Write Club: Siege at 1700:Resist v. Sumbit (RESIST)

I’m a hashtag! I am representing a clicktavist slogan for change, championing a word I whisper-yell after I’ve made one phone call to my already democratic senators and stammered out a message about a bill or appointment I can’t entirely remember because it’s only the latest in a hurricane of whatthefuckery and I have only called once this week instead of 7 times, but. RESIST, I tweet at senators, hoping that someone likes or retweets as though that makes it less of a void to shout into. RESIST, I say with my smug face because I’m wearing a Diva Cup and Thinx so I can freebleed all over the patriarchy in a very clean and responsible manner. RESIST, I chant wearing my pink pussy hat and marching arm in arm with women who probably won’t show up at the next Black Lives Matter march, including myself because I had a sick kid. But she has a hat, too! Resiiiiist.

(breath)

Things are not going the way we had hoped in this country, and “hope” is an understatement in the way that “napping” is an understatement for “asphyxiation by garbage bag.” Currently, we’re watching our cartoon villain leaders twirl their moustaches and burning sack with dollar signs on them outside orphanage windows, and we have decided that it was time to resist.

We’ve watched black men and women killed on camera by police, we see the numbers of murders of trans people - especially those of color - jump exponentially; we see synagogues and mosques burned and defaced. We have decided. Just now. To resist.

See, this is America. We’re really new at this.

Countries who are accustomed to dictatorships think we’re super cute right now. With our “resistance.” Aww.

Resistance is more than an ideal, and we all know it. We don’t know what to do about it, but we know it’s something important. It’s like walking into a room with a cooler full of organs and forgetting why the hell you came in there. Ahhh...there was something...I was gonna do with these…

To resist is to exist for most of this country. It’s not like this is new. It’s not like there was a moment when someone’s boot on your neck was like, “no, this is good I like it, leave it there” - but many of didn’t notice for longer than a headline click to actually do anything of about it. That’s privilege. To not notice when you need to resist.

Resist is stigmatized here, see. It’s not looked upon favorably. Delicious things and desirable people are “irresistible.” Go on...give in...you can’t resist. You deserve it, we say, despite that gorgeous person’s sugar content and that donut’s penchant for selfishness and cheating. (pause) And once you become sick from those indulgences, you’re up against treatment-resistant disease. We hate resistant things. Unless it’s water resistant. Then we’re excited. Cause...fuck water.

But Resistance is what makes a civilized society work. It happens every day. I don’t smile when some dude tells me to  -  unless he just fell down. We don’t slap the goddamned phone out of someone’s hands when they’re staring at it while you’re talking to them, even though you wanna. You don’t go on a murderous rampage every time someone tells you to “calm down” or “not make it about race.” You don’t tear the limbs off of every person who chews so loudly it sounds like earthworms are thunder fucking in jello, though NO COURT WOULD CONVICT YOU. And persist? It’s just resisting defeat. So.

Now, on a national level, Admittedly, we’re behind. We don’t hear “intersectional feminism” without clutching our very white pearls, and FEMINISM is still looked at as a dirty word. The worst thing you can call a racist in this country is a racist. I’m not saying resistance is futile, but right now it looks like stoned people trying to assemble an IKEA shelf - we know what it’s supposed to look like, but it’s gonna take a long time and we’re really hungry.

Here’s the key: resistance begins the moment we say “no.” The moment we decide on no, we’re joining in. Toddlers already figured this out, so let’s go.

When I was 14 years old, I was single. Isn’t that the strangest fucking word to describe a child? But that’s what I thought. It was Thanksgiving in the two bedroom apartment on the dead end street we lived on in Melrose Park. I don’t remember what we ate. I just know that as soon as it was over, my mom went out with her boyfriend. My sister went out with her boyfriend. And I sat at home, wondering what to do. So I went to my yearbook, looked up my senior crush from the previous year, and found where he put his phone number. I called him. He was hanging out with friends and only too delighted to come get me. Dreamy! He picked me up, and every girl’s fantasy was fulfilled as we drove to an empty parking lot and his friends got out of the car, took out a case of beer from the trunk and left us alone. I was lucky. My resistance was met with acceptance. I wasn’t pushed after I said no. I was, however, left alone in the car waiting until his friend came in. It was his turn. He thought that was the deal. My resistance was met with begrudging acceptance. Again, this made me lucky. It doesn’t work for a lot of people. You say no, they don’t like no. So resistance becomes another word for “fight with everything you have to keep what is yours.” Some can accept the anger of defeat. Some cannot. Some can see that what they’re asking for is causing someone else pain and suffering. Some want pain and suffering for others.

And this is precisely why Resist is what we need. It is our daily bread, and we can’t get caught in the shame spiral of not baking it earlier cause we’re here now. We’re here to listen to and/or shout at the right people at the right times. Use the right pronouns, it isn’t hard. To march and call and tweet and show up. We’re here to stand up on the train when someone is abused and harassed and not be ok with things as they are but also but ALSO but also? we must resist despair. Resist does not mean we are not allowed joy. If we smile or gather or drink or watch shitty television or eat fatty things we aren’t letting anyone down. We are not finding one cause more important than another. I kissed that boy in the backseat but I owed him nothing. I took my happiness and steered it away when someone wanted it for their own. When you say STOP is when you resist. That moment. That’s why it’s never too late. You can be late and flawed, but you are welcome. Just don’t make it about you, and make it for everyone. We will resist the idea of always being miserable. We will destroy the thinking that you must not resist in order to be happy. That shit ain’t cute. I need fries. And ranch dressing. Oh, and for the marginalized populations to have equality and to smash the patriarchy, to rid the country of the scourge of this administration and institutionalized racism, school choice and for profit prisons and government all up in my uterus blah blah blah but FRIES! VIVA LA RESISTANCE.
 

Write Club: Power v. Justice (POWER)

963, 1023, or 1096. It’s one of those, I’m pretty sure. Once you near 1000 it starts to get hazy. But yeah, it’s somewhere around there.

In 2016, police killed 963, 1023, or 1096 people, depending on your source. It gets hazy.

You know what’s fun? Aside from Not This Even A Little? When you research this, you can click a refresh button for various sub stats and it’s like a grotesque fireworks show - powerful displays of the very opposite of independence. OOOH a third of the victims were under 30. AAAAH 1 in 20 were unarmed. OOOH mental illness was cited in a quarter of the incidents. Wait wait...finale... just under a third actually fled from the officers. Yay (clap clap clap) (sings) Ameeeeerica ameeeeerica...fuck it.

Now, I could spend all of my seven minutes, Lily’s seven minutes, and seven minutes of each of your days into infinity spouting more stats or names like Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Keith Lamont Scott...but then I would just end this showing the lack of justice from last year alone and call it a day. But that’s lazy. And I’ve had too much rage coffee - also known as air - to be lazy. SO LET’S DECIMATE JUSTICE since it’s pretty much a smoldering corpse of fiction anyway, yeah? GREAT. Let’s go look for some.

Well, police brutality decreased in 2016, but that’s like saying you have less oozing cancer in your left eye than your right. YOU STILL HAVE OOZING EYE CANCER.

We poisoned the water of our own citizens - well. I mean. If we consider bown people citizens. Flint got the brain damaging shit water and the Dakota Access Pipeline is really just a river of pox blankets for Native Americans who had the unmitigated gall to stand up against being poisoned. Again.

And hey. Then there was the election. I can’t say anyfuckingthing new about that. Fucking christ. Motherfuck. Uptown Fuck, Rogue Fuck. The Fuck Awakens. Stranger Fucks. I cannot.

Prisoners are being forced into slave labor and taken out of mental health treatment if they’re "bad."

Brock Turner got "seven seconds of action" and the victim WROTE A LETTER, but we still heard his fucking swim record.

Idiots took over a bird sanctuary.

We’ve taken to rebranding Nazis so we don’t hurt their feelings.

A foreign power stuck its dick in our assed up elections and didn’t even lube up first, and we’re pretending it didn’t happen. It’s like Cosby’s PR people took over our collective consciousness.

We lost everyone holding the fabric of our universe together. I’m not listing them here because I want to remain standing and not scream crying while vomiting into a bucket of consolation chicken. Again. It’s finger licking sad.

Because these things that I try not to think about and think about all the time simultaneously TAKE THAT 2017 Resolution to Meditate -  all of these things...so far...have no consequences. Police officers aren’t charged with murder, the DAPL will still break ground after this month, the Oregon standoff morons are serving their wee sentences, while Native Americans almost died protecting themselves, and the mayor of Flint is still being allowed to speak and the water he drinks is clear and tasty.

Tell me there is justice in the world. There is not. Not a hall, not a dawn of, not a league of it. No justice, no peace. And I’m pretty sure we’re not peaceful now.

Power, though. Power is alive and well. How do I know? Because in Justice v Power, my white ass was handed the topic of Power, while Lily Be is stuck with Justice. “Here, defend this thing that we no longer have for people like you. Good luck!”

In the absence of Justice, Power is all we fucking have left. It’s how we got here in the first place. The loudest, richest, whitest dude wins, because what he has is that scent of authority. The eau d’ control por homme. The stink of Because I Fucking Said So.

And let’s revisit one of those previous points, shall we? Let’s go back to rape. But, Corrbette, I don’t wanna talk about rape, you say. But guess what? I have the microphone and my voice is amplified and I therefore have the power so you’re coming down this dimly lit alleyway with me. See, power is what sexual assault is all about. And justice has no part in it. Justice is rapists actually being sentenced. Justice is education and cultural norms pointing AWAY from assault being ok and not electing it president. Justice is women not being told what to wear, where to go, what to drink, how to travel, how to make eye contact, what to say, and which self defense classes to take and not using her sexual past as a reason to rape her. (claps) WE DON’T HAVE ANY OF THAT THOUGH. Rape is used as a weapon of war, as a threat against any woman online (“in the cyber” if I use the parlance of our times and our President Elect). We hear a lot about why we should go easy on rapists because they could have their whole lives ruined, while the victims just retreat into themselves forever. Cause who cares about their future. Do they even sports? An entire football team stomped their feet and said, “No. NO HOLIDAY BOWL. NNNNO” when 5 or 7 or 10, eh, it was a group of em, so hazy, were suspended for raping a woman. Allegedly. Justice would be if those dudes understood that was the lightest of sentences. Instead, OH OK NEVERMIND. COME ON. (tousles hair) Ya scamps.

Can we use use Power for ourselves? Yes, Dorothy, you had the power all along. Jesus, get new friends.

Army vets came and put themselves in front of the cannons at Standing Rock. Apparently, we can’t see our own cruelty to Native Americans because brownish, so people who we claim to hold dear stood in harm’s way. The construction halted. Temporarily, but it halted.

A whole bunch of vaginas will descend on Washington to make their voice heard as our funding for basic care is stripped away. Black Monday in Poland was a whole herd of vaginas - ummm I think that’s called a curtain? A curtain of vaginas protested an all out abortion ban and that shit was shut right down. Hey, a woman’s body CAN shut that stuff down!

Inmates refused to show up for their slave labor-like work across the nation, and even paid workers went on strike.

People complain about how power is gained. No one likes the new rich, the entitled. No one likes dictators. And yet...here we are being lead by them. No one likes protests - oh they’re so inconvenient, oh my god you should be upset about this other thing instead. And yet, that is how power works. You have to flex your muscle, whether it’s by showing up in numbers or calling or yelling louder or just sitting in their damn way.

There is no justice in seeing the white doughy fuckwads of the world flexing their muscles. But there’s power in us all, and they will be terrified when they see it. Show up. Be powerful.