After the election results came in, I decided to take a hiatus from posting. I needed to follow the path of my avatar, to position myself in the current and take it all in, and consider the “Brave New World” that I woke in on the morning of November 9. As I considered all that I read, the conversations with friends and family, and all that I watched unfolding, I compiled pages and pages of notes for nice philosophical essays on change and sentience and how to move forward from here; how to shape the world we desired. All of that I set aside yesterday as I watched the events of the day unfold. We do not have the luxury to wait any longer before we act. We must commit today to engaging in an act of rebellion every day. It may be small, or it may be large, but it must be constant. We must spend at least one moment each day saying, “This must not stand!” We cannot allow government by fiat to continue, to gain momentum as we work out our differences in the details. Regardless of the differences we may have at the margins, we must first raise our voices to slow or break the momentum that this administration has begun to build this week. The democracy must be preserved.
Keep the voices of dissent strong. Provide support for those in the streets through your social media activity. Bring food to protestors so that they may stay “on post” if you do not have the time to stand yourself. Provide childcare for those with children who stand for you. Share information about what is going on in our government. Encourage everyone to think deeply and to be aware. Engage!
One important “forward looking” thing we can do that is remind everyone that until they take the ballot box away, it is one of the most powerful tools for change that we have. Forty-five percent of eligible voters did not show up on November 8. Every protest should have at least one person with a sign stating the importance of registering to vote and then actually voting. And standing next to them should be someone with a sign advocating for unencumbered access to the polls. Best of all would be if they could dispense voter registration information for their locale. The vote is the best tool we have for engineering fundamental change overnight. (If you doubt this statement, you only have to think back a few months.) We can be successful with this. Then, if all else fails, we will have the elections in 2018 to begin to reverse the tide.
I think that an important part of organized resistance to the current administration would be to have at least one volunteer working in every community in the United States dedicated to voter registration and ballot box access. They could find out what the “conditions on the ground” in their area are, organize neighbors of like mind and work to make sure that every public assembly of people raising their voices has at least one person working on voter registration and the power of the vote. Voting is probably one of the least controversial issues among our cohort, and should provide a point of intersection to bring all of our diverse cohort together on at least this one issue. Along the way, by working together on this effort, we will learn more about those we work alongside, and perhaps some of those differences will find reconciliation through understanding. If we succeed in increasing voter turnout to a level befitting a democracy, it will provide us with a powerful tool to use on all the other issues we face.
And so Monday, my act of rebellion will be to rebel against voter apathy, to reach out in my community and find out if anyone is already engaged in these activities that I can partner with. Should I find that there is no one, I will take it upon myself to begin. I want voter activism to be a part of every demonstration in my community. And when I retire in June, it will become my full-time occupation. Back in the sixties, we used to ask, “What if they gave a war and no one showed up?” Now I ask, “Is it a democracy if we, the people, don’t vote?”