We keep going to work and buying groceries and living life while everything around us is wrong. It is so expensive to barely survive right now — prices and profits are soaring while wages stagnate. CEOs get stock options while workers’ hours get cut.
The government is full of people elected by rigged systems, gerrymandered, the blocking of basic protections by people whose pockets are lined by lobbies. The courts are packed with liars and zealots.
They’d have you show two forms of ID to vote and keep the lines so long you can get heat stroke, but you can buy a gun with cash and no waiting period. This is on purpose.
They tell you that an unborn child’s life is sacred and do nothing to prevent the slaughter of children in schools. This is on purpose.
They celebrate the blocking of legislation that shouldn’t be a partisan issue, then fundraise based on promises of family values or human rights or whatever will appeal to people who are terrified, because of what their party has taught them to be scared of. This is on purpose.
They say that regulating guns won’t stop guns from being bought, but regulate abortion knowing full well it won’t stop and that their decision is deadly. They don’t care if you die, they care about taking away your autonomy. This is on purpose.
They tell you to vote, to donate, to vote like your life depends on it, as if you haven’t been. The blame always goes back to the people. The workers. The voters. This is just the way it’s always been, they’d tell you. But it hasn’t. This is on purpose.
None of the issues in the crosshairs of this establishment should even have to have been written into law. We should fundamentally be imbued with a right to privacy, a right to healthcare, a right to make decisions between two consenting adults. None of this should have come from a law or court. These rights are inherent. But when second class citizens have had to fight for the same rights as their more privileged neighbors, we are expected to be grateful, as if those rights were a gift tied with strings that pull us in the direction of being presentable, appropriate, a model minority.
Don’t be too queer. Don’t be too slutty. Don’t be too Black. Don’t be too fat. Don’t be too unladylike. Don’t be too much. Don’t be anything. Just be what you are in private, over there, away from the eyes of the children.
I would take comfort in the fact that their God would turn them away from Heaven, but what good does that do the living? The suffering? Terrible people’s karma is not going to help people today. Right now. Living a horrific pulling of the rug from under them, worrying about getting back in the closet, worrying about the emboldened bullies who will choose violence and get away with it, worrying about what this means for their children to inherit such a world.
I am angry. And I am sad. And I don’t know what to do next.
EDIT: I have had some reflection on what to do next.
One, please do not share memes or offer to drive people/host people seeking abortions. These posts can be used by law enforcement to target both the person offering and the person seeking an abortion.
If you want to help support abortion access, do so by supporting existing and established reproductive justice organizations with vetted organizers and aid providers. (PS. Lots of them were developed by Black women who have been telling us for years that this shit was bad, so please just support them instead of being a white woman with a hero complex).
Two, give money:
National Network of Abortion Funds (AbortionFunds.org)
National Birth Equity Collaborative — Black Reproductive Justice Agenda
The incredible image in this blog is shared with permission by the artist Reed Calloway.
Caitlin Liz Fisher 