Make Good Trouble. And Popcorn.
Once again, we have an opportunity to show the nation we're not giving up our democracy without a fight.
One of the things I miss the most about our old lives in the United States is the near certainty that when I awoke in the morning, I wasn’t going to find out that my government did something dreadful in the middle of the night. We may have been involved in bad things in other parts of the world, but for most of my lifetime, our own Congress and Supreme Court weren’t taking rights away from us in the middle of the night.
And while I recognize that some of the certainties I enjoyed were a result of the privilege of being a white woman living a middle-class existence in Los Angeles, I never imagined that the US government would occupy my city and stay here for over a month. Or that I could be kidnapped off the street by a gang of masked government goons and whisked into a concentration camp - without an opportunity to call a lawyer (or let my family know). Or be deported to a country I’ve never heard of.
That is no longer the case in the United States of America. Those wonderful checks and balances our teachers told us would prevent us from living under a dictatorship turned out to be mirages. As frogs in the pot, we are nearly boiled.
By now, you know that Trump once again succeeded in smashing a norm with the overnight passage of his rescission package, clawing back $8 billion in funding for international aid and public broadcasting. We don’t know how that bodes for future bipartisan budget negotiations. There won’t be any future if we don’t take back the Congress in 2026, and that feels like an eternity from now.
In the meantime: We need to continue to show our fellow Americans (and the world) that this is not okay. That we are not okay. And that our voices will not be silenced.
We lost John Lewis five years ago today, and so tonight we will be making Good Trouble in over 1500 locations throughout the country. If you cannot make one of the evening vigils, you can still participate online at a virtual event hosting by our friends at MomsRising. And as we watch our nation slide deeper into the abyss, the folks at Indivisible have hatched some new plans for resistance. The One Million Rising trainings began last night - but it’s not too late to sign up for the next two events. Do it.
Pass the Popcorn
The last six months have been grim, so I think Karoli and I can be forgiven for having a few laughs at the expense of MAGA’s Jeffrey Epstein dilemma. We managed to talk about some of the atrocities the regime committed this week, too - but overall, I think this week was one of the more enjoyable hours we got to spend together. I hope you’ll think so, too.
One Last Thing
