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I ain't going to sit by no window waiting for the glass to crack
The staff of the Diesel were wearing safety pins today. I saw them when I stopped by with Matthew in the afternoon.
All day I have been wearing a navy wool overshirt that belonged to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving's father, a lieutenant commander and inventor in the U.S. Navy in WWII. It's one of my winter shirts now. It is scratchy and slightly too large on me and feels occasionally like a metaphor, but it keeps me warm walking from Kendall to Harvard in below-freezing winds. I don't want to have to live up to ghosts for the next four years, but I keep thinking of my grandparents, immigrants' children who marched for civil rights in the American South and Midwest and were sometimes the only Jews on campus and had an ACLU sticker on the porch of their house in Maine and wanted to see a state of Palestine as well as Israel, and at the moment I feel angrier on their behalf than on mine, as I feel angrier on behalf of my three-year-old niece who deserves a future moving forward, not retrograde.
derspatchel and I put safety pins on our coats before leaving the house tonight. It is almost literally the least we can do (signing an online petition involves less scrounging through drawers), but we will wear them as long as they are needed and in the meantime we will learn the actions we must take to make them more than a gesture.
You remember the people who died in the fight; then you decide how you will fight for what needs preserving. And what needs to change.
All day I have been wearing a navy wool overshirt that belonged to
nineweaving's father, a lieutenant commander and inventor in the U.S. Navy in WWII. It's one of my winter shirts now. It is scratchy and slightly too large on me and feels occasionally like a metaphor, but it keeps me warm walking from Kendall to Harvard in below-freezing winds. I don't want to have to live up to ghosts for the next four years, but I keep thinking of my grandparents, immigrants' children who marched for civil rights in the American South and Midwest and were sometimes the only Jews on campus and had an ACLU sticker on the porch of their house in Maine and wanted to see a state of Palestine as well as Israel, and at the moment I feel angrier on their behalf than on mine, as I feel angrier on behalf of my three-year-old niece who deserves a future moving forward, not retrograde.derspatchel and I put safety pins on our coats before leaving the house tonight. It is almost literally the least we can do (signing an online petition involves less scrounging through drawers), but we will wear them as long as they are needed and in the meantime we will learn the actions we must take to make them more than a gesture.You remember the people who died in the fight; then you decide how you will fight for what needs preserving. And what needs to change.
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*hugs*
Nine
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I can think of worse ways to hold the world together.
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I think you have confused me with
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we will wear them as long as they are needed and in the meantime we will learn the actions we must take to make them more than a gesture.
Yes, that makes sense. I'll try to do the same.
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I think it's like any other symbol of solidarity: it's worth what you do while wearing it. Which means it is potentially worth quite a lot. We weren't sure last night if the significance of safety pins was folklore or fakelore, but we pinned them to our coats anyway; if it wasn't real yet, enough people treating it like a meaningful signal with built-in accountability would soon enough make it real. And it seems to be working and I am glad. And now we do the rest.
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Yes, I think that's true. I've seen it all over social media today, so the meaning ought to be widely known. Now to live up to the symbol, as you say.
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I'm trying to remember that my being crippled by despair won't help anything. Keeping on learning Spanish and working with the teens in Holyoke, on the other hand, will.
There was racist graffiti scrawled on a summit near here--but there were also people who scrubbed it off. That's the fight.
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I don't see that it hurts to double up. My grandmother wore her red ribbon for AIDS awareness on her purse for the same reason, but I can see that a safety pin on a purse might look like it has a structural function as well as a symbolic one.
I'm trying to remember that my being crippled by despair won't help anything. Keeping on learning Spanish and working with the teens in Holyoke, on the other hand, will.
I think it is very important, even if despairing, to keep acting. It's not just self-help psychobabble. You may not believe that change is possible, but it certainly isn't going to happen if you don't at least try and see.
There was racist graffiti scrawled on a summit near here--but there were also people who scrubbed it off. That's the fight.
Good for them! Yes.
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That's great. I hope the students take them.
How are you holding?
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I really need to find one or two things I can work on and concentrate on those, because it just seems like there are too many things to fight against, defend, take care of, etc. in the face of Trump's regime.
I may spend four years listening to nothing but Bikini Kill, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys.
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If you get a handle on the sorting process, let me know. The incidental details of his government are the kind of thing people organize protests for and these are just the first few.
I may spend four years listening to nothing but Bikini Kill, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys.
The Plastic People of the Universe are almost certainly apropos.