[Because my diaries are full of whining, my DK name honors a guy whose whining was epic. Compared to his days, chained beside the bodies of his dead brothers, mine are a cakewalk and I shouldn’t be whining at all. Having said that, I feel that I am chained beside the dead bodies of democracy, one human one vote, and the rule of law.]
You can skip over this background stuff, directly to the open letter below!
Last night, before the debate, I gave to the Democratic Unity Fund. Trying to send a message. But I expect the message was not received. Today my inbox is full of the exact same appeals.
In 2015 I sent Bernie $27 a month, because I thought his team was making a difference, even though I was working on a 1099 and my company had cut way back. When Hillary was nominated I switched over. Our family’s situation went into a worse spiral the following year and now we’ve got additional medical problems, so this time around I have even fewer dollars and less attention to offer the causes of truth and repentance and restorative justice. I’m heartbroken that with Nazis trying (and failing) to run our country under the guidance of Russian thugs, I am too tired and distracted to do much at all.
Having said that, specific plans to fix things cheer me up and I am grateful to every candidate who presents them. Let’s adopt Baratunde Thurston’s proposal that Democratic debates should take only questions from Black women. And I appreciate the useful organizing advice here …
[deep breath]
I am grateful that I’m working poor with a roof over my head. That I still have a job (not what I used to do, but something I can do, gritting my teeth at the daily moral compromises required). But I hate that my family (counting the extended parts too) has to spend so many hours a week juggling bills and has to postpone or skip medical care and decline any invitation that involves people meeting up at a place that sells food and drink and that I wear clothes other people have discarded and am glad to get them. More whining: I completely stopped giving money to church (and feel awful about that) and only saw one Marvel movie in the last 5 years (fortunately a good one); I am redirecting $5 / month to DK and the other journalistic outlets that I want to keep paying their reporters …
Dear Democrats:
Donation records and stickers are not of interest to me so I don’t even open those emails. When I did give money to the party or a candidate, I didn’t remember to always give it from the same email address or use the same ActBlue form or whatever so even if you do offer to show me my “donation record” it will be wrong and it’ll just make me angry to look at it.
Back in 2015 I absolutely cared about (and gave money because of) monthly fundraising goals demonstrating momentum, but now I don’t have the money or the bandwidth (and many of the journalists who used to cover actual momentum are out of work and/or focusing on Twitter) so … nope.
Every time I think about giving money or time/effort I have to fight past my heartbreak about the DNC shenanigans that wasted everyone’s time and the infighting and business-as-usual … mistakes! They were mistakes, right? After the election, when I could bring myself to open an email from the DNC, I liked some of the new team who signed up to lead. And then shenanigans surfaced again, with consultants not being able to work for insurgents … where are we going to get our new ideas from? The new ideas that we can use to take advantage of youthful idealism / energy and inspire / forge new coalitions and win?
You must have figured out that I’m poor because now much of the time you ask me for only $3. Due to the newfangled “numbers of donations” metric or … ?
Yes I have favorite candidates and I have given to them directly, once each. I haven’t watched a single debate because I have been working evenings and because I don’t need to. I will get behind our nominee no matter who it is, and I want us to take back our country, and I don’t think “Democrats doing the same old things” are going to get us where we need to go.
Thanks for reading.