Day-After To-Dos

First ThingCheck on your queer, your trans, your immigrant, your people of color, your women (especially your young women), your disabled, your young adult, and your red state family and friends, along with those who are victims of sexual assault. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.They are the ones most frightened, impacted, and traumatized by last night and the next untold years. Listen to them and assure them that you stand with them, and will surround them with care and protection. No, really. This should be the primary task of today. Second ThingCreate networks of support and communication immediately. Ensure secure platforms and ways of contact, for Trump has promised retribution and violence to those who oppose and who work against him. Foster friendships and trusted relationships. We will need one another. Third ThingEstablish starting now patterns of rich and regular self care and grounding. We are looking at a long scary slog which requires internal resources that draw upon a fine balance of courage, stamina, and mindfulness. Fourth ThingAllow for grief, anger, fear, and joy. Feel guilt about none of them. Fifth ThingKnow that while you are crucial to moving forward, the movement isn’t depending on just you. Remember the geese who fly in formation, allowing for the strong ones to rest. Make like a goose. Sixth ThingHonestly review how this could have happened. What makes people vote for a racist, misogynistic, bigoted convicted sexual assaulter who demonstrably lies, threatens, calls an insurrection into being, and admires Hitler and Orban?That is not (only) a rhetorical rant, but rather a question that we should be asking ourselves deeply. Read up on and listen to those who think on these things. And ask: what was done, or not done, by people, organizations, institutions, and systems to enable this result?Reflect and call it out. Seventh ThingDo some deep dives on the Resistance Movement under Hitler, East Germany, Poland. Resistance to fascists has been done before. Learn from them. Eighth ThingLove this country, love one another. Do not say or believe that we aren’t this—clearly we are—but rather say and believe that we are -better- than this. Let love—not namby pamby or saccharine, nice love, but authentic, raw, messy, honest and risky love—animate and define us. ~~~~~There will be more to add, but these were first-pass, tormented election night thoughts which tossed and turned me last night. Now, to rustle up coffee, and to rustle up hope.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Anna Madsen at revdrannam.substack.com/subscribe