Post-election Thoughts
I've been working on this for all of this week and I just want to get it out there already. Here are all my thoughts about the election results, the last four years, etc.
Like so many Americans - especially those of us who are marginalized by this white supremacist, classist & ableist cis/hetero/patriarchy - I am still processing this week's election results. I am trying not to rush myself through this processing, while still moving forward in any way I can. While I don't have all the answers because literally *none* of us do, I thought I'd try to write down some of my thoughts so far. Maybe they'll help you, maybe they won't.
Trump winning stirs up a lot of grief for me. I feel like I never truly got to heal the initial grief & trauma I felt from his first four years in office because suddenly, I was forced to grieve a new president's policies while I watched so many Americans accept these policies as good, or at least an improvement. Biden's policies/actions around COVID that I took the most issue with: saying vaccinated people could stop masking during the very first vaccine rollout when we didn't have enough data to support this yet (and many vaccinated people got infected that summer because of this), saying he “doesn't think about COVID anymore” and that we “don't let it control our lives” (ignoring the experiences of immunocompromised people), not doing *anything* about Long COVID or even mentioning it more than a few times, declaring the pandemic emergency over meaning we lost access to a lot of important programs, things like COVID tests were no longer covered by insurance, the uninsured no longer get free COVID vaccines, and many lost their health insurance coverage that they initially got during the pandemic. Those are only a few of the many criticisms I have of the way he handled COVID. Then there were his immigration policies that negatively impacted many immigrants, and of course, more enraging than anything else, his direct role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. There is also the fact that I don't believe he did enough to stop the attack on reproductive healthcare & trans rights, and even contributed to these issues in some ways. I have other criticisms, but those are the major ones. And I watched so many Democrats refuse to listen to those of us who voiced these criticisms because “at least he's not Trump,” and then eventually, “criticizing him will help Trump win.” I hope in hindsight, many more people start to accept that candidates for our two major parties can be worthy of criticism at once, and making these criticisms does not mean we are helping the other person win. We should all be critical of politicians rather than giving them endless support regardless of their actions and political stances.
So, you now hopefully understand why I'm saying that I'm being thrown back into the grief I felt during the first Trump presidency, while also having to deal with the grief of the past four years. I suspect I am far from alone in this, even if it can feel lonely pretty often as I watch Americans rally around politicians who do not care about us and abandon marginalized groups.
There has been a lot of talk on what to do next. What parties to join, what mutual aid projects to focus on. These are important conversations to have, but if you want more people to join, you have to make these groups more accessible. A lot of leftists, especially able-bodied leftists, simply do not do enough work making their events and organizations accessible. You need more people to join and help out, and there are disabled people in your communities who want to help out. While I recommend at least learning basic requirements for accessible events and spaces, reach out to your community about what specifics they need. Add something in a newsletter or social media post asking people in your community to let you know what barriers there have been for them in getting involved, and I'm sure you will get feedback you can use to make your events more accessible and increase involvement. And because it's *always* important and leftist groups are always falling short on this, I'll repeat it for the millionth time: your events are not accessible if you don't require masks. Reach out to local mask blocs and they can provide you with some or point you in the right direction at least.
I really want people to stop speaking so negatively about “social media activism.” “In person” activism is not accessible to everyone. I do have some frustrations with social media, especially when it comes to ethical issues I have with the platforms we use, but I think overall it gives us an advantage that activists of previous decades didn't have. Not every important action requires people meeting in person. Work on expanding your definition of “activism.” I've seen a lot of disability activism take place online for years now. Because of where I live and because of the pandemic, I wouldn't have seen as much disability activism without online spaces. But it's good for many other forms of activism. If you think not enough people are showing up to the events you go to, ask yourself how much inaccessibility (including work hours, lack of transportation money, lack of childcare) might be playing a role in this and figure out what you can do to change that. And also realize sometimes certain people will always only be able to do “social media activism” for various reasons, including health issues, and whatever they can do still matters. Your activism shouldn't be about trying to prove you're a “better activist” than those people.
I have also (understandably) seen many people talking about the importance of reading right now. I agree, reading is important if we're able to. I have a few tips - the first is that we all need to be reading as much as possible about disability justice & disability history. This is something that has always been important even if it's too often neglected, and it'll be especially important during the next four years. Even if you've already read a lot about it - read more. There are many topics, particularly related to social justice and liberation, that we should all be learning as much as we can about right now. Palestine is a big one that I hope nobody forgets to keep learning about. If you're someone who likes podcasts, I highly recommend listening to Death Panel if you haven't already. Especially the episodes about COVID and disability if these are new topics for you, as well as the episodes on Palestine.
A thing people need to be aware of is we're going to have to resist and combat misinformation and disinformation, including from the anti-vaccine movement, even more aggressively these next few years. If you want to learn more about the anti-vaccine movement’s history and want a place to start, try educating yourself about where the “vaccines cause autism” myth comes from. Learn about Andrew Wakefield, whose disproven paper started that myth, and Jenny McCarthy, who used her celebrity status to further popularize the myth, speaking as a “mother of an autistic child.” If you run into these myths anywhere, don't just say it isn't true that vaccines cause autism - also try to combat any ableism you encounter about autism in these conversations. Autism is not a tragedy, and it shouldn't be something people fear more than children dying from communicable diseases. As you probably know, RFK Jr. was officially named Secretary of Health and Human Services, which I have been anxious about for weeks. So yeah, even more anxious now. And even more serious about the fact that we need to combat health/wellness misinformation. Unfortunately, there has also been a lot of COVID misinformation from Democrats, some doctors and those working in public health, liberals, and leftists as well as conservatives and the anti-vaccine movement, so we'll have to get creative in combating lots of misinformation from all sides. If you've believed that COVID is no longer an issue and people don't need to wear masks anymore, you've internalized some of that misinformation, so I recommend starting with yourself (the Death Panel episodes on COVID I mentioned above can help with this).
I also want to say that part of my grief has been because I'm a survivor, so I am thinking of any other survivors struggling right now. When Trump first got elected, there was a lot of talk about not only the allegations against him but also his comments about “grabbing women by the pussy.” That made his presidency extremely triggering from the start. During his presidency, survivors also had to watch Brett Kavanaugh get sworn in. Many survivors and others who were outraged even held protests. Then the Me Too Movement gained mainstream attention in 2017, and we did see some change, but not enough. If enough progress was made, we wouldn't be where we are now. In the last week, I have heard about right-wing men feeling more emboldened to voice their misogyny and repeat the horrifying phrase “your body, my choice.” This phrase, while partially referring to abortion specifically, is a product of rape culture and a threat to women and other marginalized genders. This is likely a rough time for a lot of survivors you know, so keep them in your thoughts and ask if they need anything. I want to say to any survivor struggling right now because of the election that I'm so sorry you're going through this and I hope things are much, much better for all of us someday.
Things that have been said many times before, but are worth repeating right now:
Make sure any pro-choice posts you make are inclusive of transgender people. All transgender people deserve reproductive justice. Trans men and nonbinary people get abortions. Don't attach gendered meanings to genitals (ie “no uterus no opinion”). While the pro-life movement is full of misogyny, it isn't only cis women who are negatively impacted by it.
People living in red states shouldn't be pressured to move (many of them can't anyway), or punished for the way Trump supporters voted there.
No minority population is to blame for Trump's win. Not Palestinians, not Arab Americans, not Latino voters, not Native Americans. Or any other minority population, but those are the ones I have seen blamed the most since the election. The Democrats also did not lose because they “pandered too much to the woke left when it came to trans rights.” They actually didn't even do enough for trans rights and actively distanced themselves from trans people in many ways. Believing these marginalized groups caused Trump to get elected only leads to scapegoating and divides us more.
And here's one that I have seen others talk about, but not nearly enough: the 4B movement is associated with TERFS. It's okay if you didn't know this before - but I recommend distancing yourself from them as much as possible. Listen to trans people who are understandably concerned about it.
I think that is all for now. I’m turning off comments because I don't really want to have a discussion about any of this right now, but I hope you're all doing as okay as you can be right now.