I swarmed! And appreciate the Senate bill graveyard.

Several months ago, one of my very dearest pals and I decided that rain, shine, or whatever life was throwing at us, we’d walk together every Thursday morning. I believe the only exception we’ve made is when we stayed in to watch Fiona Hill conquer her hearing during the impeachment trial. That was infinitely worth it.

This Thursday tradition is one of my favorite parts of every week, time with a rare gem of a human that I treasure. Yesterday after we walked, I used my new juicer (the Breville juice fountain; I could not recommend it more) to make us fresh carrot-orange juice, and as we drank our vitamins, I confided that with Tom out of town and the pace I’ve been keeping, perhaps I wouldn’t head downtown to join the #SwarmTheSenate protest at noon.

“I’m tired, but I do want to go.”

“Well, you don’t have to go. You certainly go enough. But it does always make you feel better.”

It does, she was right, and I’m so glad I hauled it down to the Hart Senate Building to join the swarm, not least because just after we began, the House walked the articles of impeachment to the Senate and Chief Justice Roberts began swearing in each senator as an impartial justice (we’ll see about that as not a few Republicans have already made clear they refuse to call witnesses, hear new evidence, or listen to anything that goes against ‘our dear leader is perfect’).

Swarm is a committed, welcoming bunch from all over the country: California, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Jersey. They have black shirts that together spell out a variety of phrases and others that have Article 2 Section 4 of the Constitution on the back. Some have been adorned with colorful pieces of fabric on which Remove Trump has been printed. Fortunately, I was wearing a charcoal shirt and navy pants so I didn’t stand out too badly. And they have rolls of Remove Trump/Swarm the Senate stickers, so I stuck two to my chest.

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We gathered inside the Hart atrium, in front of a towering black steel Calder sculpture called Mountains and Clouds. Quietly, peacefully, we stood in front of it in rows, the sun streaming down on us through skylights overhead. Periodically, perhaps because of the stringent rules around gatherings and protests in government buildings or perhaps to infuse a bit of performance art into our protest, we walked silently around, a solemn conga line punctuated by silent resisters standing firmly in newly adopted places.

An 85-year-old woman named Barbara had brought a folding stool to sit on rather than stand. The guards told her she was not allowed to sit in the atrium unless she used the stone benches scattered around the perimeter of the space. After some respectful discussion about was that discrimination or not -I mean, would they not let someone in a wheelchair stay put?- Barbara relocated to a bench. We gathered around her in solidarity (see second photo, above).

in the second floor atrium

in the second floor atrium

Roughly forty-minutes in, we made our way to the second floor of the Russell Senate building where the gorgeous, multi-floor round atrium is. I saw a woman I’d marched with and met several years ago, the NRA -> DC march, and also met a great woman from New Jersey. I felt so deeply and sadly that so many of the people who sit behind the wooden desks in the marbled offices in the hallowed halls of Hart don’t remotely respect the country or office enough to deserve the positions of power they hold.

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Someone unfurled an enormous Remove Trump banner, and we did calls-and-responses with an ever-growing crowd of protesters until we got our third warning from Capitol Police. I could not afford to get arrested yesterday, nor could the NJ woman I’d met, so we walked around the Capitol grounds. I stopped suddenly in front of a new visual I’d not seen before: a graveyard of House bills the Senate, McConnell, has refused to bring to the floor.

It’s powerful. Rows of headstones each with a bill as epitaph. 347 House-passed bills just languishing on McConnell’s desk. Bipartisan bills that would help Americans in so many ways.

I don’t know what will happen this November , but I do know that it’s worth fighting every single day until then to protect what democracy we have left, to get enough people informed and inspired to vote in new members of Congress who will actually care about oaths, regular citizens, infrastructure, our dying planet, equity, justice, and the future.

What are you doing to help bring about change this year? Please share all acts, big or small. I’d love to hear about them!

Damnit, and next

I spent Thursday morning and five hours yesterday going from Capitol to Senate to Supreme Court. I took the tunnel from Dirksen to Russell twice and was even admonished for inadvertently finding my way to the Senate subway in some subterranean space. With two friends, I visited the offices of Senators Leahy, Feinstein, Collins, Corker, Murkowski, Flake, Manchin, Cruz, and more. I wrote notes to almost all of them, left a not-in-your-fan club note in Cruz’s guest book, and spoke my mind politely but very firmly in front of a crowd in Manchin’s office. I was interviewed by NPR, Splinter, and Arizona PBS, and the only reason I share any of this is because none of it seems to have mattered. But I still think it does.

For way too long, I and so many of us have taken democracy for granted. It’s what America is, right? No. It’s what America can be if enough of us fight for that. Right now, we’re fast luges on an icy decline to an authoritarian state run by white Christian men (and not a few women) of the GOP. That would NEVER be a country that represents me or my husband or my children or most people I know and love. And, as such, it is unjust and intolerable to me.

Yesterday at the Senate, I heard a rape victim share her story as well as the fact that in doing so earlier that morning, she had been laughed at -laughed at to her face!- by a group wearing Women For Kavanaugh and I’m With Brett shirts. The cruelty in that renders me speechless. I am still speechless.

And today, when I listened to the roll call of senators casting votes for Kavanaugh, I wasn’t surprised but I was crushed.

I know that so many of us feel hopeless. That we should just give up. But to do so is to abdicate our democratic duties. To do so is to prove the naysayers’ point that democracy is but an idealistic figment, a farce.

If all I witnessed yesterday and Thursday and last week and all the days I’ve protested and marched and rallied and called and canvassed is any indication, democracy is tenuous but worth desperately fighting for. There are so many of us out there demanding change. What needs to happen now is that ALL OF US VOTE. Change can happen only if we storm the voting booths and make our voices heard.

Yes to every doubt you’ll likely raise: gerrymandering, voter suppression, cheating, PACs and other dark money, toxic everything, politicians who only care about their own positions of power.

But also: the rising tide of furious women who will not go back to anything except what we choose to; folks like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams and Jacky Rosen and Jahana Hayes; the people who have already done what everyone said they couldn’t (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example); the people who will (whoever runs against Susan fucking Collins).

We saw in the Senate signs I never thought I’d see (see photos) and met so many staffers who thanked us and thanked us some more for being there. One of my dear friends flew in on the red eye from Portland so she could protest all day Friday. Another dear friend essentially moved onto the Capitol steps last week and may finally return home tonight.

All of us, regardless of what side you’re on, deserve better than what we’re getting. We deserve better than mealy-mouthed cowards (like Jeff Flake whose office door we found locked on Friday) and Lisa Murkowski who talked a big game but pulled her vote today because “Gaines would vote Aye if he were here so our votes would cancel each others out anyway.” We deserve better than old pissy white men like Grassley, Hatch, and Graham, who never bothered to take Dr. Ford or the FBI “investigation” remotely seriously but instead impeded both at every turn and in every way. We deserve better than the two-bit cheating imbecile who is our “president.” And we certainly deserve better than the angry liar who was just given what is arguably the largest honor with the greatest amount of sway in our country: a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

We have FOUR AND A HALF WEEKS until the midterms. How will you spend your time?

If you care at all about our democracy, you will do everything in your power to register and get people to vote. You will make calls, write postcards, knock on doors, and donate what you can. You will talk to neighbors and friends and people in the carpool lines and you will politely beg them to vote. If you’re uncomfortable, do it anyway, or do it quietly or with your checkbook. If you have daughters, do it so they won’t have to be assaulted and then disbelieved. If you have sons, do it because you want to raise men who would NEVER treat women as sub-human toys. If you’re an adult, question the ways you were socialized as children. If you have any hesitation, consider the rest of your life being run by people like these:

H/t Daily Kos

H/t Daily Kos

Change the narrative, y’all. Demand better. Demand different. Demand more. If you’re angry, stay angry. There’s a fuckload to be angry about, and as so many people have correctly noted, from righteous anger can come enormous growth and change.

We have four and a half weeks. Focus. If the Democrats don’t gain back at least the House, I think America buys itself a second Trump term. I do not think we can afford that in any way. Everything you feel now? Use it.

Resources:

Votesforwomen.co

Sisterdistrict.com

Host a Flip the House postcard-writing party: Flip the House

Swing Left

Some great candidates to support:

Beto O’Rourke (TX/Sen)

Kyrsten Sinema (AZ/Sen)

Jacky Rosen (NV/Sen)

Joe Donnelly (IN/Sen)

Heidi Heitkamp (ND/Sen)

Bill Nelson (FL/Sen)

Andrew Gillum (FL/gov)

Stacey Abrams (GA/gov)

Sean Casten (IL-6/House)

Mike Levin (CA-49/House)

Jahana Hayes (CT-5/House)

Let me know of folks you support, too!

This is what democracy looks like

Yesterday’s heartbreak and rage led to today’s feelings of nausea and fury, and so really, I had to do something. After a meeting and a doctor’s appointment, I met up with a friend -the aforementioned Pilates teacher- and hauled ass to the Supreme Court where we met up with another friend of mine, my Supreme Court-protest buddy, and then saw my forever resister sister.

After a vigorous rally on the steps of the Supreme Court, three of us marched to the Senate buildings for another protest. After walking in the damn front door and politely asking, “Can we come in?” a friend and I led a large group into the Dirksen building with the intention of visiting Lisa Murkowski’s office. Looking over the directory, however, our eyes froze over Mitch McConnell’s name: Russell building 317.

Can you imagine where we headed? Third floor.

On the way we met one of Senator Durbin’s aides, a delightful man who showed us exactly where to go and thanked us for being there. We cheered him with wild abandon. Guards helped us when we were stymied by the many buildings’ twists and turns, and before I knew it, we were marching through one of the underground tunnels and into Russell.

It’s a beautiful, grand place. The marble halls of power, the rotundas of history, the old school formality, the flags and medallions. In some awe, in hushed tones, we persisted. Right to 317.

I haven’t any idea how I ended up as the apparent representative of our group, but before I knew it I was writing a letter -on a red leather bound legal pad embossed “Senate”- to McConnell that we all signed. It ran the gamut from “sir, you serve your constituents” to “we remember the ‘let’s make Obama a one-term president’ obstruction” to Merrick Garland and here we are today.

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It wasn’t lost on me that prior to my protest I had a GYN appointment and then had to leave the Senate building to get home in time for carpool; what women do. But it all felt so very therapeutic, a way to put rage and fear to work. This IS what democracy looks like, and I will fight to the end for it.

In the cab on the way home, a text came in: Flake has reversed course somewhat and is calling for an FBI investigation. Bless the women that confronted him in the elevator and all the Americans who have called, faxed, tweeted, written, and showed up in person. Murkowski supports his call. We have one week.

Make it count.

Senator Murkowski: 202-224-6665
Senator Collins: 202-224-2523
Senator Flake: 202-224-4521
Senator Manchin: 202-224-3954
Senator Heitkamp: 202-224-2043