of education, after the state of Ohio decided to cut funding for school librarians and I made a speech outside the building about how a librarian saved my life when I was a child. I was a nervous wreck that day because I had to speak through a megaphone.

This time I just had to walk around in public wearing a tightly fitted knit pink hat and waving a No sign. I could do that, damn it. The minute we stepped outside the house, it was a sea of pink hats. Crowds of people, mostly women, walking from every direction. They weren't screaming. They weren't carrying tiki torches (that would come later, for the aggrieved white men who like the idea of grabbing women by the pussies or kneeling on the necks of Black men and don't want to be called out for it) No,

the women were talking, laughing, moving toward the Capitol, a crowd so thick you could get lost in it, get squished in it, but I was never afraid. Which is interesting, when I think about it now, because several people--all trump supporters coincidentally--called me before I left to express fear, to tell me they were "thinking of me," 

which I laughed off, said, Don't worry, when what I wanted to tell them was F off, but I'll admit, there was a small doubt of What if they were right? What if the crowd did get out of control? 

But there, in the thick of it, with people laughing and chatting and waiting in lines for the port-o-potties, the funny creative signs, the making of new friends, the picture snapping, and all of those absurd pink hats everywhere you looked, how could you be afraid? 

In some moments you could even feel joy. There are more of us, I thought, and that was before I knew there were 500,000 people at the march. Millions of people rallying at the same time in cities all of the country, all over the world. Maybe we could all do something constructive with our rage?

I did. I learned my congressmen's names and state reps' names and phone numbers. And called them. A lot. I went to townhalls and wrote postcards reminding people to vote and wrote letters to the editor and went to more marches and canvassed neighborhoods for candidates and joined organizations to help fight back unfair laws, and voted, of course, 

and all of those millions of pink hatted women combined with so many other people-- Black Lives Matter people (who, according to some of my now former friends and neighbors, have the audacity to say that Black people's lives matter), and scientists freaked out over Climate Change, and children terrified of being gunned down in school, and immigrants and refugees and gay people and trans people-- all of us standing up to say NO

to human rights abuses and corruption and fraud, 

voted too. And the person we voted for won the election by 7 million votes.  

So, if you find yourself on the other side of that, enraged, I hear you. 

But don't carry your arsenal of guns to the statehouse to try to kidnap the governor or set up a gallows outside the Capitol so you can hang the Vice President or break through the barriers of the building and scratch your balls on the Speaker of the House's desk or beat a police officer to death with an American flag and then turn around and tell me it was nothing, let's all move past this for the sake of unity, 

I heard that enough when I was a child, and this time I say what I couldn't say then

No. 

We vote

There are hundreds of people already here, shuffling socially distant, the line stretching around three sides of the building when we take our place at the tail end. This looks like a Walking Dead episode, I joke to my husband and our daughter. Something about the backdrop of an old shopping center, the people staggering past in their masks. 

We're moving fast, everything orderly. An hour wait, someone tells us and we're okay with that. This is the only early voting place in our county--potentially for 800,000 people. I am prepared to stand here all day if I have to. In other parts of the country people have waited twelve hours. 

The man behind us is quiet, looking at his phone. The women ahead of us joke and laugh. As we move forward, more people join the line. Old people. Young people. Black and white people. Couples. Families. A mom holding a child's hand. She reminds me of myself years ago, toting my toddlers along to vote. 

Of course, back then we didn't discuss our voting plan, didn't worry about security or the integrity of the ballot. I went to the precinct up the street. There was no line. I didn't give much thought to voting except that it felt like something I should do and so I showed up. My life, other people's lives didn't seem to depend on it. 

This year, we could've gone to my neighborhood precinct on election day, I suppose. But we didn't want to chance it. Clearly other people around here have the same idea. There's a stream of cars pulling into the parking lot. Some are parking. Some are headed toward the one designated absentee ballot drop off box in the county. 

A sign on the wall tells us it's a 45-minute wait from this point. We shuffle on, rounding the corner. Volunteers hand out sample ballots. We take the Democratic ballot. Nearly everyone in line that I can see takes one too.  

We round the next corner. A volunteer thanks us for being here. A woman wearing a MAGA hat stands by silently. No one takes a ballot from her. Another MAGA woman says, Let's Keep America Great!

I catch the eye of the man behind us and we both laugh. 

I confess that there is a part of me that wants to scream at the woman, that wants to scream at everyone. Some days I seethe with so much rage that I feel like I am shaking apart. I look at strangers with suspicion. Do they support the monster in the white house? Even worse is how I've come to feel about old friends, family members, people I once respected and admired. How will I ever forget this awful thing I know about them?

How will I ever forgive it?   

The women in the laughing joking group call to a man who's sitting on a fold up chair under a tree. Join us, they say. I can feel the line shifting around us. Are they asking this man to cut in front of us? The women seem to know what we're all thinking.

He's our friend, they announce. He had open heart surgery. We've been saving a place for him. 

We all make way and let him in. 

Only an hour and we've reached the entrance to the building. The voting itself is easy. After I turn in my ballot, I see another line forming ahead. What's this line for? Who knows, but I dutifully take my place in it. I smile when I realize it's for a sticker. We're waiting in line for an I Voted sticker. 

I paste one on my sweatshirt and find my husband and daughter outside. The sky is so blue and the cars are still streaming into the lot, the line still swelling. The masks hide the people's faces but I would like to think their expressions mirror mine, filled with determination. Exhilaration. 

Hope.

 

Nobody's home

It was a weird sunny warm day and I was walking up and down the street ringing doorbells and carrying my clipboard. Canvassing has gotten more high tech since the last time I did it. Instead of a paper map, we get an app on our phone. Swipe when the voter isn't home. Check a box if he doesn't support your candidate. Make a note if he has a sign: NO SOLICITING!

My candidate was Elizabeth Warren and this was last Sunday, a few days before she dropped out of the race, and I was trying to feel optimistic. Reading the news and ranting to friends wasn't working for me. I needed to be out there. DOING something--

but I was dragging my feet up and down the street, not sure if I wanted people to be home or not. No one likes opening their doors to strangers and I don't blame them.

Please vote for Elizabeth Warren I wanted to beg people. But on the off chance that someone opened the door, all I could manage was a shy smile.

Have you made up your mind yet?

No.

Are you going to vote in the primary?

Yes.

Great!

Then I'd go on to the next house, dutifully checking off names on my list. Noting the Bernie sign in someone's yard. Shuffling around awkwardly whenever I saw that I was being recorded by one of those camera doorbells. Laughing at the no soliciting sign on someone's door:

Absolutely no soliciting. That means no knocking. I mean it. Just don't. It will be weird for both of us. 

I had a momentary desire to knock anyway, just so I could tell the woman I liked her sign. (I knew it was a woman because my phone app told me. Also, I knew her name and age. I know I know. Should I know this about a stranger?)

Something I know about Elizabeth Warren was how she had plans for everything. How she took the time to talk to people, one on one, and take smile-y photos with them. She grew up poor and married and had children young and was a teacher of students with disabilities before going to law school. She was a law professor and is an expert in economics and finance and bankruptcy regulation and consumer protection.

People tried to make her seem like a leftist extremist, but interestingly enough, she had been a registered Republican for years because she believed they were the party who supported the free market. And then she could see that their policies were actually putting the finger on the market to benefit wealthy people only and so she switched parties.

Her mission after that was supporting consumers and protecting the environment and standing up for women, fighting for public education and advocating for healthcare for all.

She has more stamina than me.

I know this because when I was finished with the street, the app asked me if I wanted to load another list and I said no. 

I drove back to the campaign headquarters (someone's small house) and returned my clipboard.

Driving home I felt like I was stepping out of a bubble. Leaving behind the type of person who walks up and down streets knocking on strangers' doors,

and returning to the person who walks up and down the same streets with my dog, the type of person who hesitates to open the door when a stranger rings the bell.

thank-you post-its around Elizabeth Warren's photo at Harvard

Dark days in America and a pinprick of light

I don't want to write about the dark days, how even in this month of limited news and no social media, I know all of the details of the impeachment trial, how it's all been a foregone conclusion anyway--that some people get to do whatever they want in this country and get away with it.

Because this is too dark to contemplate. 

Instead, what I want to write about is the party I went to a few nights ago. It was a party thrown by strangers, at a place where I suspected I would know no one, except for the person who sent me the invitation (and she wasn't the host). I got lost on the way there. It was dark and the people throwing the party lived in a loopy-maze-like subdivision. Several times on the drive over, I considered going home,

because it was a week night and I'd worked all day, and I didn't know these people! Also, I forgot to mention that the party wasn't really a party party, but more of a Meet the New Candidate for District 16 in the Ohio Statehouse Senate Race kind of party. And that night, lost in the dark-loopy-maze, a party like that didn't sound like any party I wanted to attend.

Also, I had just realized that because of my recent move (a mere ten minutes away from my old house), I no longer live in District 16.

Still, I had rsvp-ed and there was the house, at last, the lights on, the people, through the windows, chattering away about a candidate that I would never be able to vote for.

I took a breath, decided I'd stay for a few minutes, write a small check, and creep back out of there and, hopefully, find my way home without getting lost again.

The first person I met in the doorway was the candidate herself. (I didn't know this and just chatted with her--she seemed nice!-- and then noticed her nametag.) I told her I wished I could vote for her and joked that I hoped I could still donate money. I could! she said. And then it was off to see if this shindig had any wine.

They did not. But they did have water in plastic cups and a nice spread of food and shuffling around the table, strangely enough, were quite a few familiar faces. The resistance in central Ohio tends to show up in the same places, I've noticed. But also, there were several regular patrons I know from my job at the library and we blinked at each other, awkwardly, in the same way my high school students and I used to when we bumped into each other at Kroger.

I ran into the woman who'd invited me and she introduced me to her friends, telling them (and reminding me) that the first time she and I met was in the office of our congressman when she cried to his aide about how her nephew was going to lose healthcare if our congressman voted against the Affordable Care Act, and the aide told us that the congressman believed that healthcare was not a right but a privilege.

What an asshole, I said, and the woman looked stricken and I realized I don't really know her so maybe I shouldn't be swearing in her face. 

Maybe this was my time to write my small check and get the hell out of here. But as I headed into the living room, I was trapped by the group of party-goers, now all settling in to listen to the candidate speak.

Her name is Crystal Lett, in case you happen to live in Ohio Statehouse Senate District 16, and she talked about how her first child was born with special needs and she had to quit her job to care for him, and part of caring for him was to spend time with insurance companies and it had worn her out but luckily there was the CHIP program (the Children's Health Insurance Program--part of Medicaid) but the president and his cronies had put it on the chopping block, so for months her child's fate and the fate of several hundred thousand other Ohio children was up in the air.

She had started speaking up about that and our Democratic senator Sherrod Brown invited her to speak in Washington and after a long battle, CHIP was restored. Crystal Lett said it was the most grueling and gratifying thing she had ever done in her life, so when Sherrod Brown asked her if she'd ever thought about running for office, she paused and then considered...

And here she was now, running in what is probably the only competitive district in the state of Ohio but energized and ready to fight for all people in our state. And then her campaign manager, who Crystal had mentioned was 23 years old, stood up and gave an impassioned speech too and by then I was sort of wishing I still lived in District 16 just so I could vote for Crystal Lett.

It occurred to me as I was writing my check in the kitchen and talking to the interns on Crystal's campaign staff that all of them were college age or just barely out and all of the people at this party were old (I count myself in the old category) but here we were all together-- the young people energized and excited to work on a campaign and the old people providing the water in plastic cups and the checks, our names on Crystal's email list and ready to be called for service in the fall, to knock on doors and write postcards and make calls.

On my way out the door I thanked Crystal for her inspiring speech and wished her luck, said goodbye to the interns and the library patrons and the new people I'd met and headed out into the dark night.

I put my home address into my gps and didn't get lost once.

Crystal Lett needs your vote in Senate District 16

Why I March (part two)

A high school student asked me at the rally. She was doing a class project, an interview. Why are you here?

She asked my husband first, and he held up his hand and said, Wait. I need to think about it.

He was with me this time around. Actually, he was the reason I was there, at the march. All morning I kept changing my mind. It was cold outside. It had started to sleet. Soon, it would turn into a blizzard, the weather channel kept saying. Maybe the March would be cancelled. I mean, who would drive downtown on potentially treacherous roads to wave a sign in the freezing rain?

Come on, my husband said. I'll drive you. 

I didn't wear my pink hat this time. I didn't even make a sign. I didn't know what I would put on a sign. Honestly, my head was sort of muddled up about why I march.

Two years ago, my first march, it was crystal clear. I was shocked by the election outcome, outraged at the treatment of women by the new president, disgusted and appalled by his views on anyone who isn't white, his bullying of people with disabilities and veterans and refugees. That day I stood with over 500,000 other people, who seemed equally outraged. I didn't know until the drive home that there had been marches in cities all over the country, all over the world, with millions of people sharing the same shock, horror, rage, and disgust.

Today, I have all of those same feelings of course (except shock). Plus, a whole new slew of things to be horrified by and enraged and disgusted over, too many things to fit on a sign.

Something you may not know about marches is how Not-Angry they are. It's just a group of people standing in the rain. A cross section of humans. Take away the signs, and we are any crowd gathered in a park. People in wheelchairs. People pushing strollers or carrying their toddlers on their shoulders. People walking dogs. Women and men. Black people and white people. Christians and Jews and Muslims.

The signs and chants are angry, clever, funny. We listen to speeches. Mull around with each other. Walk together.

After the first march I came home fired up. I joined political organizations and went to meetings and called my congressman and my senator so many times the people answering the phones knew my name. I gathered signatures on petitions and wrote letters to the editor and canvassed neighborhoods to remind people to vote.

I know on a logical level that this is what democracy looks like,

that change takes time, that organizations aren't perfect, that the people who run them are flawed, that every election will not go my way, that even so, it is worth it to stand up, to be a body in the crowd.

Standing outside in the cold, in the rain, I remember.

Why are you here?

I stand with women, my husband answered. My wife. My daughter. I stand with everyone here.

And you, she said, holding her phone out to me?

Most people aren't home

or they're pretending they aren't. My husband holds the map and charts our course, while I knock on doors. That's the deal we struck, although one of the days we go out canvassing together, when it looks like it's going to rain, he darts across the street and hits the odd numbered houses on the list while I do the even.

I can hear him knocking, talking enthusiastically about how much he loves the candidate we're canvassing for, how he's met her five times. I laugh when we're back in the car, safe out of the downpour. What was that all about, I say. You've never met that candidate.

My husband shrugs. I got caught up in the moment, he says.

Here's the thing about canvassing, at least how it's done in our part of Ohio: you're not knocking on every door. You're not knocking on most doors. You're only knocking on the doors of likely supporters. The point is to energize these people to go out and vote.

But I wonder about the houses we skip. Not the obvious ones with Republican candidate signs in the yards. But the others. Houses with bikes thrown on the lawn. Carved pumpkins on the stoop. Leaf piles. Maybe they're not registered in either party. Maybe they keep their views private, their right, of course. Or maybe they don't vote.

I knock on a door and the man inside scolds me. I'm tired of you people coming here all day, he says. You're going to wake my baby.

Flustered, I tell him I'm sorry.

But my husband, down at the curb, is furious. You should have asked him why he has a front door, he said. You should have asked him if he's okay with his baby sleeping in a cage at the border.

Ah well, I say. I check the box for non-supporter. I cross the house address off the list.

Something I remember from history class is that in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War only 40% of the colonists supported fighting the British. Twenty percent supported the British, the presumed MABA crowd (Make America British Again).

Everyone else was neutral.

I mean, I get it. We're all busy. Going to work. Taking care of the kids. Making meals. But how do you not have an opinion one way or another? How do you not take a stand?

And I wonder, Did the neutral ones stay neutral throughout the war, or was there a line for them, a moment when a light bulb went off and they thought, Hmm. Okay, that's it. Now I care.

At the house where we meet for canvassing duty, volunteers are bustling around. Checking in address packets. Signing out the next shift of volunteers. Leading a brief training for the newbies. Someone's in the kitchen setting out sandwiches and a bowl of candy.

It reminds me of my PTA days, the same core group of volunteers, the people behind the scenes making sure that the teachers had the supplies they needed and that all the fun programs went on without a hitch.

Day three, canvassing, I go out with a friend.

A woman out raking her leaves says, Oh good! I need one of these sample ballots to take in with me when I vote. A man says, I'm a Republican, and when I start to turn away, he laughs and says, I'm joking!

But most of the people are not home or are pretending not to be. We hang a sample ballot on the doorknob. Head to the next house on the list.

Not a Lamp Post (or, why I am voting for Rick Neal)

The first time I met the guy, I was at the library.

My husband and I were attending a presentation about climate change put on by a professor from Ohio State University. Before the presentation started, the moderator mentioned that Rick Neal, a candidate for Congress in Ohio District 15, was in the audience.

My husband leaned over and whispered. Do you know anything about him?

I whispered back, No. And I don't care. He could be a lamp post and I'd still vote for him.

a lamp post is NOT running for Congress in Ohio District 15

I was joking. (kinda)

Of course I was still mad because the guy presently holding the seat had called me and several hundred others of his constituents paid agitators. He called us that because we all went to a town hall to find out why he was voting to take away affordable healthcare, and he didn't show up. And instead of being a good leader and decent human being, and maybe saying, "Hey, I know that not everyone agrees with my position, but here's what it is,"

he mocked us.

Mocking is a thing he has done more than once. 

Also, he said that healthcare is not a right. He took money from payday loan companies, and is fighting to bring those companies back into the state even though he is a veteran and knows that payday loan companies prey on veterans and their families. He voted for a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, and now that the deficit is ballooning, he wants to cut Medicare and Social Security. 

Honestly, a lamp post would do a much better job representing the district. At the very least, a lamp post would not hurt anyone.

I went up to talk to Rick Neal after the library presentation. Without thinking about it, I blurted out that he could be a lamp post and I would still vote for him. Rick Neal laughed.

So, he has a sense of humor.

Also, he's a former Peace Corp volunteer, an international healthcare worker who helped in Africa during the Ebola crisis. A dad of two little girls. A guy who believes that healthcare is a right and that people deserve a living wage. He doesn't take any money from payday loan companies or from ANY corporations, and he would not cut Medicare and Social Security.

At the moment he's on a listening tour, meeting with as many constituents as he can in our district, from town halls to regular people's living rooms. I have bumped into him myself at least five times. The last time he told me that he had challenged the present congressman to five debates. After several weeks thinking about it, the present congressman agreed to two.

Something unfortunate: This is a gerrymandered district, which means that the boundaries are manipulated to favor the present congressman. It's why he doesn't need to show up at town halls or listen to his constituents, why he doesn't even worry about mocking some of us.

Last time he ran in an election, 66 percent of the people in the district voted for him.

But here is something he may not know: I was one of the 66 percent! And now I would rather vote for a lamp post!

Thank goodness, there is a much much better choice.

Rick Neal, for Congress, Ohio District 15

Democracy with a Side of Pea Shoots

I hear the word Petition and I think of the line in the Declaration of Independence:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury... something something about pleading with the King of England to listen to us.

Not what I thought I'd be doing on the hottest day of the year (so far) in my little town of Upper Arlington, Ohio. But here I am at local Farmer's Market, holding a clipboard, asking people to sign a petition.

I'm set up in the shade, cursing myself for not bringing along a bottle of water. Or a wading pool. As people wander toward the vegetable and flower booths, I accost them, politely. I've got a smile plastered on my face, my spiel memorized:

Hi! Have you signed the petition for Fair Districts Ohio? We're trying to stop gerrymandering in Ohio Congressional districts...

At this point the person I've accosted does one of three things:

1. Smiles back and says, "Oh I've heard of that! I want to sign it!"

2. Waves me off with a "I've signed that already!"

or

3. Gives me a look that says, BACK OFF WEIRDO as they hurry off in the shimmering heat toward the table heaped with bags of organic lettuce and pea shoots.

Luckily, I am not alone in my petitioning quest. I'm here with Lyddie, reluctant (but good sport) 8-year old daughter of a friend. Lyddie's babysitter fell through, and now, after a fun afternoon splashing around the public pool, she's stuck with me at the Farmer's Market where I've agreed to collect signatures for a petition.

Me: Hi! Have you signed the petition for Fair Districts Ohio? We're trying to stop gerrymandering in Ohio Congressional districts.

Accosted woman: "I have no idea what you are talking about."

Me: So this is--

AW: (waving me away)

Fun facts for woman in the above exchange:

The way things work in Ohio is every ten years, after the census, whatever party is in power gets to draw the district lines for our congresspeople. Sometimes this means the Democrats get the honor. Sometimes the Republicans do it. But either way, it's led to what most people would call unfairly drawn congressional districts.

Communities split and parceled out into three or four districts. Towns represented by leaders who basically pick their own sure-thing voters.

Which means that when it comes time for an election, our reps don't have a contest at all and are easily re-elected. Which means that they know their job is safe. Which means that they don't have to hold a townhall to listen to their constituents' concerns or answer questions or explain why they're voting the way they're voting.

Anyway, the Fair Districts Ohio petition is a plea to put some common sense back into the system--a request for a transparent process where both parties have a say in the drawing of districts. We need to get 500,000 signatures for this to appear on the ballot in 2018.

This week I need to get sixty signatures. Today, I am hoping for twenty-five.

Lyddie is not thrilled with my odds. She's flopped out in the grass in the meager shade, fanning herself with my information flyers. She's given up on coloring in her coloring book. It's too hot to turn cartwheels. Thank GOD the farmer in the organic meats booth across from us has taken pity and offered her a popsicle.

Meanwhile, I'm accosting people politely. Hi! Have you signed the petition for Fair Districts Ohio...

I feel like a waitress back in my waitressing days. Hey! Would you like fries with that? Hi there! Do you want to help me save our Democracy! Hello! How would you like your burger cooked?

"I don't have time for this," a man snaps at me, and I smile and say "Okay!"

"Well, are you going to explain what the petition IS?" he asks.

Um.

Lyddie covers her head with a beach towel. "What a fart face," she says after the man stalks off to check out the organic meats.

The guy selling lettuce and pea shoots laughs. I drift over to his booth and we chat for a bit about the heat. And about our lovely customers. After fart face leaves, the organic meat farmer joins us. Naturally, I ask both guys to sign my petition. In turn, I buy pea shoots and lettuce and rib eye steaks.

Lyddie scores another popsicle. I collect 24 signatures.

All and all, a fine day for America.