Don't say "it will die in the senate"

Say "I will kill it in the senate"

And then call them. It takes so few calls, comparatively, to make it feel like a wave crashing over them. We need to be the wave, again and again.

oh also my usual disclaimer that i am SO PRO BINDING. but when people are using it, for years, as a teen — there were other options. most likely, adults failed them. the us house of reps sure as fuck is failing kids now.

(lots of marginalized people have fantastic relationships with their bodies; by nature of my practice, i saw those who didn't, but wanted to. but we all carry trauma from a society that does violence to us and those who look like us, one way or another. and it never had to be this way.)

the way trans adults struggle to accept kind, healthy, nonsexual touch broke my heart, again and again and again. lots of folk have that—fat people and Black people and racialized and minoritized people. and trans people. everyone our society tries to discard. every one so damn precious and worthy.

how's it looking now? 💜

yes! we aren't near bike trails, but there's enough bike infrastructure (green boxes, etc) near us that we've had our kids who go to neighborhood schools bike almost full time. it's just the kids who aren't well served by neighborhood schools who we have to drive, because there's no good options.

we're all just monkeys at keyboards and our emotions color our perceptions! sometimes the whole lot of us start fighting even when no one actually disagrees, lol.

that isn't what stephen did, but it is what the quoted post did! and it sucks, a lot, to face that every single day about every single choice. so people get twitchy, even when it isn't deserved, same as stephen misinterpreted what i said because he's getting THOSE reactions.

well, i wasn't arguing with stephen, but tbh, i also have a ton of sympathy for parents (esp mothers) who are sensitive, bc we have to deal with the kind of judgmental bs of the post he quoted about every decision we ever make, all as though we are making them in isolation rather than in systems.

but seriously stop blaming parents. (it's almost inevitably mothers, btw, even if we all agree it shouldn't be.) mothers make rational decisions *for their situation*. want a different decision, in bulk? change our situations! otherwise you're just doing a misogyny!

to clarify, I'm in agreement with the person I'm quoting! we're both going hang on a sec at the person that post quoted.

i see that! so sorry.

oh i know! I'm not railing at you!

wasn't that two hours ago?

I choose to start. I choose to have faith that something can grow from starting, however that endures, grows, succeeds. I choose to do the work of hope and keep doing it without waiting to see how it turns out. "How it turns out" is a luxury for afterward, and there's fires that need lighting now.

This is an unsubtle season in an unsubtle year. It's an unsubtle time. But amidst an era of cruelty that's blatant and broad, destruction and deprivation that revels in its vulgar enormity, we have this unsubtle season to share broad, blatant, vulgar, enormous courage. Kindness. Hope. Why not?

Nothing is forever. And forever makes everything else brief. And brief doesn't mean worthless, or failed. If a whole world matters, a corner of it does. If eons matter, sparks and gasps do too. And saving everyone looks huge from one angle and small from another; saving one person is the same.