I Guess My New Weekend Activity Is Protesting Now
We are living in interesting times, to put it lightly. It seems prudent to start being more conscientious and dedicated about my journalling.
I went to the Women's March last weekend, and it was such a necessary, replenishing activity. To be with literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people in my city alone, our voices raised in solidarity, went some small way towards healing the wounds of this fucking election. I have never been in such a big crowd, nevermind such a big crowd that was so relentlessly good-natured and kind and united in purpose. I've been knocked around more shopping at the mall during holidays than I was at the absolutely packed Women's March in LA. It felt good and right to be there, to raise my voice in even that small way.
Of course, then there was the relentless fuckery of the week after it, capped off by Friday's Muslim ban. Which I was somewhat calm about on Friday night, but then the belated panic hit. My brother was in Spain on vacation with my sister-in-law, got back in the country on Friday afternoon. I was at work when he texted his usual at the airport text letting me and my parents know he was back and on his way home, so I hadn't seen the news really and was just briefly relieved that he was home again. Then I checked the news when I got home.
My brother is a US citizen. But his passport says born in Iran, and as of Friday night, I have zero faith that that passport and that citizenship means a goddamn thing in terms of keeping him, or any of us, safe. Ever since I got my citizenship in the immediate weeks after 9/11, I have been painfully aware that my citizenship is conditional, because about half the body politic has done its best to make me feel that way. Whatever security any of you natural born citizens have in your citizenship, please understand that I have never had that. That is what it means to be a refugee, to be an immigrant. To know that you are one stroke of the pen away from being stateless.
Now, even worse, I am one terrorist attack away from having to register, from being detained, from being interned. If you don't understand that that is EXACTLY where this is going, I'm going to gently suggest that you are being willfully ignorant.
I've been thinking of Mario Savio's words all weekend: There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
I did my small part throwing myself on the gears of the machine today, by going to the LAX protest this afternoon. It feels like a small thing, but today, it was what I could do. My body's on the line no matter what. I'm in danger no matter what. If I'm getting crushed under the wheels of this monstrous machine Trump et al have set in motion, I'm going down screaming.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/474215.html, with
comments there.
I went to the Women's March last weekend, and it was such a necessary, replenishing activity. To be with literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people in my city alone, our voices raised in solidarity, went some small way towards healing the wounds of this fucking election. I have never been in such a big crowd, nevermind such a big crowd that was so relentlessly good-natured and kind and united in purpose. I've been knocked around more shopping at the mall during holidays than I was at the absolutely packed Women's March in LA. It felt good and right to be there, to raise my voice in even that small way.
Of course, then there was the relentless fuckery of the week after it, capped off by Friday's Muslim ban. Which I was somewhat calm about on Friday night, but then the belated panic hit. My brother was in Spain on vacation with my sister-in-law, got back in the country on Friday afternoon. I was at work when he texted his usual at the airport text letting me and my parents know he was back and on his way home, so I hadn't seen the news really and was just briefly relieved that he was home again. Then I checked the news when I got home.
My brother is a US citizen. But his passport says born in Iran, and as of Friday night, I have zero faith that that passport and that citizenship means a goddamn thing in terms of keeping him, or any of us, safe. Ever since I got my citizenship in the immediate weeks after 9/11, I have been painfully aware that my citizenship is conditional, because about half the body politic has done its best to make me feel that way. Whatever security any of you natural born citizens have in your citizenship, please understand that I have never had that. That is what it means to be a refugee, to be an immigrant. To know that you are one stroke of the pen away from being stateless.
Now, even worse, I am one terrorist attack away from having to register, from being detained, from being interned. If you don't understand that that is EXACTLY where this is going, I'm going to gently suggest that you are being willfully ignorant.
I've been thinking of Mario Savio's words all weekend: There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!
I did my small part throwing myself on the gears of the machine today, by going to the LAX protest this afternoon. It feels like a small thing, but today, it was what I could do. My body's on the line no matter what. I'm in danger no matter what. If I'm getting crushed under the wheels of this monstrous machine Trump et al have set in motion, I'm going down screaming.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/474215.html, with
comments there.