In this time of political darkness we think about who will suffer, and so many will. Good citizens will lose their rights and their voices will go unheard and the ability feel free to be who they are in their own country will be diminished. We will watch out for them and we will see them and say we are still here to stand by you. We will do all we can to preserve and protect those rights for everyone.
What we need to look out for, too, is who is benefitting from a system that has been put in place to keep people down. We need to account for who is doing well in this climate of ignorance and exclusion and to keep track of this.
I, for one, am gutted that such a horrible person has been elected to lead our country. I do not condone his actions or ignorance (could he even pass a high school civics test?). I do not accept how things have turned out; there was interference and corruption and it must be investigated and resolved rightly. For the record, I am not silent that this is not right.
I will, however, make the best of it because I have young children who need to grow up and learn everything they know about the world from me. That does not mean I'll sugarcoat anything. I will teach them that there is bad in the world and they are forces for good who can stand up to the bad. I will demonstrate for them that we are strong people who matter and who have a voice that should be heard. Their dad and I will take them to their first protest tomorrow to stand up against a political leader that we do not support because protesting peacefully is a right we are afforded (for the time being) in our country and we will exercise it.
Tonight we made signs for the women's march tomorrow. We explained to our young son that we have a new leader for our country that is not a good person, who does not have the kindness or love in him to treat everyone fairly or with respect - but that WE do have that inside of us and we will demonstrate that by marching with signs that say so. We are here and we are not silenced by election results or inaugurations or by other's desires for us to just go along with the status quo. I would never want my children to grow up and just "play nice" in the face of racism or sexism or bigotry.
We are marching tomorrow for our children to know that their parents stood up to this. We are marching because we want to demonstrate to them their basic political freedoms. We are marching because good people say when bad is bad. We are marching tomorrow to show others that our family is a loving, accepting family that deeply cares about everyone because we live in a world with a bunch of different, eclectic, strange, beautiful humans that we want the best for. And what we have now is most definitely not the best.
