Havdalah #31: Well, Fuck.

Hello all, and welcome to Havdalah #31 —

I’m so tired.

All day Wednesday, when friends, family, texted to ask how I was, all I could say was, I’m so tired. Part of it was sheer exhaustion: I’d worked the polls Tuesday, a long day, 6am to 9pm, and by the time I’d gotten to sleep it was midnight and the race still not called. I woke up Wednesday to my work alarm and the decision and I couldn’t deal with it; I was tired down to my bones. I called in sick, ate breakfast, took a nap; woke up for a work meeting, took another nap; went to another work meeting, had whatever a meal of bread and cheese at 3pm is called, decided not to take another nap, because I was worried about burning the last of my sick time and I might not be able to get to bed that night if I slept anymore. Around 5pm I finally talked to someone, instead of just texting, my oldest friend, and it wasn’t until then that I started to cry.

I’m so tired.

It’s better today (Thursday, at time of writing), at least the bone-deep exhaustion, but this kind of tired is deeper; it’s keeping me from feeling my anger (though it’s there, lurking) because I don’t have the energy for it right now. I’m tired of phone banking and donating and volunteering and organizing, of putting my strength against the millstone of fascism, of bailing out with my own efforts the failing institutions that should work, damn it. I’m so tired of the adults having to come into the room after the Republicans have wrecked it, spending all their time putting it to rights, only to have people whine because it’s not as much fun to be responsible as it is to destroy.

I’m so tired.

I’m so tired; and an hour ago I made an appointment to donate blood. I’m so tired; and this afternoon I took a walk with a friend and smiled. I’m so tired; and there’s work to do, so I’m gonna do what I can of it. I’m so tired; but I lived through Bush, and I lived through Trump 1.0, and goddammit, this will not break me. That’s easy (easier) for me to say, perhaps; so many of us didn’t survive: but Trump isn’t forever. Dictator he might want to be, but the fucker’s old. One more push, because what’s the alternative? Lay back and think of the queen? I won’t give him the satisfaction.

Ah, there’s the anger.

I don’t know where you are on your Tennessee Waltz ride of exhaustion-anger-despair-determination-depression, but I want to give you something to do and something to read and something to grab onto that isn’t doomscrolling and endless postmortems.

If you’re looking for hope, or help:

• The Trevor Project has crisis support for LGBTQ youth: The Trevor Project Help Page

• Ten states passed measures to put abortion rights into law: Abortion Laws Summary

• Those nerds (affectionate) at the ACLU already have a plan drafted to fight against Trump and are ready to fight him on day one: ACLU Statement

• Lines to call that aren’t the police: Warmlines

• Various and sundry motivational posts:

  • It has gotten better

  • Spite

  • Hope over climate change

  • advice from dad

  • Terry Pratchett

  • obligatory Lord of the Rings quote

If you’re looking for distraction:

• The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council has free classes and educational walks along the river: WRWC Events

• I’m outing myself as Supernatural trash to say that this fic, in particular, has been keeping me company (hey, at least we’re not literally living through the Apocalypse?): Down to Agincourt

• If you have a Hulu or Apple+ subscription, or are sufficiently industrious (yo ho), have you ever heard of M*A*S*H? It’s a 70’s show that follows the medical staff in a mobile army surgical hospital in what is nominally the Korean War but is actually a commentary on Vietnam. It ran for eleven seasons, and swung wildly between slapstick, black humor, and genuine pathos, and is always, always, always bitterly critical of war and the war machine. I suggest starting either with episode 1×17, Sometimes You Hear the Bullet, or 4×01, Welcome to Korea.

  • warning for: (generally offscreen) violence, depictions of the effects of war, period typical sexism and bigotry (although it’s more queer than you’d expect), and a very unfortunate laugh track

• Customizable white noise generator: Noise Machines

If you’re looking for something to do:

• The Rhode Island Blood Center takes appointments here: RIBC Appointments

• Learn how to administer naloxone and carry it with you: Naloxone Info

• The government is, for now, still offering free Covid tests: Where to order Covid Tests

• Pick up some Plan B and keep it, either for yourself or someone else: Plan B Info

• ACA Enrollment is open through January 15 — make sure you’re enrolled if you need to be: ACA Marketplace 

• Volunteer to help cure ballots — even if Trump won, there are still Senate, House, and down ballot races that are possibly in play:

  • Explanation of ballot curing

  • Link to ballot curing events

• The Better Future Program has a library of free education on social justice, mental health, and academics: Liberation Library 

• Some thoughts on mutual aid and getting involved: Building Community

• This is a fantastic article on next steps: 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now That Trump Has Won

• Places to donate:

  • National Network of Abortion Funds

  • Trans Law Center

  • Gaza Soup Kitchen

  • Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

The rest of the newsletter is a bit thin, this week; James has written his own piece on the election, and what it means; there’s a member of DARE in need of some mutual aid; Fash Watch sleeps for no one; and there are always actions to do for Palestine, still; but it looks like everyone else is sorting out what to do, same as us.

Goodnight, and mind how you go —

Katherine

(Various ideas and links cribbed from the internet: source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4, source 5)

Support a DARE Member Needing Shelter

One of DARE's elderly members has been facing homelessness for over a month now and needs a warm bed to sleep in. She has been at the forefront of DARE’s work, and now is our chance to help her any way we can! Please donate so she can pay for a room for a couple of months until her situation is resolved.

DARE Member GoFundMe

James (he / him)

This Loss is Not Our Mass Grave (Get Up)

I. SS Marine Electric

We lost.

I’m writing this about a week before the election: October 30th. I don’t know the score; the count hasn’t begun yet.

The conclusion remains no matter the result: we lost.

Let’s say you’re reading this on Saturday evening, or maybe Sunday morning, and the fabled #BlueTsunami has inundated the nation, the miraculous counterpart to the tempests that have devastated the land this year. Let’s say you’re reading this and there is a clear win for Harris, that at some point this past week the Democrats had a tremendously good night.

We still lost.

There is no cause for celebration, no sigh of relief, no possible victory to be snatched from the jaws of an election wherein the candidates are an unbalanced, vicious fascist and a Democrat who embraces conservatism and assures us that we will return to business as usual.

Business as usual, as in pinning the endorsements of war criminals on our lapels like medals of honor.

Business as usual, as in pushing the immigration policies of our predecessor, the ones we once decried as inhumane when it was convenient (just over four years ago).

Business as usual, as in not only ignoring a genocide, not only aiding it, but participating in it.

Business as usual, as in the road that led us here to begin with.

We lost, because we were never permitted to choose anything else.

This is not to say that there are no differences between the two candidates. Those food safety issues? Lax oversight and slackened regulations (which worsened under Trump) will increase contaminations, and recalls will not be as prompt. The next pandemic? We’re still not handling the current one, and with Trump’s public health record on top of his new embrace of Qanon, development of and access to vaccination will become far more fraught. The increasingly frequent Category 5’s? Let’s review Trump’s response to Hurricane Maria. 

There is a difference, and those refusing to recognize this are either being stubbornly obtuse or intellectually dishonest. But different does not mean good. Nicotine or strychnine — picking your poison still means what comes next won’t be pleasant to swallow.

Some of us will try to break the game, spitefully choosing another option on the menu. Snake oil, that’s better than poison. It will demonstrate the need for a third party, we reason, not taking into account that these candidates are cynical grifters who have no real interest in organizing viable parties outside of those for book releases.

Recusing oneself from choosing does not mean one is excused from the table, although I don’t begrudge those who refuse to play the game. Up until a few days ago, I was still debating whether to walk into the booth listening to The Mountain Goats, you are coming down with me / hand in unlovable hand blaring from my headphones. I don’t have it in me to lecture, to condemn, to blame those curled up in despair. It’s cruel, it’s unproductive, it’s ineffective. I leave them be because I know, depending on the day, on the hour, I’m curled up with them. As a trans person, I’m high on the list of enemies within. Those who want to preach to me about lesser evils – and they have, oh Lord, they have, at every holiday and every birthday dinner, those family members whose designations do not mark them for extermination – can save their sermons.

The point is, there are no good options. But the futility in the choice is not the sole reason we’ve lost.

Let me bring this closer to home.

I was present during a recent action organized by Jewish Voice for Peace to disrupt a private dinner. Politicians wined and dined while, outside in the cold, their constituents demanded how many kids did you kill today?

Sheldon Whitehouse was in attendance. I watched with no small measure of teeth-chattering satisfaction as one by one, local bigwigs arrived or departed and were met with screaming jeers of shame! Yet, when Whitehouse left, flanked by two women, he barely spared the crowd a glance. He was sanguine, smiling wryly at his companions. He didn’t care.

He didn’t have to.

Sheldon Whitehouse’s opponent is Patricia Morgan. I’ve written about Patricia before, mostly regarding the conspiracist swill on her Twitter and her ceaselessly pathetic attempts to eradicate trans kids from schools. Patricia Morgan is every local disgruntled nut’s dream: an ascendant to a position of power where she may legislate whatever dumbfuck thing she wants, or, failing that (she fails more often than she succeeds), make herself a persistent pain in the ass to her colleagues.

She is utterly ineffectual. She is deeply insufferable. She is frustratingly dangerous.

She’s gunning for Whitehouse’s job. And I simply cannot allow her to have it.

We can say hypothetically that if I had refused to vote for Harris, it would have made very little difference to the outcome of the general election. The Electoral College ensures that — ironic given the campaign’s claim that my vote is how I “save” “democracy.”

But the Electoral College does not liberate me from control over who sits in the seat currently occupied by Sheldon Whitehouse. It does not liberate me from the knowledge of what Patricia Morgan would do with that kind of power. It does not liberate me from the choice.

I watched Whitehouse’s leisurely stroll to his car that night and hated him even as I knew that in a week I would be voting for him.

This is why we have lost. Not because we do not have a choice, but because we only have one.

Interlude — The Day After

I wake up to scattered texts from a few group chats. This is how I find out. I do not look at the news. I do not need to; the rogues galleries of pundits, talking heads, and political analysts have never provided enough insight to justify the attention they demand from me.

The one advantage I have over many of my peers is that, while I am devastated, I do not experience the rug pull moment of shock. After 2016, I doubt that I will ever be surprised again, because I doubt I will ever expect anything again. My stomach has nowhere to drop, because it never left where it landed the first time.

I consider using my sick hours at work. I don’t want to be there anyway, not among the white men who will have a spring in their step today, who will be smug and bloviating.

I decide to go in, if only because I have so recently clawed my way into my own swagger when I enter the building, that I am reluctant to surrender a gain that I haven’t even had time to consolidate yet. I refuse to capitulate. I’m not scared of you, I say to the absent adversary, then pull myself out of bed.

My defiance insulates me from my grief. I have only days ago completed editing the two-part Sidebar for the next Havdalah, and the conclusion I’d landed on is still fresh in my psyche. It lets me reach out to people first. I ask how they are. I remind them that I love them. I send them my favorite poems – Lorde’s Litany for Survival and Boyer’s What Resembles The Grave But Isn’t – to steady them. My mother reminds me to get my passport, something she’s been doing with increasing stringency and agitation since 2020. I tell her yes, I will, it is on my list, as I have been since 2020.

I check on my sister, my brother. I check on my best friends. I check on my comrades, my colleagues, my neighbors. I go up to the fourth floor to give the girl in accounting a hug. I ask everyone what’s in their holes today, both out of curiosity (it makes sense, if you read Boyer) and out of the desire to lift people with laughter. I wish people an easy hole day. I enjoy the dirty responses and let myself laugh too. 

My sister and my mother both ask me to keep them updated on each leg of my trip later this afternoon. I agree. My mother believes bad actors will be emboldened today. I don’t believe it’s dangerous where I’m going, but I indulge her and say I’ll be careful.

I scroll Tumblr briefly. I see one or two angry people attempt to blame one-issue voters for the results. The movement for Palestinian liberation is particularly singled out, as expected. Most, however, point out that even if all the votes for third party candidates had instead gone to Harris, she still would have lost the popular vote by a significant margin. Some even comment that campaigning with the Cheneys may not have been the move. For the most part, there’s an acknowledgement that the failure to stop fascism is not ours, but the opposition party’s. I tell myself that those other angry people are clinging to blame out of panic. I try to be compassionate, but my patience is already so thin.

I read the wise, supportive articles trusted friends send me. I listen to podcasts for direction. I hold the words of leaders close to my chest. Deescalate all conflict that isn’t with the enemy. I walk with my chin high at work.

When my boss, who decorates his office with Trump merchandise and a painting of January 6th, greets me with, “that racist bitch on the View, Oprah, said that uneducated white women are why he won,” I tell him to not refer to women as bitches in front of me again. When I remember to tack on a please at the end, it is not a courtesy, but a threat. He hears it. I’m not scared of you, I say in my head. He hears that, too.

Later, I learn he was referring to Whoopie Goldberg.

I have lunch with a friend. We talk of normal things. Our dreams, our hopes, my job hunt, the new game she’s addicted to. She makes me try lychee tea, and while I don’t like it, I do like trying new things.

I take the Amtrak down to see my partner. Our original plan is for me to ride the rails all the way to his borough. About an hour out from midtown, we decide he’ll meet me at the station; we’re worried about my transit card. Better to have him with me in case it doesn’t work.

He’s there when the cop follows me into the ladies’ room.

The gender neutral restroom, when I try it, is locked. Thinking it’s occupied, or perhaps that it’s a nonsensical measure to prevent houseless people from using it, I enter the women’s instead. When in situations where I must use a gendered public bathroom, this is the choice I usually make. If I’m assaulted, I’m more confident in my ability to defend myself from a cis woman than a cis man. I’m just closing the stall door behind me when I hear the voice of security:

“Alright, male that just walked into the ladies room, what are you doing in here?”

It’s the tone that frightens me. We’re all friends here. Let’s cooperate, no one has to get hurt. Always said with a smile that would very much like to hurt you, that’s looking forward to it, in fact.

A woman in another stall expresses consternation at the guard. 

“There’s no male over here!”

The guard ignores her.

“The male that just walked in here, come out right now, or I’ll be bringing in the Amtrak police.”

The woman speaks up again, and this gives me enough confidence to join the chorus. Again, disregarded. There’s sounds of movement, then nothing else. I’m aware that there’s now a countdown until there are armed men surrounding my stall. This is not the first time I’ve been profiled at this station while trying to use a restroom, but while the previous incident was only humiliating, this time, I’m terrified.

I try to text my partner, try to text the White Rose RI group chat, but the restroom is a dead zone. I have no bars, no WiFi. Helplessly, I can only watch as a circle spins under my outgoing messages, feeling more and more desperate as nothing goes out or comes in. Absurdly, I think, I can’t believe mum was right about this bullshit.

The silence remains undisturbed, and I realize nothing is happening as, finally, texts begin arriving. It seems that my partner witnessed the security guard follow me in, and intervened just as he began to cordon off the area. My heart doesn’t stop racing, but it’s not an alarm now. It’s a war drum.

Is he still there, I text my partner, I want to cuss him the fuck out

No he left

I could just leave, too. I want to leave, I want to go home, I want to be safe.

I’m not scared of you.

After washing my hands, I storm out of the restroom.

“Where the fuck is he?”

With some obstinate pestering, we locate the apologetic but remorseless security guard. He admits he targeted me not only because of my presentation, but because he saw me try and fail to enter the gender neutral restroom before I went into the ladies’.

It’s clear he doesn’t understand why he was wrong or how what he did was menacing. There’s no way to guarantee he won’t do it again to someone else. Someone without a partner on the outside, someone with even less reliable cell service. The confrontation doesn’t provide a satisfying outcome, but it’s cathartic to reduce this blustering, power-drunk man to fumbling excuses, clumsy apologies, and hollow assurances of “good vibes.”

He’s scared. Scared to get in trouble, scared to lose his job, scared of consequences. Maybe scared enough that next time, he’ll think twice. Maybe he’ll hesitate before he saunters into a restroom after a he-she just trying to take a piss.

Or maybe he’ll just be scared until the end of my lecture.

I decide that this is good enough. He still has his petty power, but now he knows enough to be scared of me.

II. The Mary Ellen Carter

I think it’s probably an understatement to say that my mental health has not been great the last month.

I’ve spent an admittedly embarrassing amount of time rolled up in bed like a giant duvet burrito, under the thrall of my phone, which has served as both a barricade and a bridge to the rest of humanity. It’s as often a vital distraction and vector of connection as it is an isolator and messenger of doom. As it’s gotten darker earlier and the nights longer, the hours between work and sleep have felt harder to endure. I often want to go to bed just after dinner, because if I’m awake, I’ll think. And thinking has not been a particularly fulfilling pastime as of late.

Despair is like drowning. It’s as choking as it is comfortable. It’s agonizing, but it’s easy.

It’s an emotional death, but that means it’ll be over soon. A dreamless sleep means no nightmares either.

It’s a luxury.

If the political project is defined and measured solely by our electoral reality, then we have lost.

But it isn't.

(Rise again, rise again.)

I have paused here in writing this draft to refer back to something I wrote earlier this year. I’m abashed by my own predictability. My past self, only somewhat wiser than I, had written many of these same words before, no doubt pointedly intended for this very moment of weakness that has consumed my waking hours:

If the political project is defined and measured solely by our electoral reality, then we have lost.

But it isn’t.

Yes, the election was always going to be a loss, because true change was always going to be a fight. And we must give our opponents no quarter regardless of who our opponents are.

Ballots and phone banks will not stop the genocides, will not collapse the borders, will not save us from ourselves. The arena is so much bigger than that. There is so much more to do, so much more that can be done, but first we have to imagine that it can be done. We must imagine it done, we must believe it possible, we must never stop imagining how. It can be done, it will be done, if we can just be brave. 

It’s a hard thing, being brave, much harder than drowning. But we are not dead, so we are not done. We are not done fighting, not done trying. No matter what shape this loss coalesces into, we are not done.

As Anne Boyer writes:

We have more than one shovel to dig our way out. We have spades, we have pickaxes, we have our own fucking fingernails.

It’s time to get out of the hole.

Needle Drop: “The Mary Ellen Carter”, Stan Rogers

Steve Ahlquist Appreciation Corner

Right-wing zealots are lying to you about Title IX and trans rights in Rhode Island (Steve Ahlquist, November 1, 2024)

Words of Wisdom

10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won (Daniel Hunter for Waging Nonviolence, November 4, 2024)

The Sky is Falling; We’ve Got This (Margaret Killjoy in Birds Before the Storm, November 6, 2024)

Beyond the Blame: Fighting for Each Other in the Face of Fascism (Kelly Hayes in Organizing My Thoughts, November 8, 2024)

Exit Right (Gabriel Winant for Dissent Magazine, November 8, 2024)

Pod Recs: It Could Happen Here

Trump’s Constitutional Sheriffs (November 4, 2024)

Still Don’t Panic: An Election Response (November 7, 2024)

Trump’s Deportation Plans (November 8, 2024)

Continuing Actions for Palestine

Jewish Voice for Peace Weekly Flyering

• When: Every Wednesday, 5:00pm-6:00pm

• Where: Providence Train Station, 100 Gaspee Street, Providence, RI 02903

• JVP RI invites all to join them in their efforts to spread the word about their work and simple actions people can take to demand an end to the genocide in Palestine. They meet on the Statehouse side of the train station.

Weekly Kaddish

• When: Every Sunday, 1:00pm-1:30pm

• Where: Michael Van Leesten Pedestrian Bridge, Providence, RI 02903

• Jewish Voice for Peace RI and allies will be hosting a weekly gathering on Sundays to recite the Mourners Kaddish and communally grieve the Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military. You need not be Jewish to attend; all are welcome to participate.

Power Half-Hours for Gaza

• When: every day, Monday through Friday, 3:00pm EST

• Where: online

• Jewish Voice for Peace is holding Power Half-Hours for Gaza every day — join us as we channel our fury and sorrow into collective action to stop genocide.

• Power Half-Hours for Gaza Registration

Ceasefire Today Toolkit

• This toolkit has a variety of links, including call scripts, groups accepting donations, phone banks, petitions, and more

• Ceasefire Today Toolkit

News Coverage

• As always, especially when getting news from social media, be aware of who is sharing information and why they’re doing it.

• Al Jazeera Coverage of the War on Gaza has continued to be a reliable source

• Mondoweiss has also provided excellent context and deep dive pieces.