Friends, we are still numb. But also, we know we have each other. We hope you will join us for soup and community this Saturday if you feel up for it. We promise friendly faces, delicious food, and hugs if you need them. Hope to see you there, it’s an open house, so drop by for as long as you like. No pressure if you don’t feel up to a big gathering yet, we understand. Watch this space, more to come. For now, we are off to make a big pot of soup…
Sign up to join us: https://www.mobilize.us/nj11thforchange/event/742317/
Two of our friends wrote reflections on what happened this week, we thought they were worth sharing. Here’s the first:
Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of …each other. Folks, I can’t sugarcoat it. That was a shellacking. We have lost a lot. We will lose more over the coming years and even decades unless we can unpack the supreme court. Now is the time of teeth gnashing and rending of garments. It is the time of tears.
It is not, however, a time for recriminations. Kamala Harris ran a flawless campaign for the scant 100 days she had to do so. Her team was disciplined. The get out the vote and donation machines were legendary. I can’t answer why people stayed home or why so many men and women voted for one of the greatest threats to our country. I’m sure the pundits will have something to say about all that, and I won’t listen to a single one of them.
The truth is hard but simple. We are back in 2016. The situation is more dire and more hopeful. Dire because the guardrails are off, the supreme court is already stacked, and Trump is more unstable and more ready to burn things down. More hopeful because we have had years of training to resist trump and to resist GOP policies.
This is no time for the faint-hearted. People of Color, immigrants, DACA recipients, LGBTQIA+, anyone with a functioning uterus, anyone who receives social security or medicare…all these people are under attack and under threat. Despair is a luxury we cannot afford. Hand-wringing “how did we get here” is an indulgence we don’t have time for. We are where we are. We are who we are. We are a very tired cavalry. But we are still here. We still have each other. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of each other.
And I know. I hear you. It’s going to be bad. “They’re going to – “ well fill in the blank. Take away healthcare, gut the government, destroy the department of education, raise tariffs, destroy the environment. But my response to that is…not yet. They haven’t done any of those things yet. Can we stop them? I don’t know. Maybe we can. So I’m not going to panic about those things yet. They haven’t happened and perhaps they won’t – if we organize. If we fight. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of each other.
They want us paralyzed with fear. Motionless in despair. They don’t want our joy. They don’t want our comradery. They certainly don’t want our action. There are mutual aid groups all over the country. We have organizers locally and nationally. We may need to get uncomfortable. National strikes, large scale protests. We may need to get local and get our towns and states to pass constitutional amendments and local ordinances to protect people’s rights. We may need a lot of things – we can DO a lot of things – but only if we work together. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of each other!
I’m still in this fight. Andy Kim is in this fight! Mikie Sherrill is in this fight! Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor are in this fight! Sure, we might lose a battle or two or ten or twenty and we must understand that. But we keep fighting. We fight for our kids, for our parents, for ourselves. We fight for our friends and loved ones. Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of each other! We’re in this together. We will catch each other when we fall. And we will rise together. I am so proud to be in this fight with you.
And here’s the second:
Whoever coined the phrase “Opinions are like a--holes. Everyone has one,” probably found themselves in a situation like we are in the day after the election. Since 1AM this morning, I’ve trawled through the overabundance of opinions on every conceivable thing that Harris and the Democrats did wrong in the campaign. I haven’t found too much about all the things they, and us, did right.
So, I’m dedicating this moment of grace to all the doers who did so many things right in our neck of the woods in NJ.
Post 2016 election, many of us came together with a simple idea and shared purpose – that we couldn't control what was happening in the world beyond us, so maybe we could focus on our towns and neighborhoods. And then others would do that in their towns and neighborhoods. And our combined efforts would model a version of the world we wanted to live in — a world of diversity, inclusivity, opportunity, decency, and humanity.
Groups like this one sprouted across our towns and districts. We volunteered our time, effort, and money. We ran candidates, organized campaigns, knocked doors, made calls, won elections, lost elections...rinsed and repeated, year after year after year. Much of this was in addition to the world we were already doing to nurture our communities – we tended our parks, woods and streams, volunteered in our community's schools, EMS's, fire departments, PTAs and more. When we couldn’t work directly, we helped other angels in our communities lifting fellow humans in other towns who were struggling to meet basic needs. We are privileged to live in parts of a Blue state where we could do this.
Now, for the first time in my American experience, I am reckoning with the idea that I have no idea what happens now...how many weeks, or months or years we have before all the ugly things we were warned about come to bear. It’s not just me. Everyone around me, my friends in other countries, are feeling numb, exhausted and uncertain. In an election that had the potential to change the course of our history, we learned that voters were motivated by hate and fear more than sensible policies, common sense, and a shared purpose.
What’s important is that we tried. We didn't sit around pointing fingers and pontificating about problems and solutions on social media. We rolled up our sleeves and did the hard work - day in and day out, year after year.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to be part of real and meaningful change for the past few years. Thank you to the leaders, organizers and candidates who led fearlessly and created opportunities for people like me to help.
Please shut off the social media naysayers, pontificators, cynics, prognosticators, judges and juries over the next few days. They haven't a damn clue of the work we've done, and the tremendous difference it made in- and for our communities. Let them focus on the things they think we got wrong. We know and will keep reminding each other of the long list of things we got right.
Call for volunteers
If you are looking for an effective action this week, there are still uncalled House and Senate seats, and voters in those states need help curing their mail ballots
National call training, multiple dates
