(no subject)

[rushthatspeaks]

My son is three weeks old, so I cannot give in to despair.

We have donated to the ACLU. We have donated to Planned Parenthood, and to the Standing Rock Sioux. Ruth goes to a Unitarian church, and when the baby is a little older we will coordinate with their social justice committee. About the same time, I will call Planned Parenthood and volunteer. We are looking for an immigrants' rights organization to donate to (suggestions welcome).

It feels like nothing. It feels like holding hair out of my face in the wind. It feels like any safety we ever thought we had in this nation was not just an illusion, but a dangerous illusion.

It can happen here, I was always told in school. It can happen anywhere. The banality of evil, the seductions of demagoguery, the selection of outsiders as scapegoats, the defining of various sets of people as outsiders... it can happen here.

The unspoken corollary was, but it won't. That's why we teach you these things in the schools in the first place. If you know it can happen here, now, to you, you can stop it.

That feels today not just as though it was wrong, but as though it was the worst of well-intentioned lies.

I don't know how to go on from here. I don't know how to help anyone else go on from here. I can barely put one foot in front of the other. I don't know where we will get the strength to fight back, and I don't know how to bear up under the weight that just settled on my shoulders.

But, because my son is three weeks old, and he has to be fed and changed and rocked and told that it is going to be all right, I have to trust that I will find that strength. That I will carry that weight. That we will fight back. That there will be losses, brutal and unnecessary losses, but that the fight will not be wholly in vain. That we will save something from the wreckage. That this will not literally be the end of the world.

One foot in front of the other, until I can figure out how. Until we can come together to do the necessary work.

Breathe. Grieve. Keep on living.

Comments

[watersword]

This is a post that I am glad to have read. ♥

[gwyneira]

But, because my son is three weeks old, and he has to be fed and changed and rocked and told that it is going to be all right, I have to trust that I will find that strength. That I will carry that weight. That we will fight back. That there will be losses, brutal and unnecessary losses, but that the fight will not be wholly in vain. That we will save something from the wreckage. That this will not literally be the end of the world.

This, that last sentence, is what I keep telling myself, in order to keep on going and resist despair.

Jezebel has a good list of organizations to donate to, including several dealing with immigration reform and immigrants' rights, here. (I set up so many recurring donations yesterday that my credit card company notified me about suspicious activity and I had to go re-enable the card.)

[chomiji]

Thank you.

Yes, it's time for me to be picking my Combined Federal Campaign charities anyway. I'm guessing I will increase my overall giving and make some rather different choices this year.

We already donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center as a family, and that's another good choice.

[coffeeandink]

<3

[skygiants]

I'd really like to hear what you guys end up deciding in re: immigrant's rights orgs to donate to.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

U-Hub crowdsourced local immigrants' rights groups: http://www.universalhub.com/questions/2016/local-immigrant-rights-groups

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Your son will grow up knowing what is just, what is kind: he will learn that in your laps.

Much love,

Nine

[rosefox]

Pro-immigrant org that I've heard good things about: http://unitedwedream.org/

Some other good orgs among the signatories to this pledge: https://our100.org/

My mother, who's been a leftist activist since stanning for Adlai Stevenson at age 10, told me, "This too shall pass." And we will find the strength and the cleverness to make it pass as quickly as possible.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Maybe also consider the Southern Poverty Law Center?

[larryhammer]

Having to adult as a parent has helped here too. I'm still taking stock and trying to figure out where to direct what strength I have. A likely direction for the small monetary stream that had been going to campaigns is the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with our continued support of the Community Food Bank. ACLU is another possibility.

And it's time to start taking the kid back to First Day School (been on pause while we work through security issues).

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

---L.