So many friends, family, neighbors, and posts on social media have expressed bewilderment at the election results: they’ve been in mourning, wondering “where our country went.”
I’ve moved through a wide range of emotions since Tuesday: disbelief, despair, fear, thoughts of moving to Canada, Mexico, or Ireland (where I can apply for a passport because my father’s mother emigrated from what is now Northern Ireland.) But three days after the election, I’ve landed on some painful truths and decided, “F$$k Trump.” He’s trying to steal my country, but I won’t let him, his tech bros, and the rest of his bigoted minions steal my country. Or my joy.
Since 1999, we’ve lived with horses, burros, chickens, and dogs on an acre in Corrales, NM, a rural community NW of Albuquerque, with a population of just over 8,600. Ten minutes from Costco. In a state with a terrific Democratic governor. We maintained a solid Democratic majority in our legislature Tuesday, and we bested Trump state-wide by six points.
We have a strong human rights amendment in the state (I learned to lobby to help with that work in the early 2000s). We passed marriage equality in 2013. In 2003, I was on the board of the Coalition for Equality in NM, our state-wide LGBTQ nonprofit that formed in 1993, and I helped reorganize our c3 with a state-wide c4 and a PAC into what we named Equality New Mexico.
But I’m no longer on committees, commissions, or boards because when I turned 80, my mouth got bigger, and I say things I later regret. So for activist work, I stick to my desk, and I do what I do best: email. I’m what some neighbors call the “town crier” for our neighborhood. When I die, my tombstone will read SHE HAD GOOD LISTS.
What I’ve learned over the years is that we each need to find some form of activism that works for us. Avoid despair and seek out what we CAN do to change our communities for the better and forgive ourselves for what we can’t change. But to do that, we need to see the bigger picture: WE LIVE IN A DYING PATRIARCHY. We’ve got to continue to find ways to keep up the struggle to birth a healthy new world for all of us. Thanks to President Biden, we’re a lot closer than we were four years ago.
But if you’re white, ask any friend not of your race what their elders tell them about the “whitewashed” history we never learned in school: stealing Native land, treaty violations, slavery, Japanese internment camps, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia are ugly truths about our country’s history.
Trump is the latest in a long lineup of mostly white men who claim to be rulers of the universe. They’re not. They use identity to divide us. Don’t let them. We need to lick our wounds and regroup, renew our resolve, and continue to find ways that work for each of us personally, then work together to build the communities we dream of. And celebrate our joy.
—Mary Ellen Capek, [email protected]