After the election, I turned off National Public Radio and drove to work in despondent silence.
My mother wanted to protest. "Let's go!" she said.
I was non-committal, "What if it snows?"
"Let's go!" she said, and as the day got closer and the sky was clear, I knew I would go. When your 74-year-old mother wants to march with you: You march.
Participating in the march on Jan. 21 meant I had to tune in, but I was hurting. Love wins, I'd been saying. So, love lost? It was an unfathomable blow.
Then, I heard about the Writers Resist event worldwide and near me at Town Hall Seattle.
For $5, Town Hall Seattle has lifted my spirits on many occasions and put me in touch with my heroes. This is where I heard Margaret Atwood read from MaddAddam (see my review of the trilogy at EcoLit Books), saw Tom Robbins the epitome of cool in his 80s, and was inspired by Senator Cory Booker a funny, engaging, politician rooted in love who aims to reduce mass incarceration.
It's a drive to get to Town Hall, a challenge to park, but the Great Hall built in 1999 welcomes all with its long tradition of civic spirit.
It didn't hurt that my spouse and I came into town early for a slice of vegan pizza at Sizzle Pie and, across the street, a scoop of plant-based ice cream — caramel black ash and California Cabin (smokey vanilla and fir with black-pepper cardamom shortbread) — at Frankie and Jo's. The ease of this cruelty-free indulgence is, in and of itself, a kind of futuristic utopia.
The ACLU of Washington hosted the Writers Resist event and welcomed us with a "Geeks Love ACLU" button and a Star Wars themed sticker, "The Vagina Strikes Back." They know us! The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was founded in 1920. Prior to election day, if I am remembering the numbers I heard correctly, it had 18,000 members in Washington State, 14,500 have joined since election day (my spouse is one of those).
We sat down to hear from "some writers." With the exception of Daniel James Brown author of Boys in the Boat, read for my book club, I was not familiar with their works.
One by one, the writers invoked the spirits of writers before them, speaking powerful words, bringing poems and speeches to life. They mixed in their own works, modern twists, and created our community of voices.
Author Samuel Ligon began with a beautiful piece that wove famous phrases from pop and literary culture, from words and writing together. Voices were rising, making themselves heard together. So it began.
She read her work, How Not to Be Afraid of Everything." It begins, "how not to punch everyone in the face" and took comfort in Lucille Clifton's "won't you celebrate with me," which ends with its dark line, "I want you to celebrate with me someone has tried to kill me and has failed."
Samuel Ligon read Dear Gaybashers by Jill McDonough. "A big part of resistance is play," he said.
The last line of that poem: "Chrome."
And I was laughing, invigorated.
Here we are together capable of all these emotions, all these visions of the future and united by our wish to be a community, by our wish to make things better for each other. Here we are bringing...our best impulses: creativity, empathy, and the belief that we all deserve a voice.
Along with the Writers Resist movement comes Readers Resist.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Praise Song for the Day, A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
Ur-Facism, Umberto Eco, in The New York Review of Books
“We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.” ― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce
My mother wanted to protest. "Let's go!" she said.
I was non-committal, "What if it snows?"
"Let's go!" she said, and as the day got closer and the sky was clear, I knew I would go. When your 74-year-old mother wants to march with you: You march.
Participating in the march on Jan. 21 meant I had to tune in, but I was hurting. Love wins, I'd been saying. So, love lost? It was an unfathomable blow.
Then, I heard about the Writers Resist event worldwide and near me at Town Hall Seattle.
For $5, Town Hall Seattle has lifted my spirits on many occasions and put me in touch with my heroes. This is where I heard Margaret Atwood read from MaddAddam (see my review of the trilogy at EcoLit Books), saw Tom Robbins the epitome of cool in his 80s, and was inspired by Senator Cory Booker a funny, engaging, politician rooted in love who aims to reduce mass incarceration.
It's a drive to get to Town Hall, a challenge to park, but the Great Hall built in 1999 welcomes all with its long tradition of civic spirit.
A vibrant gathering place in the heart of Seattle, Town Hall fosters an engaged community through civic, arts, and educational programs that reflect—and inspire—our region’s best impulses: creativity, empathy, and the belief that we all deserve a voice.Writers Resist on a Sunday night would launch my Womxn's March week.
It didn't hurt that my spouse and I came into town early for a slice of vegan pizza at Sizzle Pie and, across the street, a scoop of plant-based ice cream — caramel black ash and California Cabin (smokey vanilla and fir with black-pepper cardamom shortbread) — at Frankie and Jo's. The ease of this cruelty-free indulgence is, in and of itself, a kind of futuristic utopia.
The ACLU of Washington hosted the Writers Resist event and welcomed us with a "Geeks Love ACLU" button and a Star Wars themed sticker, "The Vagina Strikes Back." They know us! The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was founded in 1920. Prior to election day, if I am remembering the numbers I heard correctly, it had 18,000 members in Washington State, 14,500 have joined since election day (my spouse is one of those).We sat down to hear from "some writers." With the exception of Daniel James Brown author of Boys in the Boat, read for my book club, I was not familiar with their works.
One by one, the writers invoked the spirits of writers before them, speaking powerful words, bringing poems and speeches to life. They mixed in their own works, modern twists, and created our community of voices.
Author Samuel Ligon began with a beautiful piece that wove famous phrases from pop and literary culture, from words and writing together. Voices were rising, making themselves heard together. So it began.
This is what I heard:
We must resist silence and despair.“Your silence will not protect you.” ― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
"An ugly idea if left unchallenged begins to turn the color of normal." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Now is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About, The New YorkerWe must have conviction. We must love more.
“I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.” ― Toni Morrison, Song of SolomonWe must create: Creativity and life compels us. The government is the creation of the people. Freedom and liberty are our persistent task, our duty.
"There is no need of knowing whether, by pursuing justice, we shall manage to preserve liberty. It is essential to know that, without liberty, we shall achieve nothing and that we shall lose both future justice and ancient beauty. Liberty alone draws men from their isolation; but slavery dominates a crowd of solitudes. And art, by virtue of that free essence I have tried to define, unites whereas tyranny separates. It is not surprising, therefore, that art should be the enemy marked out by every form of oppression. It is not surprising that artists and intellectuals should have been the first victims of modern tyrannies, whether of the Right or of the Left. Tyrants know there is in the work of art an emancipatory force, which is mysterious only to those who do not revere it. Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and this is its whole secret. And thousands of concentration camps and barred cells are not enough to hide this staggering testimony of dignity." — Create Dangerously, A Lecture by Albert Camus, December 14, 1957, University of Uppsala, Sweden
"If I don't claim that space inside of me, others surely will." — Tod Marshall, Washington State Poet Laureate, 2016-2018We must stand up. We must march. We must resist.
"Say what you see. Write it. Shout it. Do what you can." — author Jess Walter
"The road is made by walking together. Juntos." — Claudia Castro Luna, Seattle's Civic PoetPoet Jane Wong brought anger and despair as I was feeling.
She read her work, How Not to Be Afraid of Everything." It begins, "how not to punch everyone in the face" and took comfort in Lucille Clifton's "won't you celebrate with me," which ends with its dark line, "I want you to celebrate with me someone has tried to kill me and has failed."
Samuel Ligon read Dear Gaybashers by Jill McDonough. "A big part of resistance is play," he said.
The last line of that poem: "Chrome."
And I was laughing, invigorated.
Here we are together capable of all these emotions, all these visions of the future and united by our wish to be a community, by our wish to make things better for each other. Here we are bringing...our best impulses: creativity, empathy, and the belief that we all deserve a voice.
Along with the Writers Resist movement comes Readers Resist.
In that spirit, for further reading:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.Praise Song for the Day, A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
Ur-Facism, Umberto Eco, in The New York Review of Books
“We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last - the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.” ― Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce
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