The Women's March Was an Unreal Experience
This was not my first rodeo. I went to my first rally in DC when I was twelve years old. While I've never been intensely active politically, I've marched and rallied across the years for the causes most near and dear to my heart
( Read more... )
That description of the unused/unreachable port-a-potties was painful! Kind of reminds me of when I first moved to NYC and had to walk with Laura from the subway to our house every night past tons of people eating fabulous meals at sidewalk cafes in the Village and even buying fast food from food trucks when we were broke and going home to rice and canned beans or peanut butter and bargain-bin whole wheat bread. I bet plenty of people who voted for Trump do not believe that employed relatively well-paid workers can be that desperate for food in this society and live one paycheck away from homelessness. That's America folks. The class divide gets deeper and wider.
Speaking of that kind of thing. There are so many people who cannot live without a car and public transportation sucks. (And I am not talking about people like you who live in rural areas, but those living in villages, towns, and small cities across this country with no transportation outside of their own vehicle. This country is fucked up.) Alex said to me yesterday, "but he cannot take the money away from public schools!" And I said, "just watch him! When I was a kid we had major arts funding, band with school-provided musical instruments, theater productions of good plays, both musical and dramatic works, three or four times a year." And Alex says, "Wow!!"
I am woefully underinformed about what will happen with the health care situation now--I suppose I will have to do my research. Alex and I are both covered under some form of Obamacare. I know mine sucks--I cannot afford the co-pays, but it's certainly better than nothing.
So happy the march energized you. I have a feeling that energy will be needed over the next period, unless we get lucky and he gets impeached for his total disregard for the law in any way that it might apply to him--like conflict of interest and total disregard for the truth.
Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! There is a reason I did not immediately respond to this post. I did not know if I could control myself. I'm angry. I am happy that people moved themselves yesterday. My immediate family doing so including my kids, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc., participating in demos in San Francisco, Oakland, Fort Worth, Chicago, D.C., NYC, Charlotte, NC, and Indianapolis. Some very surprising places had significant demos--like Charlotte, Indianapolis, and Fort Worth.
Reply
Physically, it was one of the most arduous things I've done. I ate a ClifBar around 7 AM and had maybe three sips of water throughout the day, then didn't eat again till about 5:30. It was the only part of the day that seemed completely and badly planned out, that the march didn't start till 1 and there was no food at the starting point where the rally was! A group of us went into the National Gallery to try to bring out food for everyone (staying outside to watch our signs, which they would not let us bring in), only to be told that we could remove nothing--not even a cup of coffee--from the food court. By the time we started encountering food trucks, the march was underway and getting to them would have been like swimming against a rip current.
A friend of mine messaged me on FB, sounding regretful that he did not go too; I think he felt a little bad because I marched for marriage equality with him. But I told him that I would have never expected it. He would not have done well! It was a rough day!
I bet plenty of people who voted for Trump do not believe that employed relatively well-paid workers can be that desperate for food in this society and live one paycheck away from homelessness.
I read and loved this today, which makes a similar point.
I never get the opposition of middle-class people to a government safety net. They act like they're more likely to become millionaires than to need food stamps or Medicaid when the exact opposite is true. I tell people sometimes that I accept that I might need "welfare" someday. They look at me funny, but plenty of people whose lives it saves also never thought they'd need it!
public transportation sucks
My dealings with the DC Metro--which we ended up not even using--reminded me of this.
what will happen with the health care situation now
OMG, I don't even know. I'm very frightened for people. A lot of people I care about will be directly and significantly impacted by this.
It is beyond me that the party that bleats about being "pro-life" is about to rip health coverage out from under 18 million pairs of feet. I am open to fixing problems with the ACA. I am the first to say it is far from perfect legislation. (Although I say that because I want single-payer, which I doubt encompasses the Republican opposition. ;) No one seems to remember the days of "pre-existing conditions" or "lifetime caps" or $60,000 out-of-pocket pregnancies or the kinds of shenanigans when a person would get cancer and be kicked off her insurance for failing to disclose that she got zits as a teenager. How short memories are.
But then we're also just eight years past the presidency of the last Electoral College-appointed clown, and here's another one that's even worse, and the scary kind of clown too, like one in a Stephen King novel.
Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!
Don't be sorry! I'm angry too. And frightened. And trying very hard to be hopeful and do something proactive to sustain that hope.
I cannot imagine how you feel. You've been fighting your whole life for these same things. I saw a lot of women yesterday carrying signs that said, "I can't believe I'm still marching for this shit." I thought of you!
Reply
I haven't been to nearly as many marches on Washington as I have been to ones in San Francisco. I got plenty excited today to read on my Facebook and in news articles how many places there were with big demos that usually are not centers of protest. Indianapolis had 10,000. That seems like a small-time turnout by SF, or NYC, or DC numbers, but, wow! Indiana is Pence territory.
I keep telling myself that I came to consciousness in the 1950s and vaguely recall the McCarthy hearings rattling in the background on our first TV set and it scaring adults around me. I remember when I was a little kid my father talking about how Eisenhower was the big business president and his cabinet was made up of union-busting CEOs. I remember Ronald Reagan getting elected, the freakish governor of California who attacked demonstrators at UC Berkeley when I was a student there and placed the entire city under martial law with tear gas-spraying helicopters and riot police shooting people in the streets and killing one. It's not like I haven't lived through bad stuff before. The mythology of my childhood passed onto to me from older people was all about what it was like surviving the Great Depression when my grandmother talked about giving leftover from dinner to hobos who approached her backdoor from the railroad tracks and asked for food. People did survive (although not without a lot of lives and potential lost).
I do not know why this guy scares me so much. I think it is partly his total lack of civility, run-of-mill manners, ewww!--he's just so gross! I would not want to find myself in the same room with him--god only knows what he might do--grab a woman by the crotch? Make fun of a disabled person? I saw a photo of George W. Bush smiling in a photo on Friday at the inauguration and the caption said, "He's grinning because he is no longer the worst president we ever had." I kind of chuckled at that. Nothing about Trump makes me laugh!
Enough! We'll probably get through this--not all of us, but hopefully, with a lot of effort and more action, most of us.
Reply
I was galvanized by concern for the environment and then animal rights when I was a preteen and young teen. My parents, to their credit, always supported me in that. You know I kind of fell accidentally into advocacy for disadvantaged kids, but I'm eternally glad I did (even if it meant that I had to suffer through the school I did--that was also eye-opening and therefore necessary).
I detest the sudden affection and longing for GWB. (I know that's not what you're doing, but other liberals are!) Like, "I realize now that Bush wasn't so bad, why did I think he was so bad??" Because he was so bad!! The fact that he appears to be a step up from something is a testament to how low we've fallen.
Reply
That's me and my husband. We are well aware that disaster is just a step away. If either of us lands in the hospital we will lose our home. An earthquake could render our home uninhabitable. There are lots of things that could happen.
I cannot fathom the attitude that we don't need safety nets in America, that everyone should be just fine and be able to always pull themselves up by their bootstraps--and if they can't then there is something wrong with them.
But age, illness and natural disaster do not discriminate. Even the wealthiest or youngest or most powerful can be laid low by them.
They need to remember that.
Reply
No they won't! The barriers against moving upward out of the middle class have been raised so high as to be nearly insurmountable. I have no delusions that Bobby and I--are pair of teachers in rural Vermont--will ever be millionaires. (Not that we want to be!) But a lot of people really and truly believe that they're more likely to acquire wealth than to need welfare. I used to hear it all the time with my students in Baltimore, who didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, yet used to talk with confidence about the cars and jewelry and houses they would have when they were rich. How were they going to become rich? NFL, NBA, rapper, music producer ... the only problem was that there was there was no recognition of there being any steps between where they were and their American Dream. Seniors, for example, who imagined becoming NBA stars and never played more than an occasional game of pickup ball.
I tell people all the time that they need to come to grips with the fact that they are far more likely to need a social safety net than they are to become rich. They scoff at this. What a negative Nelly to suggest that they might get sick or have a house fire or lose their job and need food stamps or Medicaid! What a negative Nelly that I don't believe they will become instantaneously and magically rich, just because they want to.
But this magical thinking too means that they fight against the disadvantaged--perceived as being weak, lazy, unresourceful--and defend the rights of the upper class that they imagine lounging among some day. That's the sickest part of all.
Reply
I think sometimes that people need to have experienced at least one traumatic loss in their lives to cure them of thinking bad things only happen to other people and good things are going to automatically come to them one day.
And even many people who have it hard, who do live just barely paycheck to paycheck still voted for Trump because they believed that since he made his billions his wealth and luck would spill over on them. (I have heard this out of their own mouths.)
Right now, we have Obamacare, although the deductible is too high to use, it's there in case of catastrophe. If we can hold out until our birthdays this year, we will have Medicare. But both of us were really sick last week--it would have been good to be able to afford a simple office visit. Right now, we are living on SS and our little part-time jobs. If the DH should lose his for any reason, we will be in serious financial trouble. We have house insurance, but not earthquake insurance. Even if we could afford it, it wouldn't help--we've looked into the terms, and they won't pay out for anything less than catastrophic damage and the deductible is too high to make using it feasible anyway. My husband no longer has life insurance, so if something should happen to him, I would likely lose our home. We don't have a 401K or an IRA.
We are not unusual. Ten years ago the DH was making a very good salary and had great benefits. But now that we are older, we have gradually lost our personal safety net and are relying on the ones the gov't has set up for us. Trump and his crowd want to take that away from us and everyone else who needs one.
Sometimes I see customers behind one of my elderly customers. A little old lady who has to count out pennies dug from the bottom of her purse to pay for her loaf of bread and half-gallon of milk gets impatient eyerolls from the person behind her. And perish forbid if one of the fortunate few should be behind someone using the EBT (formerly known as food stamps), because they always have comments about welfare afterward.
Until it happens to them, and they find themselves in the same predicament.
A couple of years ago when the oil prices dropped precipitously, I had previously highly paid oilfield workers coming in to use their newly acquired foodstamp cards. They were always embarrassed. I reminded them they had paid taxes for years, that they were now entitled to put those taxes to their own use. Most of them said they had never thought of it that way before.
My main hope is that we can rid ourselves of the new administration in four years. I am more disillusioned than ever and we are not even a week into Trump's term.
Just two days after he was inaugurated, we've had several natural disasters resulting in loss of life--and we haven't even heard a peep about them out of him. He's too busy trying to prove his crowds were bigger and his vote was more than it already was, if we'd only listen to his "alternative facts".
Even Dubya knew that things like fires, tornadoes or hurricanes called for a presidential condolence message.
Reply
Leave a comment