Fire Weekend Hope Notes
I wrote this list on my Facebook page on Friday night.
Sometime in the post-11/9 world, I started making #hopeinthedark lists. Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark, and her frequent social media posts and subsequent essays.
The fires are breaking my heart. Usually I stay hopeful but not right now. Tonight, I’m writing this list because I need to see it. Hope is a practice I guess.
Besides the general good news about the blue wave, and the diversity of the newly-elected politicians, here are amazing victories and sources of continuing inspiration that I’m excited about recently, in no particular order:
Costa Rica will be the first Central American country to allow same-sex marriage by 2020.
Congressional Democrats introduced a ban on forced arbitration clauses in employment agreements
Latino voter turnout doubled over 2014
Betsy Devos sued over failing to comply with a judge’s order to cancel student debt
opposition in NYC to Amazon
La Taqueria in SF buys its building and gets to stay
North Carolina now has a 5–2 pro-voting rights state Supreme Court who are likely to strike down the awful gerrymandering of that state
40 of 70 DSA-backed candidates for office this year won
Oakland rejects Tagami’s coal terminal hopefully once and for all
the new Democratic Governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, plans to reinstate protections for LGBT state workers
a federal judge blocks the Keystone XL pipeline, again.
appeals court rules against Trump’s effort to end DACA
Utah, Maine, Nebraska, Idaho, and Kansas voted for Medicaid expansion
Ned Lamont elected Governor of Connecticut (the antiwar candidate who beat Joe Lieberman in the Senate primary and then lost to Lieberman when he ran as an independent in 2006)
Besides the House, there are 7 new Democratic governors, and 6 new Democratic trifecta state legislatures
Baltimore banned water privatization
Missouri and Arkansas voted to raise the minimum wage
legal marijuana passed in Michigan
Scott Walker defeated
Louisiana voted to end non-unanimous juries, a relic of jim crow
charter school teachers vote to authorize strikes in Chicago
Liverpool ran far-right marches out of town
incredible stories all over the countries of racist and Republican judges, sheriffs, and DAs getting voted out.
Florida votes to restore voting rights to over a million people with felonies.
San Francisco passed Prop C to tax big corporations to address homelessness in a decisive way
Oakland passes a vacancy tax and a real estate transfer tax on big properties, and expands eviction protections
California defeated Prop 5 and 6, and passed Props 1 & 2.
climate protests block five bridges in London
in San Francisco, Buena Vista Horace Mann begins a groundbreaking program to let homeless students and their families sleep on campus and provides services. (This is my children’s school so I am especially proud.)
the Venezuelan government delivers 2.3 million new homes to working class people in the midst of the economic crisis.
hotel workers in Boston settled their contract as part of the national Marriott strike ONE JOB SHOULD BE ENOUGH.
Taxi drivers in Philly refused rides to people headed to a far-right rally
Federal judge in Oakland blocks the City from removing homeless encampments
1000s protest in Norway against restrictions on abortion
I know there’s a lot more of continuing good news, like Catherine Baker, the last Republican in the Assembly from the Bay Area finally getting unseated.
The destruction and suffering caused by the fires in unimaginable. The IPCC climate change report last month said that millions will die because of particulates and we’re seeing it happen in front of us. I feel fortunate to have a house, but it’s old and leaky and our heater broke so we’re cold. It’s hard to think about organizing to change the root causes of our crisis when my head hurts and I can’t go outside. How do you fucking organize without leaving the house? Time for a homebound cacerolazo maybe?
The consequences of climate change we’re living now were both predicted and preventable. Meanwhile, we have politicians on the right who think climate change is a marxist conspiracy and are throwing snowballs in the Senate or whatever, and we have Democrats kinda noodling around the edges but still not at the level the crisis requires.
Tonight feels dark, so I’m writing my hope lists to clear my head and restore my resolve. Yesterday I was at the memorial from my friend Alana, who died two weeks ago. There was grief at the loss and joy at the life she lived. We live with contradictions. We’re living in an age of fire cyclones. Fear about the future, fury at the people whose irresponsibility and greed got us here, sadness for the losses. So making my lists is how I’ve come to train my brain not to freeze. Looking for hope when I don’t feel it, because I know it’s always there. Now I’m going to go snuggle my kids.
