All of these executive orders are not a fucking distraction from the Epstein Files.

These are planned and detailed processes designed by Project 2025.

Yes, it would be great if the Epstein Files toppled the man at the top, but it’s clearly not working yet. And with several states actively creating legislation making it legal to marry (i.e. Sleep With) 14 year old girls, they’re just codifying the very thing that we’re hanging our hat on.

It would be great if the files got released.

In the mean time, we need to continue to rage against the attacks on women, LGBTQIA+ people, black people, brown people, autistic people and more.

I worry that if it comes down to a civil war of ideologies, the MAGA camp is better armed.

So, yes, keep raging. But make sure that you’re inclusive in your rage and not hoping for the other shoe to drop. We’ve had a long time with Trump and that other shoe seems to be elusive.

When you say it in plain language, there is no way anyone could believe this was something that happens during the normal course of a democratic government.

And yet, we have people today who are cheering on their brave leaders. And those same “leaders” are defying not only human rights and common sense but also a 9-0 ruling from the Supreme Court to go get the man they shipped off.

And that’s not the only man they sent who did nothing wrong, including a kid who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and not even on ICE’s list to begin with.

I bet the Supreme Court might be regretting giving the president “immunity” for all things done while he holds the office.

What’s crazy is that a lot of us thought that the descent into a fascist dictatorship might have taken a lot longer. As it turns out, it took no time at all. And yet there are still so many people waving their Make America Great Again flags who don’t seem to understand that the situation is not nuanced, and every single American is going to pay for what’s happening at the highest levels of our government because of the blatant corruption and the art of the deal that appears to be “whatever sounds interesting today.”

One of my core values is to always speak up for people who aren’t in the room. I don’t have any connection to the people who are being targeted for this unlawful “deportation,” but I can’t stand back and pretend like it’s not a problem. And the president himself recently quipped that he would like to expand it to “homegrown” folks. “Criminals” was implied, but since this first wave of deportations, including several non-criminals, I don’t think that is a dealbreaker for this administration.

Even if all I can do is say that this is not okay, I am going to say it. This is not okay. This is not what I signed up for. I would even like to believe that this isn’t exactly what the MAGA voters signed up for, but I know many of them may still feel loyalty to a person who has absolutely no loyalty to them.

I know that some people are looking to leave the country. And I think for a lot of people, that’s a safe move. It’s unbelievable that we may live in a time when Americans will be refugees in other places, but here we are. And the thing is, I don’t want to leave this country. I don’t want to leave my home that I love. I want to stay, and I want to think that the better parts of humanity will prevail. But if all this could happen in just 3 months, I have concerns. And we all have to be mindful of the future.

In the meantime, I’ll keep speaking out, and I’ll keep finding joy wherever I can.

Meanwhile, the news has been brutal. Every day brings a fresh horror, and it's hard not to feel like our efforts, my efforts, don't matter. Watching this administration bulldoze its way through democracy, I kept asking myself: What's the point? But of course, the resistance is made up of people like me. What we need is more people like them stepping up.

Yesterday, something shifted. A small thing, maybe, but it cracked the door open to hope.

Senator Cory Booker stood on the Senate floor for over 25 hours in what I believe will be remembered as a historic filibuster. He didn't waste time with stalling tactics or dramatic monologues. Instead, he delivered a speech full of purpose and substance. He invoked John Lewis and the spirit of Good Trouble. It was the kind of fire we needed, real fuel for the work ahead.

Then came another win: Susan Crawford won her race in Wisconsin despite Elon Musk trying to buy the election with promises that felt straight-up illegal. This time, it didn't work. This time, money didn't win. And I hope that star of his keeps falling.

Of course, not everything is trending upward. Heather Cox Richardson has had several posts removed from Facebook, an undeniable act of censorship. While the tech giants like to claim they're restoring "free speech," it's clear that only applies if you're saying something they agree with. Silencing historians? That's a red flag.

Yes, you can still subscribe to her Substack and read her directly, which I highly recommend, but ditching Facebook entirely is the only real protest that hits. I know it's not easy. For many of us, it's our only connection to far-flung friends and family. But we have to start asking if that connection is worth the cost. We’re still searching for a viable alternative.

Still, despite the setbacks, I'm holding tight to the glimmers of hope from the last 25 hours. Don't stop now just because it's hard.

And this Saturday, turn out. All over the country, including here, people are gathering to protest and push back. Show up. Make noise. Get into Good Trouble.

And that’s the point. It’s meant to exhaust us into saying, “Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.”

When I first joined Substack, I subscribed to every blog and newsletter that piqued my interest. But I quickly realized I was overwhelming myself. So, without unfollowing, I pared my emails down to just a few, including Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, and Jay Kuo, while checking the rest on the website. Because self-care is as important as staying informed.

For a while, I tried keeping lists of everything happening, but that proved impossible. Every day brings something not just absurd but dangerously destructive.

Take the first U.S. measles death in a decade. The administration shrugged it off, with RFK Jr. saying it “just happens.” But it doesn’t. Measles is entirely preventable. The agonizing death of children is preventable. And yet, here we are, possibly facing multiple pandemics with no reliable information from agencies designed to keep us informed. If another one hits, I can only imagine the public’s reaction to masks this time around.

I expected another pandemic someday, but I wasn’t prepared for it to be just five years after the last. Knowledge helps us prepare and prevent, but we’re not even trying.

Then there’s Musk’s cabinet statement, where he admitted he’d likely make mistakes, citing Ebola as an example. At the same time, the President bizarrely asked if anyone was unhappy with DOGE’s work but didn’t allow responses. These aren’t payroll errors or managerial tweaks. These are decisions that could cost lives, nationally and globally. Cutting the government shouldn’t mean letting kids go hungry or ignoring major weather events.

It’s easy to feel like nothing we do matters. Today is the national boycott which is not a bad thing. I plan to hit up some Asheville breweries and restaurants instead of shopping online. But will a one-day dip in sales make an impact, or will people just shop twice as much tomorrow? I don’t know. But it’s better than nothing.

What I would love to see are more alternatives. Communities shifting toward local action like direct sales, local participation, and taking social off media and back into real spaces. The revolution starts with one person at a time.

I used to watch Les Stroud and Survivorman. He was likable and interesting, and at the time, my partner and I were building our tiny home, thinking that if everything went to hell, we could at least live there off the land. I'll get back to that later.

There is a romantic notion that comes with survival shows. It continues through shows like Alone, which drops several individuals off in the most rugged parts of Alaska with limited tools and tells them to try to survive 90 days to earn a big prize. If they can't, for whatever reason, they have to tap out, and they lose. And what happens every time in these shows is that a lot of the contestants drop out in the first few days, not necessarily because they can't do the physical aspect of survival, but because the crushing loneliness is too much to handle.

Then there was the show Outlast, which created teams that had to work together to last a certain amount of time in the remote wilderness. What happened in the first season was that one team decided that sabotaging the others was the best way to win, and the only reason it didn't devolve into Lord of the Flies and actual violence was the presence of the camera crew. In the end, the cheaters didn't win, which was vindicating.

Right now, with only a couple of episodes airing so far, there is a show called Extracted. It's literally like adult Hunger Games where one person is dropped into a survival situation with absolutely no gear, and two family members have to work together from the relative comfort of an HQ to compete and send them what they need, not just to be comfortable but literally survive. It's only up to the family to determine when someone needs to be extracted, so they appear willing to let their loved ones suffer in exchange for a chance at a prize pot.

Cataloging all of these shows and not even mentioning dozens just like them brings me to my actual hypothesis.

We live in a culture that has commoditized a romantic notion of rugged individualism. There are certainly many people, like Les Stroud, who have trained and know how to survive on their own, but that doesn't mean that the human brain can thrive that way.

What's far more important for us as a species is community. Community is how we develop civilizations. It is part of our evolution and how we learned to care for our elders and offspring. We're far better when we work together than when we try to separate ourselves, no matter how romantic a notion that sounds like.

Our culture has also spent a lot of time dismantling community over many decades. The move from city centers to the suburbs allowed people to separate themselves, especially from others who didn't look like them. The prevalence of car culture that keeps us all locked in our vehicles, commuting distances, and developing road rage has caused us to not think of other drivers as humans but as obstacles.

And the way we're going to get through these next few years, whatever actually happens at the highest levels of our government, is to stick together.

I said I was going to get back to the tiny house. Well, we built that 120-square-foot house nestled in a remote mountain hollow. Entirely off the grid, we lived there for a year, and we had to collect water from the spring on the land. A small solar power system generated all our electricity. And as much as we enjoyed living on the mountain surrounded by nature, we quickly learned there was something we really missed. And that was community. And that's why we moved into the city in a small "right-sized" house.

I am grateful that I live in a community where I know all of my neighbors. And our ability to work together was tested recently after Hurricane Helene. Not only are we close friends with our immediate neighbors, but we also know everyone on our street, and even if we don't hang out with them regularly, in case of an emergency, we are able to check in and make sure everyone is okay.

While it's fun to watch others on TV compete in highly produced survival competitions, the one thing that stands out to me every time is the people who leave the shows because they miss their families and are uncomfortable being alone. And that's what the takeaway should be. Survival isn't about going it alone. Survival happens when we stay together.

Western North Carolina is not okay, and it won’t be for a long time. The storm that flooded our town and destroyed lives left behind deep trauma. My house weathered Helene without damage, but peace of mind is another story. Every time the rain turns heavy, my stomach knots. Storms aren’t something we can control.

I know weather happens. But it’s rare for a storm to stall over the Blue Ridge Mountains and unleash a disaster of that scale. Life changed on September 27th, and I’ll never forget that date.

Lying awake, my mind wandered to another thing that bothered me.

You know that meme? The one that says, “I’m not concerned about men transitioning to women. I’m concerned about Americans transitioning to Nazis.” It’s been sitting with me for days. The general sentiment isn’t the problem—Americans becoming Nazis is bad, full stop. But the phrasing? That’s what gets me.

Men don’t transition to women. That’s not how we should talk about trans people. Trans women are women—always have been. They aren’t men becoming something else; they are aligning their outward selves with who they’ve always been.

If you haven’t seen Disclosure, it’s an incredible documentary about how trans people have been portrayed in media—often dehumanized and made into a joke. But things are changing. I just binged Clean Slate on Prime, and it was sweet, funny, and never made trans people the punchline.

So, let’s stop saying men are transitioning to women. When we frame trans identity this way, we reinforce a harmful binary and give people an excuse to justify hate. Trans women are women, and words matter.

We’re still talking about the halftime show, and I am glad about that. It was an important statement at this point in history, and we can see clear dividing lines between what people thought about it. But I am also noticing that the racists who won’t shut up about it are using it as a distraction from the things that are really going on that they are unsure precisely how to defend.

Yesterday, Elon Musk held a “press conference” in the Oval Office with Mad King Donnie sitting quietly beside him. How fucked up is that? He also had his son there, as what? A prop? He defended his role in this “audit,” which is as far from an audit as something can be. I’ve been a part of corporate audits, and there’s a process and procedure, not just a bunch of hackers coming in and gaining administrative access to the computer systems. This isn’t an audit; it’s a dismantling of our government.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t things that could be made more efficient in government agencies. There is always room for improvement. But cutting off funding to cancer research seems like that’s not exactly the right-sized response.

Other things are happening, too. Have you read about the Save Act? This isn’t just the already challenging voter ID laws that many states have. This means that voters must present a birth certificate to register or vote. It creates a barrier for many US citizens, including married women who changed their last name.

I remember almost 20 years ago, when I was young and willful, having a conversation with some slightly older friends who were insistent that there was a “war on women.” I brushed it off, thinking that we had already crossed that bridge. We had voting rights. Roe V. Wade was a protected decision. I thought feminism had won and didn’t have any idea that the ERA was never ratified. I’ve thought about that conversation a lot in the last couple of decades. Because the rights that I thought were enshrined were anything but.

The other day, I went to a meeting for anyone in our community who wanted to be a part of the resistance. The room was absolutely packed and I noticed right away that among the maybe 100 people, the vast majority were older white women. And I absolutely applaud that we are on the front lines fighting for rights that we already had that are being taken away. I realize that the lack of diversity might have had more to do with the demographics of my area. Still, at the very least, I want to see more white men allowing themselves to be uncomfortable because it means a better America for everyone, not just them.

I know I don’t have a platform that reaches millions, but I do have a voice, so I know I don’t want to stay quiet.

Last week, the King (I mean president) declared that he was now the chair of the Kennedy Center for the Arts and fired the board members. He stated that he wanted to make the arts “great again.” Which is, not surprisingly, shorthand for “white and straight.”

Also this weekend, he attended the Super Bowl. But I was disappointed to learn that, according to NPR, he left before half-time. This was a shame because I really would have liked to see his reaction to Kendrick Lamar’s very pointed performance. Well, I take that back. I would not have wanted to see his reaction because I already knew what it would be.

As a very white woman, I’ll admit that there was a lot of cultural history embedded in Lamar’s show, and I would rather point to folks who are able to analyze it better than I can. But I could tell right away that the show would piss off the white nationalists, and it didn’t take long for the Xweets to start.

In other news, I want to amplify this post by Your Weirdo Friend. Something I’ve known since I was a child before I could fully communicate it, is that white supremacy is not a problem that Black people can fix. It’s systemic to those of us raised in white culture with privilege not to have to think about our place in the world every single day. But it’s long past time for us to step out of our comfort zone and make it clear that white supremacy is not the future. It’s not the way forward and only we have the voices to stand up against it.

I do believe that the revolution starts with arts and culture. For those of us with white skin or who identify as straight and cisgender, start paying more attention to art made by Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, Asian, and Indigenous people – and anyone else who isn’t straight and white. Watch it, empathize with it, and share it.

Then, as you are able, make your art that doesn’t appropriate these voices but lends your voice to the resistance. Stand firm, and don’t let the status quo make you complacent.

I know how things feel right now. And overwhelm is part of the plan. It’s intended to make us feel hopeless and distressed. It’s intended to weaponize our anxiety disorders and make us feel like we just can’t do anything.

Trust me, there are people doing things. That’s why getting involved on a local level is paramount. Look for local activists and organizers, but also spend time with your friends and neighbors.

It’s more important than ever to find joy. When the hurricane hit Asheville, none of us expected the level of destruction we had. We knew it would be a bad storm. We knew that power might go out and that we should fill up the bathtubs with water. What we didn’t know was how long the power would be out or that our entire municipal water system would be washed out entirely. And once the reality set in, we had a choice. We could settle into a very dark place, or we could find joy wherever possible.

I am so grateful that I have incredible neighbors—three houses, six adults, a teenager, and an eight-year-old. In the early days, we began pooling our food and making family dinners. One night, we used a leftover onion, peppers from our garden, cans of black beans, leftover cheese, and leftover tortillas to create taco night. We gathered at the house with a gas stove and cooked up our food by lantern light. We sat around the kitchen island, drank beer and wine, and told stories. We laughed, and for just a little while, we didn’t think about the devastation happening all around us.

That didn’t mean we buried our heads in the sand. We knew exactly what was going on, and we all did what we could to varying degrees in the community. But we knew that we also needed to have those connections and to celebrate every little thing as often as possible.

Finding joy in today’s America is also critical. The enemy is within, and it’s not DEI or trans people. It’s the billionaire coup and the budding oligarchy that is happening with this hostile corporate, I mean government, takeover. While we have to fight and organize and let our voices be heard, we also can’t stop living our lives and finding joy wherever we can.

Finding that joy will look different for everyone. Part of it is self-care, including therapy. Some of it is gathering with friends and neighbors and watching the Big Game this weekend. It could be travel or texting with an old friend. It could be watching RuPaul’s Drag Race while your soft cat sleeps on your lap.

I recently started crocheting. I wanted an activity for my hands while binge-watching Netflix, so I wouldn’t just mindlessly scroll my phone. Also, remember that self-care involves staying informed without letting the 24-hour news cycle overwhelm you.

They want us to lose hope. They want us to abandon joy. They want to stop Pride celebrations and eliminate Black History Month. Don’t give them that satisfaction.

My neighbor very seriously asked me, "You're writing under a pseudonym, right?"

No, ma'am, I am not.

I never have. And if you go far enough back, you'll find my name associated with a lot of communities since the internet became a place to share information. And I'm not afraid to share things using my real name.

That has led to some interesting experiences. I have been the target of hate mail. I have been named by a conservative vlogger and professional asshat about my decision not to have children.

You can see that one here.

For context, here is my original response to discovering that video:

Ooh - what fun! It was brought to my attention today that talk show host Matt Walsh did a "take-down" of the "childfree movement" on a show a couple of years ago. He used an interview (that I had forgotten about) that I did with USA Today many years ago as the story to illustrate his point. Which, of course, is funny by itself. And, of course, many of the things he said were either out of context or just assumptions (I don't typically sit at a bar in Cancun drinking expensive cocktails - I can do that at home.)

Please enjoy this fantastic "dismantling" of my life as a selfish and superficial person whose life has no meaning and whose family has no value because I don't have kids.

But I am not afraid. My name is my name, my thoughts, opinions, and insights are my own, and most importantly, I will always speak up for people who are not in the room.

People have hated me for a lot of reasons. I have been told that my "tone" comes off as abrasive. I've made conservative "friends" cry. I wasn't going for that, but I would challenge their thought process, and if they had an adverse reaction to that, it would not be my problem. This usually comes from men who seem to react negatively to a woman who doesn't stay quiet or defer to their authority just because they have different parts. The same people who would love an aggressive male boss but call an assertive woman in the workplace a bitch.

I have a heightened sense of justice and fairness, and when I see injustice and unfairness, I can't keep quiet. And I won't.

Don't forget about the world's stupidest coup happening right now, where a tech bro is using college kids to access every American's personal information. Keep calling your representatives. Don't stop. Do it like your life depends on it. It might.

But having said that, I want to talk a little about DEI and why the hell did we make it such a target. And it boils down to one thing. Many white people, men in particular, believe that if non-white people have access to "power," the white people will lose their control over the entire system, and they can't have that now, can they?

They said the quiet part out loud on Xwitter:

So DEI has become the boogieman, and now it has come to mean that "unqualified people get preferential treatment." Which is…NOT what DEI is. Of course, if you don't know by now, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Sometimes, there are other letters tacked on, like A for accessibility. How anyone can look at these things and think they're bad is beyond me, but the demoralized white men seem to have assigned meaning to the words that they simply don't have.

In the most basic terms, DEI is a way to provide access to positions to people who had been denied access previously. There are no unqualified people in this context unless what you mean is that based on the color of your skin, your gender identity, or who you sleep with automatically means you're less qualified than white men.

For example, I am not qualified to be an engineer. I do not have the background, education, or requisite experience. I should not be hired for that job. However, someone who has the aptitude for it but was previously shut out of opportunities and now can get the education they need to qualify for these roles, regardless of their race or socio-economic background, should be considered. That's DEI.

But the people who are turning DEI into the boogieman seem to believe that the only qualification someone needs for any job is to be white. See also the president and most of his cabinet picks.

I used to be a recruiter. I helped companies find and hire qualified people for their open jobs. That seems simple on the surface. But it wasn't. As you might imagine, there were often clients who would "nudge nudge, wink wink" with a directive to send them only the "right" candidates.

I remember once I had a fantastic candidate for a warehouse manager role. Everything was perfect with background, education, and experience, except for one thing. She was a woman. As a recruiter, part of my job is to be an advocate for my candidates. So, I submitted her resume and suggested that the hiring manager look at it. I provided lots of detail about why he should consider her, including data from her past successful roles. He declined to interview her. So I made a gentle suggestion again but let it go.

Then I learned that this hiring manager sent a three-word email to my boss, saying, "I hate Laura."

That wasn't the only time this happened. Hiring managers refused to look at candidates' resumes that had non-white-sounding names. Sure, there were plenty of hiring managers who didn't engage in these practices, but those who did were always emboldened by a system that made it possible. I would always push back, but from a professional standpoint, that was considered a bug, not a feature.

The last straw for me in staffing was when those mugshot websites popped up. You know, the ones where the owners of the website were eventually arrested and charged with extortion, money laundering, and identity theft? But before that happened, I learned that clients were using these sites to look up candidates we were sending on short-term projects. These are temporary roles where someone might work for a week or so on a project and then move on to another assignment. But I would send over the list of names of those who would be arriving the next day, and I would get a return email that said, "No. I found their mugshot online."

Of course, this raised all kinds of red flags. And rightfully so. Doing that is a clear violation, and as we learned, those websites weren't always accurate. In fact, they were rarely so. Even when the information is correct, an arrest isn't a conviction, and plenty of people are arrested when they're innocent.

Shortly after that started happening, I knew I couldn't do that job anymore. And it wasn't the fault of the company or the people I worked with. It was built into the system.

That's what DEI initiatives are intended to prevent. That's why they're not the enemy. That's why I'll always stand by providing protections for people who have been targeted personally and professionally.

Even as the government is pulling back and several large corporations are following suit, I think we must support organizations that make DEI a priority. Those of us who have benefited from privilege have to acknowledge it. We have to be vocal to ensure that trans people are safe, Black people have a voice, and everyone has access to opportunities.

Speaking of – This is Black History Month. And I guess the federal government says it's not recognizing that but then also put out a statement about celebrating it, so it's all a confusing clusterfuck of messaging.

But I will celebrate Black History because Black History is American History, and we can't stop teaching it. Many years ago, as conversations were centered around Black Lives Matter, I read a piece about what white folks could do to support Black Americans. One of the suggestions was to "consume Black art and culture." Listen to music by Black artists, read books by Black authors, and watch TV and Movies by Black writers and directors. As someone who absolutely loves stories, that's exactly what I did.

The most impactful person I can celebrate is the late Octavia Butler, specifically in her book Parable of the Sower. Written in the 1990s, it predicted much of what is happening today. Don't sleep on this book. It'll be hard to read right now, but it is so important. And that's the call to action I want to leave you with.

There is nothing normal about what’s happening right now. And if you’re not paying attention, this is going to be an absolute shit show. It’s going to be an absolute shit show, even if you are paying attention.

Please follow the Alt National Park Service. They have been around since 2017 and saw all of this coming. They warned the US and voters. Now, they are the force of the underground resistance that is going to be imperative if we want to have anything left of this democracy.

I have a whole list of topics I want to talk about soon. They’re all important things about the bullshit happening every day at the top levels of government. Policies that are irreparably harmful to everyday people, especially non-white, non-straight, non-male people. But, instead, most people are bitching about how Beyonce won a Country music Grammy. Whatever, more power to her. If you think country music should be only for white folks, then maybe you’re the problem.

It feels like this all unfolded in slow motion. We told people that Project 2025 was dangerous. We told people that this was fascism. And people who said they were voting for lower grocery and gas prices said they weren’t racist.

And now that we’re less than a month into this administration, the snowball has turned into an avalanche.

I’ll get to some of the other topics this week between shit hitting the fan. I want to talk about the “sin” of empathy, how to find joy, the time when I was named directly by a conservative hate vlog, and DEI. I have what I hope is insight, but at least opinions.

In the meantime, stay connected and be diligent.

It will be years before our region is fully recovered, but we’re a resilient group of people. It’s a phrase I would love not to hear or use again for a long time, but that’s the reality of it.

And now, not only are federal agencies at risk under the new administration, including FEMA, we’re taking this opportunity to turn natural disasters into a culture war.

“Where is the star-studded concert for Hurricane Helene?”

We had one. In October. And if celebrities in Los Angeles want to assemble a benefit concert for the community, more power to them. There shouldn’t be a comparison between one city doing disaster more right than another or that people suffering should ever have winners and losers.

The hurricane was a disaster.

The California wildfires are disasters.

What we do need to recognize is why these things are happening, not who deserves more help than someone else.

And the current administration is not going to do anything about it. Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement was a power play and will not help Americans survive. Here’s the thing. We thought of Asheville as a climate refuge. A place that would likely be untouched by things like Hurricanes. At least to that magnitude. But that is no longer the case, and it’s a concern. If a disaster of this magnitude can happen to us, it can happen anywhere.

Yes, I believe in human-driven climate change. No, I don’t think that storms are engineered to feed more conspiracy theories.

No one should make these things political, but here we are, and the current administration is the champ. And the government is just feeding our need to fight amongst ourselves rather than come together.

Let’s let the disaster Olympics go and find ways to work together. The resistance starts small in each of our homes. It begins when we’re willing to stand up and say this shit sucks, do better America. And there is not a single bigoted, racist policy that is going to help Americans. So put together concerts. Build community. Raise money. Paint signs. Speak out. Those are things all of us can do for everyone who needs help.

I am not the person who you can “nudge nudge, wink wink” about being straight and white. When I worked in staffing, I came face to face with hiring managers who wanted to make sure we sent the “right” people for jobs. I would push back as much as I could, and I eventually left staffing over it. I can’t sit back and see injustice happen when it’s preventable.

Which is why I am so mad about the current state of things. We saw this happening. We told people it would happen. I was not quiet. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, transgender rights, or immigration, there is never an excuse for inhumanity.

So here we are. And are we screaming into the void? Can we say anything that will eventually stick in the minds of the people who would rather yell nonsense over us when we say something that doesn’t match the worldview? Where life is somehow a competition we’re supposed to win, and if we don’t dehumanize others, we can’t come out on top?

I also know that there is a level of overwhelm that comes with this specific timeline. I can’t volunteer all my time; I can’t donate all my money. I still have to find joy wherever I can. I’m focusing on a few organizations right now – HRC, ACLU, and Planned Parenthood.

And, as my friend reminded me today, we have to keep making connections in our communities. This will be the most important thing as we watch this implosion happen in slow motion around us. Spend time with neighbors. Check-in on people around you. It’s a scary time, so don’t hibernate if at all possible.

I am an unapologetic progressive. I want to be unequivocally clear: I do not tolerate bigotry, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia in any form. When conservatives say that I’m being intolerant of their beliefs, that’s gaslighting. Because human rights are not opinions. Creating an executive order about gender does not make trans people go away. But creating policies out of hate will make life harder for people who want to live in safety, which is precisely what they want. And I will always speak up for the people who aren’t in the room.

So get loud. Curse a lot. Tell people to fuck off. That’s the message.

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