The Ones Who Stay and Fight
How to make a post-election roadmap for the coming months
We voted Sunday. If you’re voting today don’t forget your downballot races! They’re what affect your local community most. I brought a sample ballot I’d filled out using a voting guide. You can look up downballot races at this site or ask a friend for a voting guide they’d recommend. There are many things on the ballot besides the president and congresspeople, even if those get all the airtime.
Last winter my friend, Amelia Greenhall, of Anemone sent out a newsletter with a simple assignment: make a winter happiness plan. I love the slowing down of writing a physical list. Today, alongside writing my winter happiness list, I’m going to map out some goals and concrete actions. How do I want to connect to my community and give energy, money, time to things I care about?
No matter who is elected in the coming days we will still be over a year into a genocide. We will still be in on of the hottest years on record. And no matter who is elected we will still all have so much to give, so much to share with each other, so many expansive, creative ways to create the important changes we want to see.
Write Your Post Election Accountability List
I’ve thought of several ways to brainstorm a list like this.
A cluster web could be a useful way to map out causes. What is aligned with your values in your community? What are resources at your disposal? Who are people that you would like to connect to, things you’d like to donate to?
A venn diagram might be a good way to write down skills you have and things you want to change, want to protect, want to give to. Where do these intersect?
How about a good old fashioned phone tree? Pick five friends that you would want to collaborate with doing this work. People you could organize with, volunteer with, talk to. Maybe text them today to say that you are looking forward to the work ahead.
My plan for today is to finish binding the remaining copies of our new, doomy comic “Cellar Door: Here Comes the Night” (get a copy if you’re so inclined, its a good winter read.) I’m looking forward to sitting in a comfy chair to flip through it. I also have some very good zines/art books to read that I’ve gotten at fests including “A Soulful Body” by Leila Khoury, printed by my friend Anna at Empress Editions. I got a copy at Pittsburgh Zine Fest a few weeks ago. It chronicles the history of Arab Americans in Detroit.
At the zine fest I had lots of really great conversations but one that stood out to me was with a woman wearing a shirt with an Octavia Butler quote.
“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”
We started talking about feminist science fiction and themes that are emerging this election cycle. I said I intended to reread “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin and something new by N.K. Jemison. The woman I was talking to asked if I had read the Le Guin story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” about a utopia. I said I hadn’t, she mentioned that N.K. Jemison had written a response to that story called “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”.
Eco-feminist science fiction is just what the doctor ordered for my winter reading. If you have not read the Parable of the Sower trilogy it’s set in 2025 and was my winter read after the 2016 election.
Let me know if you read them and what you think.
Let me know what’s on your winter happiness list and what’s on your post-election plan. I’ll share mine after I finish them.
In love and solidarity,
RAH