I have gotten more radical as I have gotten older. I started out a somewhat middle of the road liberal high schooler. OK with gay people and stuff but personally very conservative and restrained. I went to Oberlin, renowned for being a school breaking every social convention. Coed dorms in the 60s, drag ball every year, a thriving student cooperative system of which I was a member. I didn’t go to Safer Sex Night or Drag Ball. Mostly because I just didn’t want to dress up and stay up late. And I had church the next morning. I was studying in France when Obama was elected the first time, and boy did I believe that message of hope. And progress. I really thought we could get out of the militaristic mindset. I hoped the ACA would reform our broken healthcare system. I thought we weren’t going to get as far as Europe until we embraced socialism, but I thought it could happen, and I thought that there was a lot of good happening in France. I finished my studies in the US, then moved back to France. I saw even more up-close the racism and gatekeeping in that society, and I saw as 26 precious children and teachers were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, and my own country did nothing.
Then *rump was elected, and I had a kid. Being pregnant and being abused by an obgyn in labor opened my eyes even wider to all the ways bodily autonomy and reproductive rights were already at risk, and that was in a state that protected abortion access AND that was before Roe was overturned.
I saw the party I voted for back down again and again and again on what the moment demanded for justice, equality, and progress. I watched income inequality balloon and democrats do nothing more than offer bandages. I watched school shooting after school shooting. I watched police murder Brionna Taylor, George Floyd, and Sandra Bland. I watched drone strikes increase under Obama, and Biden turn his back on humanitarian immigration policies. I’ve watched for over a year and a quarter now as a nation founded as a safe haven from genocide commits genocide in the wide open. And I have to contend with the knowledge now that this has been happening for over 70 years, and I’m only just now willing to call it what it has always been. And now I’m now facing another *rump term.
I’m more radical, but I’m also more contemplative, and as angry as so much of this makes me, I see hurt and scared people voting against their own interests and against mine, and I want to bridge that divide. I won’t excuse the unintended effects, but I will consider how to connect. After all, my vote has had negative consequences for groups too. I voted for Biden in 2020, and he has been instrumental in supporting Israel’s genocidal actions in the Gaza strip. I voted for Obama, but he didn’t come out strong enough on healthcare reform, instead posturing for ‘compromise’ when McConnell never had any intention of playing by the same rules. There is unequivocal cruelty out there, and that’s what I’m politically against now. As much as I laugh at the idea of storming the Bastille and engaging in revolution, the suffering and violence is not going to get us anywhere we want to be next. Anything demeaning, subjugating, thirsting for power and control, that’s what I oppose. I’ve seen domination systems in France and I see them all around me here in the US. The system that I now seek rejects power and domination in favor of care and support. Republicans and Democrats differ mainly in who they think should have power and who should be dominated and to what extent. I voted democrat because I still see it as a harm-reduction vote, but harm reduction is really the bare minimum we should seek, isn’t it. As long as taking away retirement care and healthcare and education is still on the menu, we don’t really have freedom or an opportunity to flourish, do we? I want a government that might disagree on the best way to promote health, wellness, innovation, and safety, but that actually agrees that everyone should have access to those things. I haven’t seen that yet. If the world events are any clue, there is no place that has achieved that. I think that means we need to work harder to build connections at the microlevel where we can influence others and create humane systems. But I’m feeling pretty hopeless about the upcoming state of our larger governmental and societal systems and institutions.
Actually an Artist 
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