To quote Lizzo.
It’s gonna have to be us.
I try and drill that into the heads of this FB group I’m a part of. It’s basically 500 left-leaning folks from a 65% red county in Pennsylvania. It’s a warm blanket, a forum folks can post their memes of how shitty Trump is, and cheer liberal victories in other states.
Some folks also use it as a town square, especially when they’ll attempt to hire services by someone in the group or politically aligned with the group. Often enough, you just have to hire the plumber with the Blue Lives Matter flag in his yard because that’s who’s available. I really like the idea though, folks are trying to make sure they channel their hard earned cash toward a person who isnt an asshole. It’s un-refined but the practice has potential.
Some of us are trying to make the group a little more though. While the group will get 7-10 posts a day, most are the aforementioned memes or just articles. I want it to be an organizing forum.
It already kind of is, with events like local Pride proclamations being shared in the group. But in other ways it’s not. It’s full of folks in a school district that’s all but guaranteed to elect some angry transphobes to its school board. What’s frustrating to me is the vast majority of folks in the group treat this in their own back yard like any other national news story.
They’ll post like, “I cant believe Mike Michaels is running for school board I thought he was a pastor,” and “Oh no the school board is going to be so much more conservative now”
Like, YOU live in this district! Why don’t YOU do something? A couple of the primaries were unopposed! None of these folks even cross-filed, a practice encouraged by the state to keep the election non-partisan.
Now everyone is saying “woe is us, these freaks are going to be in charge of our kids.” Well why didn’t any of YOU run for the board? Why didn’t any of YOU campaign for more like-minded candidates?
I dont live in the district, but I’m running in mine for the same reason. There’s ultra-conservatives in the race who want to purge “woke” from the school, whatever that means. And it SUCKS! I can’t spend more than $250 of my own money without filing paperwork. He’s clearly already spending that much on giant wooden signs. Top it off, a local crazy person is using her own money to print flyers about me. Running for school board sucks, but no one else was going to do it, so I’m doing it.
I’d have an easier time if some of the folks in the FB group in my area would go to bat for me, and I’d have a better chance of winning if they did, but so far no dice. I’ve tried posting in the group, looking for support, and got very little. Everyone seems to prefer to keep anything that might inconvenience them at arms length.
They were all (rightly) terrified of Doug Mastriano, a crazy right-winger who was at January 6th, when he was running for governor of the state but the only locals that came out to campaign for a Democratic governor and Senator were me and the head of the county Democratic party. I’m not even a registered Democrat. The most horrifying politician in Pennsylvania and only two locals plus two staffers from Wilkes-Barre were knocking on doors on a quiet Sunday.
I read all about how volunteerism is down nation wide. I can see why. I’m part of a volunteer organization that helps the local FFA chapter. We have 5 members when we started out with close to 15. We don’t meet anymore, we barely exist. Lot’s of other non-profits and community organizations struggle to fill their rosters as well. Our communities could really benefit from these groups but no one wants to put in the effort.
I get it. Life is hard. The top 1% has more money than the rest of us combined. It’s hard to financially justify cutting out work early to get to the local community association. It’s hard to look at a non-busy weekend where you can just relax and catch up on stuff you fell behind on throughout the week and decide to shoehorn in volunteering at a flower festival that not a lot of people are gonna show to.
The bigger institutions like churches and Mason lodges are still doing not-terrible, though I imagine most readers on this site are not churchies and Masons.
The point is it’s up to us. No one is going to fix things for us. We have to do it. It’s not fair, we shouldnt have to, and we might put ourselves at risk but we have to try. No more of this “young people give me hope” nonsense. It’s not their responsibility to fix things when we’re still here. I feel like Gen X and Boomers are actively hostile to the younger generations, while Millennials look to Gen Z for support. It’s time we gave them something TO support.
What I’m saying is we need to do what the anarchists call “dual power”, something conservatives have been kicking our asses at for decades. They go to church AND vote. And their churches, no matter how unfriendly to LGBTQ people, seem warm and welcoming to the downtrodden who have nothing at all. Churches are incredibly important in small/rural towns because their members do in fact show up. They’ll host the bake sales to send a kid to missionary school. They’ll donate food to families in need. And they’ll vote straight ticket republican.
We have to do better. We have to start volunteering more. Getting involved more. Run losing political campaigns more. Beat our heads against the wall until something changes more. We’ve equated posting on Facebook with activism.
This is my call to both run for something and get involved in a community thing. Go to a borough/township meeting for once and just listen to what goes on. It’ll take up plenty of our dwindling personal time. It’ll cost some money we’d rather not spend. But it’ll help things turn around. I’m going to join my local historical society this year. It costs $50.
What are you going to do?