Primaries Are a Good Time to Disagree (IRL)

First in a series inspired by On Tyranny:Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder

A lot of the “obedience” triggers I’ve been experiencing lately have come from the pressure (both inner and outer) to “unify” with the (perceivedly) dominant Democrats, with the implication that if we don’t, Trump will be our fault. Sometimes, in my Bernie-ful neighborhood, my brain tells me I might be seen as at best a disharmony and at worst a threat. This isn’t the case, but it’s a tough feeling to wade through.

Urgent clumps of white men have become a mainstay at the Weaver’s Way Co-op corner (the very BEST corner if you need any kind of lefty signatures) and they feel like a threat to me, just as groups of white men can in any setting. When they first congealed there, I put on my quiet teacher voice and asked them to please talk with their teams about the bullying factor, (This NYT article had just come out: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-internet-supporters-2020.html) but mostly I just cross the street to avoid them, running the risk of tangling with the grumpy dry cleaner across the street. Ladying is hard, even in our Stars-Hollow-like corner of Mt. Airy.

In addition to working on my own petitioning for Elizabeth, the main way I can push back is with art. Not having a yard, I’ve been filling the local telephone poles with even more watercolor sass than usual, plus some nice big Warren posters from headquarters, all decorated with ribbons and silk flowers.

Every year as a Valentine to the neighborhood, I take out all of the art I’ve accumulated throughout the year and staple them to the phone poles, expanding my like-I-own-the-place reach beyond my usual 3-4 blocks. This year, I got a melancholy windfall of flowers that the aunts cleaned out from Grandmom’s house. Washing them in the sink took days, the years and grief and not-having-a-family-headquarters-anymore evaporating into the air as the flowers dried, weighing heavy on my heart.

Armed with my bag of art, my bag of flowers, and my trusty staple gun, I set out to freeze my hands on my Valentine project last Saturday afternoon. One of my first stops was to decorate someone else’s art, a Postcards to Voters sign put up by a mother-daughter team I had the pleasure to meet one glorious day. Imagine, being in like second grade and helping design Postcards to Voters signs—amazing! ( https://postcardstovoters.org/)

I was happily stapling when a neighborhood lady I sort of knew approached me. She had just finished chatting with one of the aforementioned white man clumps.

“I have a new acronym!” She declared. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Of course!” I said, stapling silk flowers around the sign.

“AVAT! All votes against Trump! No matter what, we have to unify and get him out of office!”

I was wearing an Elizabeth button and I (somewhat paranoidly) thought this might be an obey-the-Bern lecture. (Or worse! Obey the Bloomberg!) But still! She was right!

“That’s a great idea! I said. “You should make a poster!”

“I don’t want to make a poster. I’m not a visual artist. I sing and write songs. Just like you might not like to sing and write songs, I don’t have to make visual art.”

Her voice had an edge to it that made me nervous, but we chatted away about her acronym. Another lady happened by and asked how she could write with Postcards to Voters, since she wasn’t from around here, and I told her it’s online.

“Yeah,” said Acronym Lady, “You can’t really see the “.org”—you should make that more prominent.”

“This isn’t my work to change, but you can totally do that!” This is my standard response to unsolicited critique, particularly unsolicited critique of free-labor activism—make your own!

“She keeps trying to force me to make art,” Acronym Lady said to the woman who was no doubt regretting that she’d stopped to chat, “But that’s not what I do.”

Something was awry here and I wasn’t sure what it was, but I wasn’t quite done stapling up this batch of flowers.

Acronym Lady kept on with her unity-talk until I finally pushed back, in (I swear) the mildest and calmest way. I told her my usual stuff about how this is primaries, now’s the time to disagree! With one guy bypassing the system by trying to buy the election and another candidate who was backed by Russia in 2015 and 2016, (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-russian-effort-to-target-sanders-supporters--and-help-elect-trump/2019/04/11/741d7308-5576-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html) there’s plenty to argue about! Plus, a lot of us were really traumatized by Bernie’s followers in 2016 etc, etc.

“So you DON’T think I should be telling people about this acronym?”

“Of course you can! Just maybe leave a little space for those of us who are in trauma.”

“Well, I was just having this conversation with a Bernie Bro who was actually capable of listening…”

The “unlike you” was implied, I think. But I’d BEEN listening for like ten minutes at this point!

I told her to stop gaslighting me and go away. Sometimes people get REALLY PISSED at me when I have a personal boundary, I can’t quite figure it out.

“No, YOU go away! This is MY corner!”

Still, I wasn’t done with what I was working on, so I kept telling her to go away and stop harassing me. I made the motion of getting out the phone to call the police, which was really dumb because there are almost no reasons to do that. What kind of street artist WOULD?!

She was shouting by the time she crossed the street. “You know what? You’re an ASSHOLE,” she hollered. “I thought you were a nice person, but you’re not.”

“Good job with the unity!” I childishly yelled. “It’s going really well!”

I’m not sure why I was the person she chose to resist, but I’m so glad she did. Her unhingedness and my own give me faith that we haven’t been swallowed up yet by tyranny, be it left or right.

But also, neither I nor Acronym Lady are okay right now. We on the left are all scared and weird from the acquittal, the missing Philadelphia snow, from the troll farms, from our own blind spots and entitlements. Amazingly, my fight or flight didn’t even activate during this exchange. Plenty of loving neighbor interactions followed—accidental canvassing, art bonding, general love. Still, Acronym Lady filled up my heart the most.

The Dueling Troll Farms of the left and right want us obedient, silent, scared, and complacent, so I hope we can hold to our IRL prickliness, our effrontery, and be downright difficult. This is a very good time for us to argue for what we believe in. It’s time to challenge each other and make each other uncomfortable and push for what’s right. This is Acronym Lady’s corner and mine and (though I wish it were very much less so) even the Bros. Fear can’t be allowed to simmer us down.