Imma Need Don Julio and Marbolo To Sponsor This Newsletter For The Next 4 Years
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I spent election night in 2016, back when I was still kind of a lib, at my friend’s house. The only fully black friend there in a room full of mostly white women, and their white husbands.
As results trickled in, and the margins became clearer, and the shock of a Trump presidency crystallized, every last woman in that room was sobbing. Except me.
Come Inauguration Day, they put on their best Clare V. tees and Women’s March-ed downtown, treating it more like a Sunday craft fair photo op for themselves. Even as Black and Brown women just one shoulder over spoke, cried, and stood as their DACA promises evaporated, their Muslim bans loomed, and the future hate crimes and overt discrimination against them bore down.
Those crowds and the contrast of purpose — one segment hoping for community and answers, the other using it as a studio backlot — is really what radicalized me.
Those friendships are long gone. Even the ones I tried to hold on to. If any of them are reading this, this might be your closure. You were unsafe to me. You had too tight of a tie to the racists, fascists, and monsters-against-progression in your life, so I left.
Roe might be the only thing that they could relate to. Even though as gainfully employed, educated, wealthy, and insured women they wouldn’t really ever have to worry, but it, and the cycle of media fear, Supreme Court nominations and appointments, kept their attention. I guess.
The fear and the tears from that election night never showed up again. They all moved on with their lives, their engagements turned to marriages, the babies were born, houses were bought, built and renovated. They flourished in work, bought labradoodles, and never stepped outside again. By 2020, when they were posting their black squares, their babies, now kindergartners, were already safely off to the all white schools they specifically geared their home buying in all white neighborhoods for. That election night fear for their futures was long gone because they were fully assured, whether they’d ever admit it or not, that their numbers would never be up anyway.
White women simply do not dream of revolution, specifically one that requires their labor. Trump 1.0 didn’t force their allyship and action plans into overdrive, it didn’t even kickstart them at all. They didn’t Trojan Horse their way into HOA’s, school boards, or neighborhood councils, easing past the color barrier to plant progressive seeds on our behalf. They stayed put.
Every underground abortion network, every jail support network, every mutual aid project I’ve seen is run by a volunteer, almost always black or brown, almost always poor, almost always themselves at risk of suffering along side the very people they’re trying to save.
For every future cause against Trump, for every call in from the collective for their labor, coverage, or support, the most the allies could muster was an Instagram repost, or send a couple of dollars to a donate link.
How we used their money became a determining factor of how worthy our causes were.
I remember the mass arrests in Minneapolis (2020), and the rush to donate to bail funds to free protestors that had been kettled, detained, and jailed. I think, like, millions were raised within a few days. More money than can ever be used for the dozens needing to be bailed out, but a life changing, legitimizing amount for an operation run by volunteers and pro-bono legal aids. Almost as fast as they donated to the fund, the well-meaning masses began demanding to know exactly how the money would be used, almost like if they couldn’t personally trace their savior dollars to an individual’s release, they didn’t want their money used at all. Almost like millions of dollars were supposed to magically clone team members, or spawn second and third heads and arms for them to work faster. They didn’t offer their labor, but fell right into their preferred space as “overseer” and “supervisor,” figuratively following Freedom Fund staff from aisle to aisle, making sure they didn’t stuff any of that money into their own dried out payroll, overdue bills, debt, or overhead.
Eight years after Trump’s first win, we are here again.
I’m not saying this is a moment to shout “fuck the little milk crate free library you zip-tied to your mailbox,” but, as a group with the most work to un-do, it’s not enough. When will you realize that voting for fictional values and personal comfort in a country where life, death, freedom, housing, and food are hourly battles, are a luxury of the insane.
So, what are you going to do?
More so, what have you already done?
50 Years After They Were Rounded Up And Slaughtered, Orcas Return to Penn Cove (WhidbeyNewsTimes)
Chappell Roan Locks Down A New Manager (Billboard)
CAA Lays Off 20 Agents (Deadline)
Skip Wordle: NYT Tech Team Is On Strike (FastCo)
Singer Jada Arnell Thomas Shot In Dallas (Newsweek)
Tony Todd Passes Away, Will Haunt Me Forever (Today)
*Yawn*…. Grammy Nominations Are Here (Variety)
Nicole Sherzinger’s Understudy Is About To Get Busy (TheIndependent)
Judith Jamison, the legendary dancer, Emmy Award-winner and Kennedy Center honoree, took over as artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre after Ailey passed away in 1989. She died Saturday in New York City after a brief illness at age 81.
“Your Body, Our Choice”— Nick Fuentes
I don’t really even know what a Nick Fuentes is. Assuming sort of mold growth incel figure from the internet’s (or honestly maybe even Substack’s) neo-nazi servers. Fact check me if I’m wrong there. I really can’t keep track of every evil child White America births. Anyway, these motherfuckers are already starting, although, now that I think about it, if we’re, like, going back to the beginning of time, they’ve never fucking stopped.
Elsewhere…