November Happened Again

When Trump was elected the first time, back in 2016, I was working on a contract with the CDC. That day was one of the strangest of my life, with scientist co-workers streaming in and out of my cube asking me questions about my family. I was one of the few in my division from a white working class background, and had been vocal in my discussions with my fellow liberal co-workers earlier in the year about how hard it was to talk to my relatives about fascism and populism and just everything around the 2016 election. So as Hillary started to lose, my cube became a gathering place for scientists struck dumb in disbelief. All their questions boiled down to "But Why?" and all my answers boiled down to "Because Bitches". After the 2016 election I sewed dozens of pussy hats from two colors of pink fleece and the whole family marched. We helped occupy the Atlanta airport terminal in support of the legal immigrants the President blocked from entering the country. We donated to the causes of refugee camps and freeing children at the border. I watched in horror as the CDC was cut, and cut again, and my contract wasn't renewed in January of 2018. We sold our condo on Dekalb Avenue that Spring, and went rental for the first time while I had my income cut in half to go work for the public library. I told myself it was because I was fighting for literacy and the city of Atlanta, but honestly, with thousands of workers all with the same skill set let go from similar federal jobs, the public library was what I could get. Eight years later, as I have only just begun to recover from the economic devestation that the pandemic shut down brought to our family, I am too exhausted to be emotional about what happened this November. What little political fight I had left in me was beaten out by my work with Stop Cop City. I've got no energy to attend any kind of local action, let alone march in DC like I did with friends in Spring of 2002. I don't think political protest matters anymore anyway. A life of protest gained me nothing but moral high ground in retrospect, the ability to just say "Well, I TRIED to do something." The system is so broken that nothing I could ever do will matter to anyone but myself and my loved ones. All I can do is get my girls out of the Southeast. Then maybe I'll be able to escape to better healthcare and opportunities myself. The husband and I tried to get our oldest out of the country to university all of last year, and though she was accepted to schools in Canada and Ireland we could afford none of them. It has been my greatest comfort the last week that our oldest ended up in Maine, a blue state surrounded by other blue states with Canada at her back. Within two years I will launch my youngest westward or northward as well. One of the men I'm dating - a white presenting Cuban man who ended up in Atlanta after a Florida hurricane - one of the first, but not the last climate change refugees I'll love in my life - texted me after the election that he was conserving his emotional energy after the election this week. I wanted to do that too, but my husband and others around me wanted me to be upset, and I admit that at times I let them get to me, and I took on a little of that depression and gried. Honestly though I grieved for the loss of law and liberalism last year. I gave the last of that energy away in the summer of 2023 trying to Stop Cop City. I have nothing left to give, politically, and even if I did feel like doing something I couldn't. I left the libary a few months ago for a contract job that I absolutely can not risk. The pay from this new job is what I need for myself and my daughters to escape to better shores. I'm just focused on getting us out now. I don't want to be on your mailing list. I'm not sewing you a hat this time. I'm not going to buy a gun or sign your petition or ride with you to the new action site. I'm staring down the barrel of 50 with three decades of protest behind me, and I'm sorry to say: I don't think there's anything you or I can do but vote, and we did that already. Just move, especially if you're a woman. Because Bitches.