The radio tells me that calls to suicide hotlines are up 30 percent since the election. The news tells me that racists will be in the white house. Friends share stories with me about how bad things are about to get. A writer I respect says we have less than two months at best. People are saying farewell to American democracy. My daughter asks if she will be deported or enslaved.
Enough, I say. To all who have a stake in making you feel awful: Enough. It is time to huddle. It is time to take care of each other, and ourselves. It is time to plan and ready ourselves for resistance. But we know how to do this. We have been countercultural. We have been oppositional and defiant. We have gone to protests and put signs on lamp posts and worn slogans on our shirts and pinned statements to our jackets. We’ve talked to people, and sometimes shouted at them, and we’ve listened to them shout at us. We have grown our hair long as a signal to others, and we have cut it short as a signal to others. We have thrown parties. We have played our music. We have told our jokes, our many, many jokes, and those jokes have brought the bright air back into the rooms we were in, if even for a moment.
And we have sat quietly, breathing, watching how our world is created anew with each breath.
Perhaps it has been a long time–perhaps some of you are young enough that you don’t remember these times. But some of us do, and we’ll show you how it’s done.
We got this.
