I have no idea.
I have no ideas.
Pretty girl.
Pretty smart girl.
I'm thinking about a lifetime of relax, calm down, I'll pay you $1,000 to be quiet, You're such an exaggerator, Your head's always been in the clouds, Get your head out of your poetry/ass, Book sense isn't everything, relax, calm down, you're crazy, you're basically a pretty girl with some smarts.
Elizabeth Warren in the hallway outside the hallowed chamber, still reading.
The Republikkkans have prioritized voter suppression, and they've specifically targeted black people and other disadvantaged groups. The Supreme Court, with a majority of conservative justices, gutted the Voting Rights Act and literally opened the gates to restrictions and obstacles that some could argue were the main contributors to how we got here. Here.
How we got here.
The most intelligent members of even my high school class are arguing with, literally, the least intelligent. The least intelligent are gloating, smug, rich, KKKristians. Gun-lovers. Brain, they hissed back in the eighth grade when I walked down the hallway with my stack of honors. Brain as derision.
Make Amerikkka great again.
The appointment of the racist Sessions and the billionaire Kkkristian DeVos took the breath out of me. Not only because he's an old-school racist but because of his stance on medical marijuana. He's not into it. Not only because she's intent on increasing God's Kingdom but also because she is purposefully ignorant and disdainful of the laws protecting the rights of the learning and otherwise disabled. She's not into it. Will I have to stockpile Sophie's medicine? At least Sophie ages out of the public school system this May. It gives me little comfort to be living in the greatest state in Amerikkka, because I know just how long many of my comrades in the disability/seizure/epilepsy world have been waiting and hoping for an easement of marijuana laws. They're not getting it now. Their children will suffer, perhaps die. It gives me little comfort to be living in the greatest state in Amerikkka because I know just how dependent many of my comrades in the disability/learning disabled world are, how young their children are, how they are thriving in schools responsible to the law that will, perhaps, not be enforced.
Even as I type, I'm getting my breath back.
I'm going to the pool now, will dive in and begin the steady strokes. I'll hold my breath, blow out through my nose and twist my head to the side. I won't gulp in air but rather train myself to keep breathing, steady, propulsive. Forward. Breathing for myself and breathing for others.
#resist
No one says it like you, Elizabeth.
ReplyDeleteI'll breathe with you and Sophie.
ReplyDeleteXoxo
Barbara
I hope Rob joins you in the water later. He's pretty hillarious in the pool. Let's splash and laugh until we cry.
ReplyDeleteI my girls, their mom though long gone, are with you. This shit is not acceptable. We have a lunatic for president thought that might be an over estimation of his intellect. I ain't seen the like of this before, as my dad might have said, if he lived to be 123.
ReplyDeleteI have one girl who in her middle age wisdom says let's work in the system and bring him to his knees, another in her very late twenties who says let's burn the motherfucker down. At age 71, I find myself in her camp.
Mike
I'm having a difficult time accepting that Donald is in fact the president and is allowed to do as he pleases. He is an angry, fearful man who is terrified of looking in the mirror. It scares me that this narcissist and the Russian narcissist have so much power and so little value for life. Trump brings out the worst in others.
ReplyDeleteI look at Mahatma Ghandi and the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis and I see people who bring out the best in people, who believe we can be better than our worst bits. And they walk, or walked in Ghandi's case, the walk. And I feel sick to my stomach.
I left you a comment yesterday but don't see it now. Very curious. I thanked you for your fierce clarity. And other things too. I don't remember now. But I sent love, too.
ReplyDeleteYes. No one says it like you, Elizabeth. That's why I added your blog to my blog roll. Keep the resistance and the persistance going.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm listening to the f*****g Pixies! :-) You articulate our collective angst so well.
ReplyDeleteAh, where is my mind?
#resist
Greetings from London.
I was listening to an interview this morning with a local teacher who was talking about literacy (and the lack of it) in our country today. He spoke of college students and college graduates who have reached out to him to ask for help. They are frustrated with their inability to communicate effectively with colleagues and customers - most white collar jobs require a great deal of email and if you can't put together a sentence that makes sense or think critically about a difficult issue, you can't do your job well. It made me sad that we've basically just given ourselves a head of the Dept. of Education that lacks the kind of literacy it takes to do such a challenging job, and that we continue to raise generation after generation of citizens who cannot have articulate conversations, exchange ideas without asserting opinions or descending in to name-calling. If we continue down this path, our country will certainly soon be the least effective on the planet.
ReplyDelete