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As soon as you turn out the light, a thief takes your day and your night
Just because one of the speakers at last night's protest thought we were well past any use in calling on elected officials does not mean that I did not just leave messages with mine in the matter of Rumeysa Ozturk, my senators to encourage them to speak out further and my representative to thank her for doing so. I do not feel that I have so many levers available to me that I can afford not to pull all of them just in case.
In all of the articles I am reading about deported, disappeared, or threatened students, I understand the tactical importance of their good characters and I don't care and I wish it were not necessary to make anyone care. I don't want their civil liberties to depend on a referendum of their pro-Palestinian activism and the degree to which it may or may not have been antisemitic as defined by a government which platforms Jew-haters like there's any kind of shortage. I was in Boston for the Marathon bombing. I was so afraid that the Crusader roleplay of the war on terror which even then had been part of the American doomscape for more than a decade had shot due process out of a cannon in the case of a bona fide domestic terrorist. Nothing about this steamrolling of constitutional rights makes me feel safer and it is not meant to, but it does make me want to scream that the fundamental rights and privileges of the law are apparently no longer even a nominal cornerstone of the American mainstream. It should not get tangled with whether their free speech is your free speech. It should not matter even if they are a nice person. I have gathered to my perplexity that the fear of the Devil turning round on them motivates far fewer people than I had once imagined, but come the everlasting exceptionalism on. Disappearing people off their doorsteps, dumping them in black sites for profit should be a no-brainer no-no.
I am obviously having a bit of a fritz-out over whether any of the actions I am taking even rise to the level of grit in the gears or whether they are merely a garnish of historical interest on an unstoppable slide and I am well aware that on some level it doesn't matter, because there is never any excuse for standing there looking on with folded hands and in any case it doesn't feel to me like the better course, but I would feel a whole lot better if I could see even a little bit of resistance in the mechanical sense in action.
In all of the articles I am reading about deported, disappeared, or threatened students, I understand the tactical importance of their good characters and I don't care and I wish it were not necessary to make anyone care. I don't want their civil liberties to depend on a referendum of their pro-Palestinian activism and the degree to which it may or may not have been antisemitic as defined by a government which platforms Jew-haters like there's any kind of shortage. I was in Boston for the Marathon bombing. I was so afraid that the Crusader roleplay of the war on terror which even then had been part of the American doomscape for more than a decade had shot due process out of a cannon in the case of a bona fide domestic terrorist. Nothing about this steamrolling of constitutional rights makes me feel safer and it is not meant to, but it does make me want to scream that the fundamental rights and privileges of the law are apparently no longer even a nominal cornerstone of the American mainstream. It should not get tangled with whether their free speech is your free speech. It should not matter even if they are a nice person. I have gathered to my perplexity that the fear of the Devil turning round on them motivates far fewer people than I had once imagined, but come the everlasting exceptionalism on. Disappearing people off their doorsteps, dumping them in black sites for profit should be a no-brainer no-no.
I am obviously having a bit of a fritz-out over whether any of the actions I am taking even rise to the level of grit in the gears or whether they are merely a garnish of historical interest on an unstoppable slide and I am well aware that on some level it doesn't matter, because there is never any excuse for standing there looking on with folded hands and in any case it doesn't feel to me like the better course, but I would feel a whole lot better if I could see even a little bit of resistance in the mechanical sense in action.
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I cannot answer this question, I cheap-ass Faraday-caged my dumb phone before setting off for a protest just in case.
And as to the other uses of your time and their effectiveness, I won't stop you from going anywhere while you're here. Borrow my mittens if you want. I've even got an alpaca hat.
*hugs*
I HAVE NEVER SEEN YOU IN AN ALPACA HAT.
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Well, they are going after the Smithsonian, so.
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thank you both for having this conversation where the rest of us can delight in it.