Essay – Page 3 – Writers Resist

A Century of Chipping at the Ceiling

By Robbie Gamble

When I was seven years old, my parents escorted me into a room in a retirement home in Carmel, CA, to meet an old friend of the family. She was a slight, elderly woman with a friendly face and a clear strong voice, and she knew how to set a fidgety, slightly precocious boy at ease. We talked for a few minutes about what I was doing in school and the books I liked to read. She shook my hand, and we moved on. There was something about her that was memorable; I couldn’t forget her. Her name was Jeannette Rankin.

Years later I learned that she was the first woman ever elected to Congress, in 1916, from the state of Montana, four years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which enshrined universal voting rights for women (Montana was an early state to adopt suffrage). An ardent feminist and pacifist, she voted with a small bloc of representatives against entry into World War I, and subsequently lost her seat. Re-elected to the House in 1940, she was the sole legislator to vote against entry into World War II. In and out of office, she fought for gender equality and civil rights for six decades. She said her proudest achievement was being on the floor of Congress to cast an affirmative vote on the original House resolution for the Nineteenth Amendment as “the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote.”

I’m fifty-six now, and it boggles my mind that I had the opportunity, within my short lifespan, to shake hands with the first woman who ever stepped onto the floor of Congress as a legislator, exactly one hundred years ago. I’ve thought a lot about Jeannette Rankin during this recent brutish election cycle, the prejudice and intimidation she must have endured as the first woman in an all-male bastion, the patience and endurance she needed to persevere in the struggle for universal suffrage, for civil rights, for peace. I look at Hillary Clinton’s tortuous campaign, the obstacles and the misogyny that she had to endure, and it seems like this nation, which appeared to be on the verge of electing our first woman to the Presidency, has come a long ways in the last hundred years, and yet hardly any distance at all. I’m proud and sad and disgusted all at once.

When I stepped into the booth on November 8th to mark my ballot, I was thinking about Jeannette Rankin, and all of us, women and men alike, who got to stand on her courageous shoulders, trying to break up that damn glass ceiling. The ceiling is still intact, but the fissures run deep, and I draw inspiration from her example of chipping away and speaking out over the long haul, not losing hope despite the setbacks of two world wars and countless other abominations, believing that justice and peace and equality will prevail if we continue to work for them.

She once said, “If I had to live my life over, I’d do it all again, but this time I’d be nastier.” Let’s keep going, nastily if need be, and with determination.

Robbie Gamble is currently completing an MFA in poetry at Lesley University. He works as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, MA.

Learn more about Jeannette Rankin.

Reading recommendation: The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History, edited by Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Steinem.

President Truman calls on all liberals and progressives

Address in St. Paul at the Municipal Auditorium.
October 13, 1948, worth revisiting today

Mr. Mayor, and fellow Democrats of Minnesota:

Tonight, I pay tribute to the liberal spirit of the people of Minnesota—in the cities, on the farms, in the forests, and in the iron country of this great State.

In this center of practical liberalism, I am proud to salute a fighting liberal—the next Senator from Minnesota, Mayor Humphrey of Minneapolis. I am also glad to greet the next Governor of Minnesota, Charles Halsted.

Through them, I salute the liberal and progressive forces of this whole region—the forces which are once again on the march against special privilege.

Before I say anything else, I want to take this opportunity to recognize the splendid record which was established by labor and management in Minnesota throughout the war years, and nobody knows any more about that than I do, for I made an investigation of it.

Through those long dark months of war never once was a blast furnace kept a single minute, because of lack of ore. Men who mined the ore and those who manned the trains and the ore boats worked day and night, Sundays and holidays, and there was no work stoppage.

This was also true of the thousands of loyal men and women who labored in your mills and on your farms, and in your foundries and in your forests.

On behalf of the Nation, I congratulate the working people of Minnesota on their splendid wartime performance.

In view of that record, it is all the more strange to me that your senior Senator showed such fanatic zeal in helping to push the shameful Taft-Hartley law through the Congress.

I’m afraid the same thing happened to Joe Ball that happens to most Republicans with a streak of liberalism when they get down to Washington. That’s what I call the “Potomac fever.”

The Republican Party either corrupts its liberals or it expels them. It drove out Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. It drove out fighting Bob LaFollette of Wisconsin in 1924.

It was the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, not the Republican Party, that held out the hand of welcome to Floyd B. Olson, and to that hero of progressive idealism–George Norris of Nebraska.

And those liberals who have not been driven out of the Republican Party have been changed, like Joe Ball, from fighters on the people’s side to champions of reaction.

True liberalism is more than a matter of words. It demands more than sound effects. It cannot hide behind the catch phrases of the Republican candidate for President-catch phrases like “unity” and “efficiency.” Unity for what cause? Efficiency for what Purpose, I wonder ?

The American people, in this critical year, are entitled to a full and open discussion of the issues. They are not getting it from the Republican candidate for President.

Unity on great issues comes only when the voice of the people has been heard so clearly, so strongly, so unmistakably, the no one … can doubt what the people mean.

It is no service to the country to refuse, in the name of unity, to discuss the issues. It is no service to democracy to conceal the difference between the major parties.

Unity in a democracy cannot be produced by mealymouthed political speeches.

Unity on great issues comes only when the voice of the people has been heard so clearly, so strongly, so unmistakably, that no one—not even the second guessers—can doubt what the people mean.

Thomas Jefferson did not seek unity by concealing the real issues between himself and Alexander Hamilton. He made the issues clear, so that the people could reach a decision. And their decision determined that democracy rather than autocracy should prevail in this great country of ours.

Andrew Jackson did not seek unity with the moneymakers in Philadelphia. He made the issues so clear that the people decided to place the control of the money in the Government of the United States, and not in a few private banks.

Abraham Lincoln did not seek unity with Stephen A. Douglas. He made it clear that this Nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933, did not seek unity with the economic royalists. He proposed the New Deal.

And today, I do not seek unity by concealing the issues between me and the special privilege groups that control the Republican Party.

I never will seek that sort of unity.

Real unity is behind basic principles and concrete programs. Real unity cannot be achieved without a definition of the issues, and a decision by the American people.

Our foreign policy is an example of this.

I had hoped that foreign policy would not become an issue in this campaign. To that end, I have refrained from taking partisan credit in campaign speeches for the policies which were organized by a Democratic administration, and which others are now claiming credit for so loudly today.

But I serve notice here and now that I shall feel at liberty to correct distortions and keep the record straight.

And when I do that, I shall be glad to give full credit for the significant contributions which have been made by some farsighted Republicans.

We have a large measure of unity in foreign policy now. But it was not always that way. We achieved this degree of unity, only after world-shaking events had made it clear that the vast majority of the people of the United States would no longer tolerate isolationism.

Now, we had no unity in foreign policy in the first national election after World War I. The Democratic candidate for President in that year stood clearly for the League of Nations, and for Woodrow Wilson’s idea of international cooperation.

But the Republican candidate, although he misled the people into believing that he stood for unity, was actually opposed to the League of Nations.

So, when the election was over, the people found themselves with a Republican administration and a Republican Congress that were completely unified–but unified in favor of the wrong policies.

And so the world started down the road to World War II.

We did not have unity in foreign policy in 1940. Even then, with half the world in flames, the Republican leaders were mainly isolationists. They were against aid to the democracies, and they called Roosevelt a warmonger.

The man who is now the Republican candidate for President said that the idea of producing 50,000 airplanes a year was fantastic. And we got to ‘produce 100,000. a

Even in 1944, in the midst of a we did not have unity in matters relating to, foreign policy. During the election campaign in that year, the Republican candidate, who is now running once more, charged again and again that it was the administration’s arbitrary desire to keep men in the Army after the war was over. You all remember that.

He had so little foresight about postwar problems that he felt we could completely demobilize our military strength the minute that hostilities ended.

Now, as a matter of hindsight, he says, “me, too” about building up our Armed Forces.

The unity we have achieved in foreign policy required leadership. It was achieved by men—Republicans as well as Democrats—who were willing to fight for principles before these principles became obvious to everyone.

It was not achieved by the people who copied the answers down neatly after the teacher had written them on the blackboard.

Here again, as in so many other cases, the American people should consider the risk of entrusting their destiny to recent converts who now come along and say, “Me, too, but I can do it better.”

In the meantime, there are other issues in this campaign—big issues. All those issues cannot be hidden or brushed away by pretending they don’t exist.

The issue in this election is not unity. It is not efficiency.

Efficiency alone is not enough in government. Maybe the Wall Street Republicans are efficient. We remember that there never was such a gang of efficiency engineers in Washington, as there was under Herbert Hoover. We remember Mr. Hoover himself was a great efficiency expert.

We remember how he selected one of the richest men in America to be his Secretary of the Treasury. But efficiency wasn’t enough 20 years ago, and efficiency isn’t enough today.

There must be life and hope in government. We must achieve and pioneer in the great frontier of human rights and social justice.

Hitler learned that efficiency without justice is a vain thing.

Democracy does not work that way. Democracy is a matter of faith—a faith in the soul of man—a faith in human rights. That is the kind of faith that moves mountains—that’s the kind of faith that hurled the Iron Range at the Axis and shook the world at Hiroshima.

Faith is much more than efficiency. Faith gives value to all things. Without faith, the people perish.

Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living—a decision, which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us:. … The Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party. [Or] the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party. Of course, the Democratic Party is not perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But the Democratic Party believes in the people. It believes in freedom and progress, and it is fighting for its beliefs right now.

Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living—a decision, which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.

On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.

Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.

Since they won’t tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.

They approve of the American farmer—but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home—but not for housing.

They are strong for labor—but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.

They favor a minimum wage—the smaller the minimum the better.

They endorse educational opportunity for all—but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—for people who can afford them.

They approve of social security benefits—so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.

They believe in international trade—so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.

They favor the admission of displaced persons—but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.

They consider electric power a great blessing—but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They say TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] is wonderful—but we ought never to try it again.

They condemn “cruelly high prices”—but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing—so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way—there is another way—the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party.

Of course, the Democratic Party is not perfect. Nobody ever said it was. But the Democratic Party believes in the people. It believes in freedom and progress, and it is fighting for its beliefs right now.

In the Democratic Party, you won’t find the kind of unity where everybody thinks what the boss tells him to think, and nothing else.

But you will find an overriding purpose to work for the good of mankind. And you will find a program—a concrete, realistic, and practical program that is worth believing in and fighting for.

Now, I call on all liberals and progressives to stand up and be counted for democracy in this great battle. I call on the old Farmer-Labor Party, the old Wisconsin Progressives, the Non-Partisan Leaguers, and the New Dealers to stand up and be counted in this fight.

This is one fight you must get in, and get in with every ounce of strength you have. After November 2d, it will be too late. It will do no good to change your mind on November 3d. The decision is right here and flow.

Against us we have the best propaganda campaign that money can buy.

But we are bound to win—and we are going to win, because we are right! I am here to tell you that in this fight, the people are with us.

With a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress, you will have the right kind of unity in this country.

We will be unified once more on the great program of social advance, which the Democratic Party pioneered in 1933.

We will be unified in support of farm cooperatives, rural electrification, and soil conservation.

We will be unified behind a housing program.

We will be unified on the question of the rights of labor and collective bargaining.

We will be unified for the expansion of social security, the improvement of our educational system, and the expansion of medical aid.

Moreover, we will be unified in our efforts to preserve our prosperity and to spread its benefits equally to all groups in the Nation.

Now, my friends, with such unity as this, we can secure the blessings of freedom for ourselves and our children.

With such unity as this, we can fulfill our God-given responsibility in leading the world to a lasting peace.

Note: The President spoke at 9:33 p.m. at the Municipal Auditorium in St. Paul. His opening words “Mr. Mayor” referred to Edward K. Delaney, Mayor of St. Paul. Later he referred to Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis, Democratic candidate for Senator, Democratic candidate for Governor Charles L. Halstead, Senator Joseph H. Ball, and former Governor Floyd B. Olson, all of Minnesota; former Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin; and former Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska.

The address was carried on a nationwide radio broadcast.

Photo credit: U.S. Library of Congress, President Harry S. Truman campaigning in 1948.

Citation: Harry S. Truman: “Address in St. Paul at the Municipal Auditorium.,” October 13, 1948. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13046.

Our Hitler

By Eduardo Santiago

In our house, November 25 is called Markmas because it is exactly a month previous to Christmas, and it is my husband Mark’s birthday. He loves all holidays and adding another one is a tradition the rest of the family and all of our friends support.

What should we call November 25th now that the day has been tainted by the death of the tyrannical Cuban dictator Fidel Castro? His passing is politically irrelevant, yet “mourned” by many in the streets of Havana, whether they want to or not. Nine days of mourning have been ordered, which means anyone caught listening to a radio or watching television or just humming to themselves—even in the privacy of their own homes—will see consequences. So if you were grappling with the terms “tyrannical” and “dictator” this should resolve that conflict.

Simultaneously, in Little Havana, the tiny Cuban heart of Miami, there is joyous celebration. Enormous Cuban flags are paraded down 8th Street alongside the U.S. flag, a commemoration of the country that provided more than a million of us with food, shelter and opportunity.

Although Cubans are known around the world for their music, there wasn’t a musical instrument in sight. Instead, it was the traditional beating of pots and pans, and I was delighted that tradition includes banging on electric rice makers. We are, after all, Americans now.

During television coverage of Little Havana on November 26, an English- speaking Cuban man put down the celebratory pots and pans just long enough to deliver a provocative sound bite: “He was our Hitler.”

The comparison, which gets bandied about quite frequently, has never felt appropriate to me. There is no comparison between the systematic extermination of more than eight million people, with the inconveniences caused by a charismatic and arrogant Latin American dictator. Fidel Castro was not a brilliant man, but he had some remarkable talents, such as talking out of both sides of his mouth, earning the blind trust of millions at mandatory rallies, and making political deals that, above all, lined his own pockets.

If there is to be a comparison between the Cubans and the Jews, it might be their sentient cry of, “Never forget.”

But is not forgetting enough? How has not forgetting served us? As a sinister new administration steps into the White House, the muffled cry in too many hearts appears to be, “Could it happen again?”

For those of you grappling with the word sinister, you need look no further than alt-right leader and Trump’s incoming chief strategist, Steve Bannon. As for the rest, all but two are white, all but two are men, and just one—Elaine Chao, AKA Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife—has run a federal agency before. For George W. Bush, and we all recall how well that went.

So, could it happen again, here? The answer will be clear come next Markmas.

Eduardo Santiago was born in Manzanillo, Cuba and is the author of the novels Tomorrow They Will Kiss and Midnight Rumba. Visit his website.

Reading recommendation: Midnight Rumba by Eduardo Santiago.

Sleeping With the Enemy

By Marcia Meier

I have been sleeping with the enemy for more than two years. Rob is a Republican. But on the morning after the election, he held me close as I sobbed and promised, “It will be okay.”

He promised. But he doesn’t know. And nothing that has happened since that morning has made either of us feel better.

He didn’t vote for the president-elect; having worked with him once, Rob said he’d never vote for a man who had no scruples or conscience. I have accused Rob and his old-school Republican conservatives of abandoning their own principles. Of allowing white men whose only interest is money and power to cede their party to extremists bent on undoing everything we’ve fought for, for more than fifty years. Women’s rights. The right to marry whomever we please. The right for people of color to be free of the tyranny of a police state. (Though we have a way to go on that one.)

Now, we two read the news each morning with incredulity. A Republican and a Democrat united in disbelief. The difference is I see the potential for our country to be forever altered, and not for the better, by a man who is so very obviously unhinged—drunk with power and ego.

Rob sees the possibility of change that might turn out to be good. That people of goodwill and right-thinking will not allow the president-elect and his corrupt cabinet to destroy us. That our constitution and our government can certainly survive four years. How much damage could he do? Rob asks rhetorically.

A lot, I say. More, perhaps, than this country can withstand.

We argue, we debate, we fight, we agree. We make love—it seems the only thing we can do that reminds us of the good. The hope we cling to despite the evidence to the contrary.

It is a time of great uncertainty. When I allow myself to dwell on the events of recent weeks, I weep. I mourn. And Rob is there to hold me and comfort me. Even though I know his optimism will never replace my fears.

I veer from vowing not to read the news to allowing myself to release the grip of terror I feel, to breathing and trusting, to pounding out angry, incoming-administration diatribes calling for resistance and vigilance and marches in the streets. I cheer on Keith Olbermann and obsessively read The New York Times and Washington Post. I listen every day to NPR and cling to every little tidbit that glimmers with hope. And then I realize it is a pipe dream, and I have to consider how I will get through the next four years. Truly, how will we all get through the next four years?

If my sweet Republican lover is right and the president’s power is limited to such an extent that he can’t do any real damage, I wonder, how much damage is okay? A Supreme Court nominee who will shape the next thirty or forty years of jurisprudence, especially with regard to abortion and gay rights? I will be long gone, but the lives of my daughter and her future children will be unalterably affected. I can’t let that go. The reversal of environmental and economic policies that have made our lives and our world better and safer and cleaner? The abolishment of health insurance that for the first time covers most Americans?

So, I write and I call congressional offices and I send letters. And I pray that some of it will somehow matter.

Marcia Meier is an award-winning writer, developmental book editor and writing coach. Her books include Heart on a Fence, (Weeping Willow Books, 2016); Navigating the Rough Waters of Today’s Publishing World, Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver Books, 2010); and Santa Barbara, Paradise on the Pacific (Longstreet Press, 1996). Her memoir, Face, is forthcoming, as is an anthology, Unmasked, Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After Fifty, co-edited with Kathleen Barry. She is also at work on another book of poetry and photography, titled Ireland, Place Out of Time. Marcia is a member of the Author’s Guild and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Visit her website.

Reading recommendation: Zhuangzi Basic Writings by Master Zhuang Zhou.

Citizen

By Susan Arthur

The day, as I write this, is November 9, 2016. Yep, the day half of us in America wander about in nearly lobotomized shock at Trump’s win. We look for solace from each other, wonder what to do. There have been whispers for some time about moving to Canada. I hear the Immigrate to Canada website crashed.

I’m fortunate. I don’t need that website. I’m a dual citizen: United States and Canada. I live in the U.S., born here to Canadian parents. I was invited to get my Canadian citizenship under the Lost Canadians law as a child of expatriates. I’ve been looking at property in Canada online all morning, land in Cape Breton, cottages in New Brunswick. An apartment in Montreal? Or maybe one in Toronto, where my father went to college. …

It soothes me to look. This could be something of a return home, a return to a motherland. I’ve never been as popular among my friends. “Take me to Canada with you!” (Am I leaving?). “Marry me!” (I am married, but thanks for the offer.) “Buy property so all of us future ex-pats can form a little community!” (Because Utopian communities always work out so well?)

My husband, an American whose family goes back generations in Massachusetts, is a board certified oncologist and clinical research doc. Canada would lay down the red carpet for him, whereas me, I’m just an artist. My French is awful, although my health is good, but if they didn’t have to take me, who knows what would happen?

Three years ago, we made a wrenching and grueling move from the Pacific Northwest, after decades there, back to New England. I’d lobbied for a move to Canada then, wanting to settle in a place that seemed more like the country I wanted than the country I had (forgive my backward paraphrase of Donald Rumsfeld). I was tired of flirting with Canada. I wanted a real relationship, a committed one. Instead, we’ve settled on coastal New England because a desirable job was here for my husband and he was uncertain about expatriating, especially in the face of what seemed like a solidly progressive U.S. We had, after all, an intelligent, progressive man in the White House. We were safe.

Today, I am sad and embarrassed, scared and angry. The U.S. has always been my home. I work here, raised my sons here, vote here. All those years of supporting and working for human rights—women, minorities, LGBTQ—are they—those rights, my years—about to disappear? My hope that we will finally address income inequality is withering, dying. My husband and his workmates are concerned about the Affordable Care Act being dismantled; what will happen to those people needing cancer treatment? Any treatment? And then, there is our fragile, threatened environment. Without a habitable earth, all of these questions are moot.

Like so many of us, probably all 65-plus million who voted for Clinton, I am looking for a path. If I were to take up residence in Canada, I would forfeit my right to vote here, to have any impact on future elections. And I am coming up on my 66th birthday. How much time and energy do I have? How many times can I engage in the same battles, the battles I thought were over and won? What can I do that will have some effect?

Hiding in Canada won’t do it, although I long to live in a place that shares my values. And oh, how I envy them Justin Trudeau.

But as I write this, it gets clearer and clearer, what I need to do. Will do.

I’ll take the weekend off. I need a moment.

And then, I will begin again.

Susan Arthur is a photographer, sculptor and writer, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She hides out in the very blue wilds of Massachusetts. Her work can be viewed here. Writers Resist previously publish a photograph by Susan, “Left for Dead Barbie Visits the Capitol.”

Reading recommendation: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

To do list

By Daniell Cohen

1. Get out of bed
2. Brush teeth
3. Get dressed
4. Breathe
5. Apply for citizenship
6. Confront your male friend for claiming your sexuality is “a waste” because you fit his “ideal partner criteria”
7. Confront a cisgender white woman in class about why “we can’t just accept that we have different opinions,”
8. Reply with “what do you have at stake?”
9. Nurse a sore throat
10. Move past uncompromising panic attacks and cry bursts
11. Hold your friends as they fall apart
12. Hold yourself as you fall apart
13. Tell your brother it will be okay even though you worry about his safety even more now than ever
14. Meditate
15. Create
16. Gather … strength
17. Silence a middle-aged white man with a bandana wrapped around his fat head and cigarette in his impulsive, pathetic, dirty fucking mouth as he whistles at you
18. Re-evaluate your privilege
19. Accept
20. Repeat

Daniell Cohen is a Somerville, Massachusetts-based artist, born and raised in Israel. She earned a BFA in photography from SUNY Purchase College, and her work has been featured in The Journal News, and at Merge Arts, Artbar, +KG, and Tea Lounge. Daniell is pursuing her Master’s degree in Art Therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge, and she is a social activist, a feminist and queer artist, and an aspiring holistic art therapist who strives to inspire, connect and move others toward equality and radical acceptance.

Reading recommendation: Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns by Andrea Gibson.

Left For Dead Barbie Visits the Capitol

By Susan Arthur

Susan Arthur is a photographer, sculptor and writer, with an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She hides out in the very blue wilds of Massachusetts. Her work is shown nationally, and she’s a member of the artist co-op Brickbottom Artists Association, in Somerville, Massachusetts.

On art as a form of resistance

I think anything we do—art, science, business, everything—can be done in the spirit of resistance. For me, the primary purpose of art is that it can act as a mirror. If this election has done nothing else, we can see how difficult it is to unearth the truth. I had never thought of myself as an activist, but, since this election, as someone suffering from pathological idealism. By pathological I mean an unwillingness to adapt to what I see as an ugly turn the country has taken.

My work is never specifically political, but my personal statements intersect at times with politics. I have joined protests when the internal pressure is too great not to—in 1969 in the March on Washington, at the WTO protests in Seattle, against the Iraq war during the Bush Administration—all of these have been at critical moments. I don’t know if protesting helps directly. The Dakota Access Pipeline suggests it does. I do know it is essential to keep our voice heard.

There have been celebrations in the midst of all this, too. President Obama’s first inauguration, that bone-numbing, cold day out on the Mall in DC, was one of the collective happiest days ever.

On the Left for Dead Barbie series

Left For Dead Barbie was what I’d felt too often, what most of us feel at some moment in our lives. Lost. Abandoned. Deserted.

I changed her to dry-cleaner’s plastic, wrapping it around and around her body, a potentially lethal, diaphanous covering. I tried placing her in different positions: standing, running, prone. Left For Dead Barbie’s evolution went from horizontal and passive to vertical and active. She transformed gradually into the Terminator. I took her out of the confines of my studio and into the world with me. I photographed her in front of the Capitol Building, the White House (where an armed guard made a point of reminding me to take her with me when I was done), St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. At St. Peter’s she waited to get in out of the storm like the rest of us, in a rain-soaked line that spun once around the block, timed entries like Disneyland. She’d become too thoroughly my surrogate. She was wet, she was annoyed, she was pickpocketed. OK, she wasn’t; I was, but Left For Dead Barbie acts as a surrogate for the viewer.

See more of Arthur’s work here.

Beware a Kinder, Gentler American Fascism

By David L. Ulin

Originally published by LitHub, November 16, 2016; used with permission of the author.

Let me begin with an admission: I don’t know how to write about this. I’ve been trying since Wednesday morning, day after the election, when I awakened with what felt like the worst hangover in the universe—and without the benefit of having gotten drunk. I’ve tried writing about Harvey Milk and the effect of the White Night Riots on the movement for gay rights. I’ve tried writing about vote tallies and the Electoral College. Tuesday night, I spent half an hour on the phone talking my son off the ledge—or no, not off the ledge, since it was the same one I was standing on. Later, I walked my daughter home from our polling place, where she had spent the day working and had voted in her first election; as we neared our house, she turned into my shoulder and burst into tears. I don’t want to make this personal, but of course I do. All politics is personal, or grows out of personal concerns. I am the father of a gay man and a straight woman, and both are at risk today. If you don’t think this is personal, then you better get out of my way.

I am not an activist, I am a writer. But we are all—we must be—activists now. As to what this means, I don’t yet know. Yes, to protests; yes, to registering voters and contesting elections; yes, to believing—to continuing to believe and fight for—this fractured democracy. But even more, I want to say, a yes to kindness, a yes to the human values for which we stand. This week, I began to dismiss my classes with a wish or admonition: Be good to each other and be good to yourselves. They’re scared. So am I. It seems the least that we can do.

What astonishes me is that the world continues. What astonishes me is that life goes on. What astonishes me is that I can step outside at break of evening, dusk deepening like a quilt of gauze across the city and everything looking as it always has. Down the street, a neighbor walks her dog while chatting on her cell phone; the smell of wood smoke lingers in the air. Just like last week, just like normal, although what does normal mean anymore? We have an anti-Semite as advisor to the new president, who is promising a first wave of deportations immediately after Inauguration Day. And yet, what frightens me is that in a year, or four months, this election, this administration, will become normalized, as will whatever happens next. We will get on with it, we always get on with it, but I don’t want to get on with anything. The dislocation is maddening: the inability to imagine a return.

I’m writing from a place of privilege; I understand that. I am a straight white male living in a (relatively) progressive state. Still, let’s not be fooled about what this means. Hate speech in a high school classroom in Sacramento, a gay man struck in the face in Santa Monica. Objects in the mirror are always closer than they appear. I have relatives who chose not to vote for president in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, where the final margin was 68,000 votes. If this is a Civil War, it is one in which the battle lines are not the Mason-Dixon line but the driveways that separate us from our neighbors, our place in line at the supermarket, the traffic light at the nearest intersection, the kid at the next desk in our schools.

What do we do about it? We stand up, vocally and without equivocation, for the most targeted and the most vulnerable, we give our money and our comfort and our time. We are still a nation of laws, with a Constitution, and an opposition leadership. This, however, cuts both ways. If fascism or autocracy takes root here—and the seeds have already been planted, let’s not delude ourselves—it will be a kinder, gentler fascism, couched in the rhetoric of the American experiment. Normalized. That’s the America Philip Roth describes in The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 presidential election and brings fascism to the United States. Roth’s country is one in which the World Series is still played in October, and kids sit in the kitchen with their mothers, talking about what they did at school. “Do not be taken in by small signs of normality,” Masha Gessen wrote last week on the blog of the New York Review of Books. “…[H]istory has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm.” All the same, Gessen reminds us we must “[r]emember the future. Nothing lasts forever.” To forget the future is to give up hope, and hope is our most prevailing necessity.

And hope, I want to say, begins with each of us. And hope, I want to say, begins at home. I keep thinking of Vaclav Havel, that dissident turned president, who in his 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” stakes out the position of a “second culture,” in which freedom begins as a function of our willingness to behave as if we are free. What makes this essential is its insistence that we are accountable, that the reanimation of “values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love” falls—personally, individually—to us. Keep the record straight, in other words, bear witness and participate, but also hold onto yourselves. “Individuals,” Havel writes, “can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate.” I make a choice, then, not to be alienated; I make a choice to engage. I make a choice to preserve the values of tolerance, of love, of looking out for the other. I make a choice to act as a human being. “If the suppression of the aims of life,” Havel continues, “is a complex process, and if it is based on the multifaceted manipulation of all expressions of life, then, by the same token, every free expression of life indirectly threatens the post-totalitarian system politically, including forms of expression to which, in other social systems, no one would attribute any potential political significance, not to mention explosive power.” This is the resistance I am seeking, this is the revolution we require.

At heart here is a different sort of normalization—the normalization of who we are. We live in a country where we’ve been told (are being told every day) that we don’t belong. What do you think hate speech is? An attack on our right to consider ourselves American. I am an American, however, and so are you … and you and you and you and you. I do not walk away from that. We—and by that, I mean we in the opposition—are a nation in our own right and we have to stick together, to find the necessary common ground. My mother, who turns 80 in a couple of months, told me the day after the election that she had been talking to a younger friend, a woman with a teenage daughter; “I won’t live to see it,” my mother said, “but you and your daughter will.” She was referring to a woman president, but also, in a sense, to the restoration of what let’s call American values, for want of a better phrase. The conversation made me sad, and yet we can’t give in to sadness; that is not our luxury. At the same time, it is also necessary that we express it, that we can tell each other what we are feeling, how we are.

So how are you? I am worried, I am angry, and (yes) I am sad. I am also trying to live my life. This is the normalization I will not yield. Call it second culture. Call it whatever you like. I am reeling, we are all reeling, but I am teaching, I am writing, I am trying to take care of those I love. Saturday evening, I went out for dinner with my family. We sat across from one another and tried to be in each other’s company, which remains, as it has ever been, its own small sort of grace. The following morning, my wife and daughter began making plans to go to the Women’s March on Washington. This is where we are now. This is who we are. Resist. Remember. Stick together. Be good to each other and be good to yourselves.

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David L. Ulin is a contributing editor to Literary Hub. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author, most recently, of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.

Reading recommendation: The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel.

Twenty Ways to Protect Our Democracy

By Timothy Snyder

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.
Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.
Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.
When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.
Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps “The Power of the Powerless” by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.
Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Bookmark PropOrNot or other sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.
Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.
Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.
Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.
Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.
Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.
Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)
Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.
Be a patriot. The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

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Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and the acclaimed author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. His guide was originally posted on his Facebook page.

Reading Recommendation: Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder.

White Privilege, This Is America

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Through African-American Eyes

By Conney D. Williams

I didn’t sit down to write all of this, but here I am. The election seems like a dream, but I’m not one of those caught off guard. I don’t see it as such a surprise. As an African American, this is the normal America I’ve seen my entire life. Although the mindset the election reflects had been underground, more covert, this segment of society no longer wants to hold it all in or swallow the medicine of “change” or “inclusiveness.”

I don’t see the country any differently now than I have for the sixty years I’ve been alive. Those of us who have been fighting this fight can’t be caught unaware, can’t be blindsided by a national election.

Donald Trump has tapped into the colonial spirit of America, the Manifest Destiny that decimated complete tribes of Native Americans. Recently celebrated Thanksgiving is the epitome of America’s character and heart. When the Native Americans were trying to find ways to assist struggling colonists, the colonists were planning how they could take their land and crops. As the Native Americans were offering food and thanks, the colonists were offering infected blankets.

Donald Trump’s promises are the same.

Tell me when America was ever great. America loves the idea of looking great, but this is only done through smoke and mirrors, through imposing its will upon others who have less might. When has America kept her promise to be one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all? When have the marginalized segments of society not known a life of marginalization or murder or systematic policies designed to keep individuals at bay and real liberty out of reach? How about a time when those who have been marginalized have been able to walk up to Washington and cash the check called Freedom?

I am not surprised Donald Trump is the president-elect of this country. Didn’t the births of Black Lives Matter and other significant groups of historically disenfranchised peoples happen during Barack Obama’s presidency? Didn’t we see the repeated revelation that Black people are still the target of state-sponsored lynchings and incarceration/slavery during the Obama presidency? What really changed because there was an African-American family occupying the White House?

All I’ve known my entire life has been to fight vehemently for my inalienable rights as a citizen of the United States, yet everywhere in America, I have been denied access to what is mine from birth. What has been promised to all remains reserved for those whose skin color is fairer than mine, for those who feel their rights have been diminished by those whose skin color is closer to mine. How fucking ridiculous is that? How has white privilege been diminished in America? When has white privilege not assumed all the resources of this country as its own?

Whenever the disenfranchised want more than crumbs that fall from the table of white privilege, it’s called “reverse discrimination” or we must “make America great again”—and we all know what that entails.

The “core values” of the America I know don’t serve those who have been disenfranchised their entire human existence; they serve white privilege.

And white privilege doesn’t want to be uncomfortable in any way. But inclusiveness and change require that white privilege be discomforted. And, We the Disenfranchised, know that that is not something white privilege is ready to embrace.

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Conney D. Williams is a poet, actor and performance artist, originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he worked as a radio personality. Conney’s first collection of poetry, Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet, was published in 2002. His poetry has also been published in various journals and anthologies including Voices from Leimert Park; America: At the End of the Day; and The Drumming Between Us. His collection Blues Red Soul Falsetto was published in December 2012, and he has released two new poetry CDs, Unsettled Water and River&Moan, available on his website.

Reading recommendation: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora N. Hurston.

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