"We Love People!"
... and other things I thought I heard at the rally.
At our “Hands Off!” protest in Berkeley last Saturday, people were chanting:
We Love People!
We Love People!
Well, that’s what I thought they were chanting. But I’m kind of hard of hearing. Sara listened for a bit, then said, “Actually, they’re saying …
We The People!"
Which also made sense, of course — totally appropriate at this lovely rally on a beautiful afternoon. But it still made me happy to remember the chant the way I’d misheard it. Because we do love people! And MAGA policies hate people: kill them and make them sick and impoverish them and disappear them. Us.
Not to say something really … obvious? But the MAGA movement/onslaught doesn’t make human sense. It’s so anti-people — anti everything that instinctively draws us together to help one another, that makes us feel whole: because we’re whole only when we’re helping and loving one another.
If you haven’t gone to a protest yet (Sara and I have been going every week to our local #TeslaTakedown), I highly recommend it. It will — I promise! — make you feel better: less alone, less hopeless, less besieged. (The next “Hands Off!” rallies around the U.S. will be on Sat., April 19.) A collective victory over the current MAGA Terror will begin to feel possible, if not imminent. (But we’ll take imminent!)
Every day the news storms into our battered psyches: more incomprehensible, awful things being done to good, innocent people. Because of the formula Stupidity + Greed + Cruelty = Evil. And what hurts especially is that the call is coming from inside the house — that is, one big chunk of our Public Self actually voted for this shit. And they are part of us, alas.
But this particular hope buoys me: that as we fight together against fascism, we can also be fighting against all the miseries inflicted on so many folks for so much longer than since this past January 20. I believe that the joy and power of protesting together will allow into our hearts the immense human relief that comes when you stop categorizing whole swaths of people as The Other.
While I was, as usual, helping Sara distribute her amazing free political patches (they flew from our hands), I was thinking about my old college political-theory advisor, Sheldon Wolin. (In part, I think, this was because I ran into one of my fellow advisees, Brian Weiner — who, unlike me, actually completed and submitted his senior thesis.) Wolin believed that democracy begins as a revolutionary impulse, a flame of people power (the literal meaning of “democracy”). But then the stewardship of this flame is taken over by bureaucracies and experts who come to serve the rich and powerful. Thus that passionate, improvisatory flame is largely co-opted by a small coterie, leaving the rest of us in a largely passive relationship with our own democracy. That revolutionary impulse, Wolin believed, eventually becomes fugitive.
I’ve been calling my Congressional representative and senators lately, following the amazingly clear and helpful (and hopeful) daily suggestions of Jessica Craven’s “Chop Wood, Carry Water” Substack. At first I was pretty shy about making the calls. I wasn’t sure what to say — and I didn’t just want to use Craven’s suggested wording, as I thought I should make the messages my own somehow. That’s because I didn’t know much (or, often, anything) about the horrible new proposed laws, or budgets, or despotic actions, that I was calling to protest. I mean, I’d read her short descriptions of each bill. But I guess what I’m saying is, it’s been hitting me what a poor citizen I’ve been. Like, all my life. When it came to so many things, I figured that other people would take care of it. I wouldn’t need to expend the energy, or deal with conflict. Or have to, God forbid, compromise. I could believe what I believed without subjecting those beliefs to alternative viewpoints. Which might challenge some things that I’d been thinking, even while reinforcing others. But let me tell you: that one time a Senate staffer actually answered the phone (rather than me getting sent to voicemail1), and I found myself speaking at first in a halting manner (because I was reading from a prompt), as the call went on I started talking more steadily and feeling more confident in myself. Eventually, with the senatorial staffer just replying politely with “uh-huh”s, I just began, you know, talking — telling him about how just plain awful Trump and Musk are, how horrible it is that they’re attacking everything smart and sweet and good, how we all have to fight back. Not super-challenging, I realize — but a start!
It’s got me to wondering why the simple actions of democratic involvement — peacefully protesting, contacting my reps — have been so infrequent in my life. And I’ll keep thinking about it, but my initial hunch is that my attitude towards our democracy has essentially been that of a child towards a largely incomprehensible grown-up world. I’ve waited every four years for democracy to take my hand and gently guide me into a candy store that has been stocked without my participation. I’ve felt it during this awful time of Trump #2: the impulse to leave the problems for others to take care of. You know, those activists. Because it can feel awkward to do activism. But also, as I’ve been learning at these protests, what doing activism feels like is: great; exhilarating; freeing.
This awful time gives us an opportunity to behave in ways that make us feel more complete and alive. Plus grassroots activism is the only way we will beat back the bastards. So it’s win-win.
Another bonus: If you happen to be going through a clinical depression, as I have, being politically active with others will (at least temporarily) make you feel better — politics as Prozac, sort of. If I may be so bold, I’ll even share a few ways that fighting fascism and fighting depression seem to overlap. For one thing, in both cases, you don’t know when the terrible thing will end. So when you try to fix it, you do so without any confidence in the ultimate efficacy of your efforts. Also, both the depression and the political oppression seem to pervade your entire existence: you awake to their continual assaults, and your heart always bears that heaviness. And both are trying really fucking hard to make you feel hopeless — to get you to become more and more passive, to accept the awfulness as being inevitable and out of your hands. And the truth is, I can’t personally fix either problem. But when I join with others in love and hope, I give both things a chance to get better. Coming out of a depression isn’t like recovering from an infection (ach — don’t get me going on RFK Jr. et al.!): even when you take the prescribed medication, you have to work with it — to seize any opportunities it gives you to climb up even a tiny mood-rung. So it feels with being part of this Resistance: our victories (as rare as they may seem these days) give us glimmers — they energize us. And if we can get ourselves to ride those glimmers, we find ourselves getting better. Stronger. Closer to fine.
It was very, very hard for me to get myself to go with Sara to the “Hands Off!” protest. All week, as I mostly lay in bed or on the couch, I mentally prepared myself to participate. Each incremental step that morning was tremendously difficult: getting out of bed/couch; brushing my teeth; showering; dressing. A strange, powerful inner voice kept trying to induce me to slip back under the covers. But I’d picture myself all the rest of that day, self-cocooned in my own misery and denial, as opposed to the alternate course of going the rally with Sara — and I was just able to override those nihilistic impulses, enough to get my ass out into the world. We were thinking of maybe going to the rally in nearby Oakland, or maybe in San Francisco (we’d already given out lots of patches in Berkeley) — but then, as we were approaching the North Berkeley BART, we saw how huge the rally was right there: it just kept going and going. And Sara asked someone if she’d like a patch with a sleepy kitten in a teacup saying, “I hate fascism” — and the woman replied, Omigod — yes!! — and we ended up just staying there.
It was fabulous! There was a brass-and-drum band! There were people with all kinds of great signs. There were us old folks, and there were also middle-aged folks and young folks. (I learned that young boys of a certain age were drawn to those patches that contained — or implied — curse words, like “Musk, GTFO.”) I noticed that a woman holding a sign saying “We Stand With Love” was also clutching a small piece of paper on which the words “You are KIND!” were handwritten. She told me that it had been given to her by a little girl who was at first too shy to approach her with this gift, but then had been urged on by her mom. I was struck by the beauty and trust and hope in this lovely gesture. And that — now that I think of it — is exactly when I thought I heard people begin to chant, “We Love People!” over and over. Which, okay, they weren’t exactly. But also, they absolutely were. You know what I mean?
By the way, if you happen to work for California Sen. Alex Padilla, your public-comment voicemail is too fucking short — I mean, you give us, like, 15 seconds to talk. Whereas Sen. Adam Schiff’s voicemail lets us go on and on, which better suits monologuists like me — plus I think Schiff is a vegan, which is something I’ll always aspire to but never be.
I always went to the big rallies (starfucker that I am), in NYC, SF, Oakland, but this time I went local, here in El Sobrante, and now I'm sold on taking the local from now on. Unlike the, er, "express," the people in the local virtually all sported signs, handmade yet, and it was a kick to see neighbors, many of whom probably would have stayed home rather than go to the trouble of getting on the subway and so forth. It was homemade, more participatory--and I'll stop at a 6-siyllable word, if you please. Don't wanna lose my "local" cred. Anyway, it sure feels better to be active rather than sit around and complain.
Instead stand up and complain . . .
Josh, I don't know how anyone can read the news and NOT be depressed. I too have always battled depression and have some idea where you're at. Regardless of what political impact it might have, (Newt Gingrich grouched "Protests are just a cheap date") It helps to go just to assuage the feelings of isolation. Also: I remember a graffito some years ago that said, "Principled struggle keeps me regular."