To my Trump supporting friends:
- You say: “get over it; you lost”. I say: This is not a game.
- You say: “it is time to heal”. I say: I am not sick.
- You say: “oh you are so angry.” I say: That’s right!
Angry that we have an indecent, inhumane President-elect.
Angry that you want to implement policies that I vehemently disagree with.
Angry that my immigrant family, LGBTQ, African American, and Muslim friends are being so insulted, disrespected, and misunderstood by the man coming into the most powerful office in the United State.
Angry that the uneducated whites have been – paraphrasing Bob Dylan – “used as political pawns for political gains.”
Angry that Science lost.
Angry that defunding critical scientific research, climate change denial, and ideology-based creationism will become the cultural norm.
Angry that anti-abortionists were duped into believing (in part by priests in my own Catholic faith) to focus all their attention on the simplistically dangerous and calice tactic of criminalizing abortion by committing to overturn Roe vs. Wade instead of committing to support prenatal care, new-born universal health insurance, adoption programs, early childhood education, and affordable child-care – proven tactics which would do more to reduce abortion than force women to revert to coat hangers.
Yep. I am proudly part of the opposition, the insurgency, the resistance.
- I still love you, mind you.
- I still will work with you.
- I still will respect you.
- AND I still will speak my mind.
You see, I come from a proud people who stood up to a dictatorial maniac and paid the ultimate price. Some had no choice but to leave our homeland. Yet today – thanks to President Obama – we are in dialogue with that very same regime. And I welcome that. I get it. But this time I ain’t going nowhere. I am here to stay. Deal with it.
Dialogue and engagement, yes. Appeasement, No!
When our agendas intersect, I will gladly work with you.
When they don’t, I will maneuver and mobilize to oppose you.
You may have the political power; we have the people power.
We will fight, resist, and protest.
We will relearn from our elders and heroes, MLK, Cesar Chavez, and the like.
We will mobilize massive resistance that you simply will not be able to ignore.
We will use our basic freedom of the press to their maximum our message.
(And when you try to squelch these freedoms, your authoritarian law and order tactics will backfire and simply make it more difficult for you to control the passion of the people.)
We will do what it takes.
We will NOT let you take us back in time to an America that was not so great.
We may occasionally celebrate joint successes; but more often than not we will go our separate ways:
- You to your blind trust in your fearless leader. Us to our common bond with our fearless people.