Monday, January 30, 2017

Combating the Sore Loser Meme

The Boston Globe published a story today about the mammoth pro-refugee/immigrant rally in Copley Square yesterday. I was still nursing a broken toe and didn't go and I'd be kicking myself for missing it but...broken toe.  On the other hand I forsee plenty of chances to rally and protest in the near and far future so I'm not heartbroken.  There were two quotes from Republicans in the Boston Globe story. Charlie Baker gave Mitch McConnell's response which was to pretend that this was all business as usual and that "the courts" would fix things, somehow.  Not a constitutional crisis, not an unconstitutional act, not immoral, just...kind of not great but if we'd all calm down and let the grown ups handle it things would be better. The other was from Trump's MA campaign manager--interesting that they couldn't get one or two of our few Republican State Reps to comment--and he gave the other party line "you were warned, you can't complain now."  Actually, what he said was even more interesting, deliberately drawing attention to the fact that President Obama had delivered this mild rebuke to the Republicans after his election he said "Elections have consequences and President Trump promised to do all this during the campaign." (Paraphrasing).

We are going to hear a lot of this in the future. But its not really an answer to the protests. We aren't protesting because we don't realize the election had a consequence that put Trump into power. We are protesting because his actions are illegal, immoral, and we don't like them. This has nothing to do with the legitimacy, or otherwise, of his election.  And it has nothing to do with numbers for or against his policies. It has to do with legal, illegal, moral, immoral, justice, and injustice.

And this is a point we need to be making to the remaining Trump voters as well as to the voters and non voters who were essentially on the fence, or ignorant of the choice they were making, or voting out of spite.  We need to emphasize (as people already do in their signs) the larger moral and safety issues.  I also think we need to start banding together in affinity groups and showing up at rallies as groups--I suppose I'm thinking this because now that I am a Social Worker I finally have a ready made group to affiliate with.  But no one will be surprised when Social Workers show up en masse.  I am thinking of smaller but bigger groups--PTA, a whole street, churches, new mothers, grandmothers, bowling leagues.  I'm also a Weight Watcher and I want to organize a "Weight Watchers Against Deportation" group.  I think back to a sign my mother saw forty years ago at a big Anti-Nuke rally in NY "East Village Weight Watchers Against The Bomb!"  When every subgroup in society comes out, loud and proud, and its not clearly "interested parties" or the phantom "paid advocates" we will start to see cracks in the complacent ice that is the majority of white people in this country.  I hope.  



Friday, January 27, 2017

Long Time No See

I went back to school this fall--just slightly before the crack of doom that threw the entire country on this dystopian footing.  Because I am getting my MSW (that's Master's in Social Work for those not in the know) I have mixed feelings about maintaining a blog.  But I was reviewing my posts today so I could send my daughter some of my Proust posts and I decided that, come hell or high water or, in the case of our post Trump world, both, blogging my experiences as a Social Work student, intern, and practitioner is worth doing.  So here goes!