Get the Fuck On Board

    A few nights ago at a social gathering I overheard the following exchange as I helped myself to cheese: 
"I'm not sure where to get started, it feels hard to know where to get stuck in."

"I know! Sometimes it feels like I'm on a train but I don't know what to do, or how to help."

    Likely you know what this is in reference to: the fast spiraling chaos that is the first few weeks of the first Elon Musk regime second Donald Trump Presidency. Since January 21st we've been bombarded with headlines of ICE coming to elementary schools, mid-air plane collisions, information disappearing from Federal websites, mass firings of Federal employees, federal financial aid from SNAP to cancer research and everything in between being "paused," and now we're descending into an outright trade war with allies that are closest to us both geographically and culturally.

    Whew, take a breath. Take a deep cleansing breath. It's a lot, and it's going to get worse before it gets better, and for some of our neighbours it's going to get to a level of bad we have only read about.

    We want to click our ruby slippers and just have a sense of normalcy be magically restored. 

    I'm sorry, booboo, that's not how this is going work. We'll be mopping up this mess for decades and we have to do it with the knowledge that it's not for us millennials, or Gen Xers, or Boomers, or possibly even Gen Z. This is for everyone coming after us.

    Continuing with the train metaphor (because you know I love a train!): I think we all know, thanks to Thomas the Tank Engine, how a coal-fired steam train works. Coal is shoveled into the fire box of a furnace of a boiler to keep generating steam to power a locomotive pulling train cars behind it. The person maintaining the furnace is called a fireman and their job is to literally just keep shoveling coal. It's a labour intensive, sweaty, dirty job that I'm sure not a few firemen just wanted to put down the shovel and enjoy a nice brew while watching the scenery. But if you stop shoveling the coal, the train stops. If you feel like you're on a train and not sure how to start/stop it, not sure how to contribute to the momentum, I suggest you think of yourself as the fireman on a steam powered locomotive:

Shovel the coal.

Shoveling coal is:

    Regularly contacting your elected representatives either by phone, or sending them an email. There's different rhetoric on which is more effective; my view is it's all circumstantial. On hot potato issues, bills that are coming to the floor in 12 hours and need the plug pulled right now a phone call is good. These calls take, at most, 15 minutes. You'll likely talk to a member of your representative's office staff who will ask for your full name and phone number (in case someone from the office needs to get in touch with you), and you can say something as minimal as "I'm asking Senator Gillibrand/Representative Ryan to vote for/against S./H.R.###." You can give your reasoning, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. Emails can be sent via their website contact page. If you go this route, be prepared to add some more volume to your message, make it personal, but keep it concise. Sometimes this is better than calling because there's, well, a written record of voter sentiment that they can bring to the floor.

    On really good days, IMO, the voicemail will be full, and no one is available to take my call. I love when that happens because it's a little reel of my community participating in democracy. And you know what I do when that happens?

I keep calling. 

    Until I get to leave a voicemail or speak to a person. One of my colleagues just shared with me that she's set aside time each Monday to call her reps, and I think that is so smart. Build it into your morning routine or lunch hour; call while your in the coffee pick up drive thru line; after you've put in your takeout order; waiting for your dentist appointment; instead of playing candy crush (or whatever game is cool now); before your duolingo lesson: open up an outgoing email message, go to their website, call. 

    Fellow phone-phobic Millennials, sorrynotsorry. I personally hate phone calls because I can't see the other person and thus have a very hard time gauging how they're picking up what I'm putting down. I hate phone calls because I'm not sure what to talk about. I hate making phone calls because the little pocket computers we're still calling phones for some reason are singularly badly designed to actually make phone calls that are not on speaker phone. I hate phone calls because now everyone is just chatting, at first appearance, to themselves or you, oh wait, no they're not, they have a bluetooth earbud so small it's invisible to the naked eye and they're just talking at random in the grocery store or coffee line. How are those people not completely distracted??!

    So when it comes time to make phone calls, I  park myself in a quiet spot where I'm unlikely to be interrupted. I put my phone on speaker, or use bluetooth headphones. I gird my loins, and take deep cleansing breaths as the call rings through. I remind myself that I have a purpose/script for this phone call; I remember all the very bland, neutral Capitol Hill staffers I've spoken with over the years who have only ever said "what's the best number to reach you at?" with zero inflection. And when I hang up I give myself a little high-five and steal some chocolate from my office mate's desk.

    You don't have to chat with this person. No justification is needed; just state your piece, politely and courteously, and get on with your day. I guarantee these poor underpaid office workers have heard far crazier and longer phone calls than yours. Yours is one of the good ones.

    I confess that sometimes I shirk this duty by saying I'm represented by Democrats almost all the way from national to local politics (my state senator is a Republican); of course they're already going to vote the way I want them to vote. 

    But sometimes they let me down, and most times Charles Schumer makes me want to scream into a pillow, (that's another blog post for another day). Even if they do vote the way I want them to, it's helpful for the data collection for me to call/write to say, "thank you for voting like that! Sure with the way things are in the Senate and House, it was mostly a symbolic gesture, but I appreciate it nonetheless and votes like this encourage me to enthusiastically vote for you!" Believe me, they notice shit like that.

    Even if I were represented by Republicans from the top to bottom, I would still be calling and writing, and I would encourage you to do the same. There's data to be mined from all that outreach: how many people called regarding a specific issue and did their representative just blithely do the opposite? That's some damning campaign material for their opposition. 

There's a real sharknado of issues to contact your representatives about, how do you know when to call and what to call about? 

    Let's go back to the steam engine metaphor: A fireman doesn't shovel coal without guidance. Even today trains are driven by an engineer or driver (US vs UK terminology). The engineer knows the mechanical operations of the train, they know how fast the train should be going, and they know when the train should brake; they know the ins and outs of train safety and compliance. As firemen, we don't need to know these things, but we do need to find a good, reliable engineer and jump on their train. 

    There will be another blog post drilling down into more detail for specific issues (immigration, housing, climate etc;) but for general rallying/issue deployment groups like Indivisible Project, The Working Families Party, and MoveOn are really good at organizing, and doing the work to triage what needs emergency action on the congressional floor, and what needs long term buy-in. I look to these guys for my marching orders and scripts, and I also look to my union, CWA, and what they need mobilization on. 

    If you're lucky enough to have union membership use it. Not just for your own needs, but for the need of other workers. There's short line connecting aircraft collisions and the de-fanging of PATCO Professional Air Traffic Controllers in 1981 when Ronald Reagan (possibly under the cloud of undiagnosed dementia/alzheimers) declared their strike for better wages and working conditions illegal. Reagan laid off 11,000 of the 13,000 striking workers two days after they went on strike, and arrested union organizers. Now we are in a situation in which one depressed, functionally alcoholic, with an irregular sleep schedule ATC is doing a job that should be done by at least two people, and staring down a mandatory retirement at age 56 with nobody coming on line to replace them anytime soon. Frankly, it's shocking to me that aircraft collisions aren't happening more frequently (though there's been quite a few close calls). 

    My point is, your labour union is only as strong as its least involved member. Don't let that member be you.

Shoveling the Coal takes Time

    In every aspect: recognition that this effort will take a lot of time; and also time as a resource that can be paid towards the effort, time donated towards building community. If there's a conspiracy theory I subscribe to, it's that the heightened productivity/workload demanded of the American workforce has exhausted us into submission, and apathy. We get home at the end of the day fairly brain dead and thus unable to go to a school board, city council, or county legislature meeting, much less participate in one. It's true that there's only so many hours in the day, and if you're a parent you probably want to be there for your kid, try to shield them in a nice cocoon of normalcy and love from the dark fuckery swirling outside. 

    I am cognizant that our choices are a shit sandwich or ten year old Big Mac. Yeah, we deserve better, it's just that no one is going to give it to us; we have to park our asses in the seats and DEMAND what we are OWED. 

    We have to attend the Zoom calls scheduled by Indivisible, and the meetups from Democratic Socialists of America. We don't have to attend all of them, but we need to make them a routine practice because that's how communities, like strength and muscle, is built: a consistent routine that gradually escalates in threshold.

Shoveling Coal is Not Nice

    I ain't ever met a fireman or ridden in a steam engine (bucket list), but I imagine they're not the most charismatic of people. Especially on the job. But the fireman's got a goal, and it's to keep this train running. If he's not very chatty, or short in his answers, get over it: he's got work to do *looks pointedly at white women.*

    As a white woman it is culturally important for me to be described as "nice," for no one to ever criticize me, and to just overall hold a place that is pleasant, compliant, and cooperative. We were taught this by mothers who won the right to employment through direct action and then were passed over for promotions because they were too bossy. Our mothers were taught this by our grandmothers who our grandfathers referred to as the ol' ball and chain and could legally SA before leaving them financially bereft. The problem is this has shifted the workload of getting shit done onto other shoulders: the shoulders of Black, and Brown Women, Indigenous Women, who then have the added insult of watching us co-opt their methods without giving credit. 

    It's about time for us to give no fucks who thinks we're ornery. It's about time we liberate the corner of our brains caught in a constant loop of anxiety and say to the people spouting nonsense that they're spouting nonsense. And you can say it just like that:

    "Dad, you're talking nonsense."

    Practice this, it feels amazing. I mean, I want to be clear: push the boundaries as far as you feel safe. I won't shame you if this puts job prospects, and livelihoods at risk, but for my white able bodied sisters, I am begging you: put that privilege to work, 

Get the Fuck On Board.