Poetic License Horoscopes for July 27-Aug 3 (How About We Don’t Name Things After Grand Wizards Edition)

Cancer: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Leo: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Virgo: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Libra: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Scorpio: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Sagittarius: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Capricorn: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Aquarius: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

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Pisces: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Aries: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Taurus: The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Gemini:  The stars really miss sharing the world with John Lewis. Not only was he a Civil Rights leader who sacrificed his safety in service of voting rights and other racial justice goals, he also cared for us as a nation by serving as a congressman for thirty-three years! AND he helped keep the Movement alive by authoring the March Trilogy graphic novels https://bookshop.org/books/march-trilogy-slipcase-set/9781603093958 which serve to bring the civil rights struggle vividly to life for the next generations of activists. For these reasons and so, so many others, the stars feel that the Edmund Pettus Bridge should be renamed after Representative John Lewis. Kindly sign the petition if you haven’t already: https://www.change.org/p/public-renaming-the-edmund-pettus-bridge?use_react=false

Faith, Anger, and Heart: Part Four (MAYBE DON’T CALL PEOPLE FREAKS?!)

As I rage-hovered off my pew at the back of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, Substitute Minister called the children up to the front to join him for the Story for All Ages. On the big screen up front appeared…P.T. Barnum?!

“I never get tired of telling people he was Unitarian,” said the Substitute Minister. I’m skeptical whenever any old-timey (or new-timey, for that matter) white dude’s face is up on the big screen at church, but sheesh-o-rama this was the WORST.

Substitute Minister had seen The Greatest Showman the night before and was inspired to talk with the congregation’s children about it. (For a good accounting of what makes The Greatest Showman so problematic, check out this surprisingly woke episode of The Flop House: https://www.flophousepodcast.com/2018/05/episode-257-the-greatest-showman/) Substitute Minister was impressed with how Barnum had uplifted the “freaks” in the movie and convinced them they were good enough, as if that were up to him.

The. Idea. That this man. Who OWNED AND EXPLOITED HUMAN BEINGS, who called people who looked different “freaks” and CHARGED PEOPLE TO COME LOOK AT THEM was somehow a doer of good, was some white angel there to redeem them?! Was too much. This was the story he was telling the children, and everybody there was just LETTING IT HAPPEN.

This was the day that Trump’s trans erasure memo began circulating, the day we all learned of the impeding registry of genitals, the day my friends across the gender spectrum became even more afraid than they already were. On that day, Substitute Minster thought a song from the “freak” Bearded Lady was what was called for. She was just beginning her song on the big screen as I steamed out the door.

It’s hard to talk about that morning in church without becoming incoherent with rage. The weight and sum of my fear and anger and disgust at the white male entitlement that allowed Substitute Minister to think he had the right to 1. Stifle political announcements and 2. Bestow worth upon those he viewed as beneath him thought his proxy the fictionalized Barnum is heavy to carry and hard to parse. It’s garbage. It’s everything wrong. This kind of institutional white cis male supremacy needs to be stifled at every level, in EVERY edifice, in EVERY way if the rest of us are truly ever going to thrive.

I wrote to the non-substitute minister and heard back pretty quickly. Valid, he said, and offered to talk when he got back from travelling. I headed off, not wearing warm enough clothes, to our local Democrats’ campaign headquarters with my BFF. We picked up our door-knocking lists and settled into our Blue Wave work. But I felt hopeless that afternoon, the things that were wrong and broken seemed so vast and embedded that I worried they could never be healed.

That hopeless feeling would pass, but this brush with Institution, like all others for me, would steal a big swath of time and leave lasting scars.

Faith, Anger, and Heart: Part Two (Stoplight Guy Forever)

The week that the Unitarian Society of Germantown put “Welcome Pope Francis” on their sign, the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration’s sign said something that made way more sense to me: “Beloved Community.” I also noticed that their minister was a woman, so it seemed like it would be a safe place to be while the rest of the city (and my now-former church friends) fell in love with the pope. They put stones in water for their Joys and Sorrows just like USG did, but the congregation shared aloud if they chose to. One member shared his post-Catholic pain during that time, and that was the ONLY mention of the pope. The sermon, given by a layperson who was a woman of color, was explicitly in favor of LGBT rights (The Q hadn’t been widely added yet.) and ended with something like “Someday maybe I’ll be ready to sit down with Kim Davis and try to understand her. But not. Today.”

Still, for all of Restoration’s wokeness-before-that-was-a-mainstream-thing, it was hard to get past the architecture. Just like all of those cathedrals I’d studied in Art History, it was shaped like a cross. All of the characters on the stain glass were white people. Unitarianism, for an anti-racist post-Catholic, is like trying to break the cycle of abuse and then realizing you’re still abusing and being abused, but gently. It’s like one of those dreams where you know a place is your home, but you also know it isn’t.

But still, this spring when the voice in my Kirtan-blissed mind told me to sing in church, Restoration seemed like a good bet.

There’s a flaw in my personality wherein I’m still sort of looking for a perfectly welcoming, perfectly approving community/family. It probably comes from not having been particularly welcomed as a child, from inherited ancestor-grief in my XX chromosomes, or both. It’s a flaw that has caused me unending sorrow as an adult, to the point where if some group seems perfectly kind and safe, I should probably run for my life before I get too attached/expectant/hurt.

When I went back to try Restoration again, my child-brain started to spin its fantasy of perfect welcome. Here’s why my mistake was both understandable and irresistible:

When it was my turn in the Joys and Sorrows, I told the congregation I was feeling scared because the following weekend I would be headed to D.C. to counterprotest the (DELICIOUSLY FAILED! https://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2018/08/my-wonderful-magical-day-of-yelling-at.html) Unite the Right rally. I said I wanted to honor Heather Heyer’s name. And then, the most intoxicating thing happened: the congregation applauded.

As activists, we are trained not to expect rewards or thanks (derisively called “cookies”) for simply doing the right thing. This is in spite of the fact that doing the right thing takes hundreds of hours of unpaid labor and is often physically and emotionally dangerous. Women are especially policed for this (we especially police EACH OTHER for this) and I think the phrase “performative ally” was one of the phrases most successfully weaponized by Russian trolls in 2016. Though I wouldn’t criticize another activist for being praised, I live in (misogynist) fear of being deemed too proud of myself, of being too happy to be in the struggle.

So when the Restoration congregation applauded my efforts, I felt a deep sense of relief and belonging, of sanctuary. As I sat down, I felt briefly free from the family alienation, the Bernie Bro concern-trolling, the microaggressions, the weaponized phrases. I just felt appreciated for a second—a very wholesome drug.

EVEN BETTER: A few Joys and Sorrows behind me in line, there was Stoplight Guy. Stoplight Guy is everything that is right with democracy, with spirituality, with the world. He was a tall African American man with caring-dad energy. He explained that he lived across the street and was there to update the congregation about the very dangerous intersection the church shares with him. He told us about his efforts to get the city to understand the need for a light. There were SO many accidents, he said. It really needed to stop.

If this church had a place for Stoplight Guy, it had a place for me. We sand “When Your Heart Is in a Holy Place,” one of my favorite hymns. I felt refreshed and energized, ready to let my guard down.

Screaming at the Supreme Court: A Love Story (Part Four)

            A really cool thing happened and then a really dreadful thing happened. Lots of protesters were sitting and having a rest along the planters that lined the sidewalk across the street from the Supreme Court. Amy and I went over there to relax for a minute and make sure our phones were charged. I opened the foil-wrapped PB& J from my purse and ate it with panic-hunger. We still joined the chants going on across the street. I wondered aloud why we weren’t BLOCKING the street. If this were Philly, we would definitely be blocking the street.

            Sometimes, tourists would come by and talk to us about what was going on. A group of Chinese women stopped to ask me what my “E.R.A. Now” sign meant. One woman in the group, tall and thin and brightly dressed, didn’t have much English at all, but she had two words:

“Me too.”

            Her face was shiny and happy, maybe just excited to have found the right words. A lightning bolt of connection, sadness, and heart from all across the world went through me. We smiled at each other. We had something beautiful and horrible and profound: Me too.

            Not too long after that life-altering exchange, a white, middle-aged, American man with a goatee, walking his bike and wearing yellow bicycle clothes, stopped to greet some friends who were sitting near me. In my freaked-out, hypervigilant state, I overheard what he was saying, and it FUCKING CONCERNED ME.

In an offhanded, chitchatty way, he said this:

“It’s just a shame because you know the ones voting yes today are the same ones who went nuts when Franken…”

“NO. NOT HERE.” I went from peaceful PB&J mode to spitting-nails mad in half a second. “YOU ARE NOT going to talk about that FRANKEN BULLSHIT HERE. NOT. TODAY.”

Like so many “liberal” men, he was super-ready with:

“You shut the fuck up, bitch. I’m just talking to my friends.” He shook his finger at me and said something physically threatening, I wish I could remember what.

“GO. AHEAD.” I said, holding my sign aloft and bracing for impact.

It seems so foolhardy now, but I WAS physically ready to fight him. I wanted him to come at me so I could rip him to FUCKING SHREDS and with him, all of the troll-farm- indoctrinated Bernie Bro rape-apologists I’d been tormented by for the past three years.

It felt like the crowd around him was treating me as a threat, but it’s likely that some of them were trying to protect me. NOT the white woman that the Bicycle Man had stopped to greet though--she stood between us, shielding the man from my attack. A black man with a very gentle manner tried to get between us on the other side. He was trying to help, I think, but I felt boxed-in and snarling. People were filming with their phones—I’m sure I’m on some feeds looking and sounding like a caged beast.

“You need to get some help.” The white lady acting as the patriarchy’s human shield kept telling me.

“You’re crazy,” the bicycle man kept saying.

1.      I am getting help! This protest IS me getting help.

2.      Nothing calms a girl down like some good old-fashioned gaslighting.

The worst part was that I ‘knew” in this moment that I was the threat here, not sleep-rape-joke making Franken (Who, in my fury, I kept calling Frankl. Sorry Viktor Frankl! Love youuuuu!”) not this man gaslighting me and telling me to shut up, not even Kavanaugh. To this little crowd, I was the scariest thing at the Capitol that day. Maybe I’m a little bit okay with that, except:

            “You’re making my daughter cry!” said the woman angrily.

            Her daughter, a curly-haired twelve-something, was indeed sobbing, in the same way my then-littlest nephew sobbed when I ruined the Thanksgiving before last screaming at the adults about Nazis and racism and the homophobic Catholic church and rape culture and Water Protectors and god knows what else. I recognized and empathized with both kids’ fear, but I tried to understand that neither I nor my anger was the problem.

            “YOU’RE making her cry! WHY DON’T YOU STAND UP FOR WOMEN?”

            “You need help,” the woman kept intoning, and I really can’t argue with her there.

            “What if it was HER in that fucking picture? What if it was YOU?” I screamed as I started to walk away.

            Although some people said words of encouragement (“Stay strong, you can do this.”) as I was led (by Amy, thank goodness) away from the scene in shock, I felt like the worst monster ever, like I’d ruined the movement, like I’d set back the Democrats by a million years. I was shattered, and ashamed of myself, but I can also see who did this.

            AL FRANKEN FUCKING DID THIS. He fucked women over in person and then he fucked us over as a party. Liberal men did this, by dismissing the concerns of all non-white non-men as “identity politics” and insisting that “real people” only cared about money.

            While I admit my anger was scary and I’m sad that that little girl cried, I hope she’ll remember my fury on her behalf. I hope, someday, it’ll spark some fury in her. That doesn’t make me not-ashamed, but it does make me a little hopeful.

Screaming at the Supreme Court: A Love Story (Part One)

If you're wondering how to manage/use/deploy your lady-rage (or even, dreamy guy allies, your on-behalf-of-ladies rage!) this book is one thousand therapy sessions. If you're in Philly, call the Big Blue Marble. https://www.bigbluemarblebooks.com/

It was a last-minute decision to go. On Friday night, October 5, Amy and I were watching Murphy Brown, newly rebooted and excoriating the fictional White House Press Corps. We were scrolling through our feeds and seething as the “on the fence” votes changed to Kavanaugh votes. I was double-seething because my “friends” on social media seemed to think that Susan Collins was the ONLY person to blame.

“I think we have to go,” I said, and I looked around on my facebook until I found the Flood the Capitol March, lead by the Women’s March and Planned Parenthood Action. I already had a sign I’d made for an anti-Kavanaugh rally we’d attended a few weeks before in Philly.

It didn’t feel like the other protests. As I cleaned the house, rearranged my Saturday plans, and went to bed early, I didn’t have as much power-to-the-people hopefulness buoying me up. Instead, I was SEETHING, so frustrated to still be doing this work, decades after my own rape experiences and millennia after women were enslaved. IT HAS NEVER NOT BEEN THIS.

Since I became politically active, this blog has often been about convincing people that protesting and other political work could be nice, friendly, loving, inclusive, and all of those things are true. But in the past few weeks, I have become less and less willing to perform polite, feminine, hopeful organizing and more willing to give voice to the feral fury that sometimes makes me feel out of control. Getting ready to Flood the Capitol, I felt almost none of my usual aren’t-humans-amazing feelings. It was more a feeling of “Survivors, let’s burn it down.”

For professional reasons, I’m hesitant to be honest about the fury. Because I work with children, it’s important for me to feel nurturing, loving, and safe. My clients and their families deserve a solid, peaceful presence in their lives, so I feel guilty to also be this raging, scary thing. But at the same time, it’s love, nurturing, and protectiveness—for myself (both adult and inner traumatized child), for my nieces and nephews, for the fear that my students, mostly children of color, will face in a future with Kavanaugh on the bench.

            As Amy and I drove Washingtonward at way-too-early-on-a-Saturday-o’clock, we decided: No getting arrested. The priority was to get safely back to the students, to not miss a single tutoring hour. As much as I admire those who get arrested (Later in the day I would sob watching a young woman have a panic attack as the handcuffs went on.) I knew my priorities were elsewhere.