Use Your Words. They Matter.

There’s a lot going on.

On Tuesday, I watched in horror, as my nation proved that it does not care for it’s fellow citizens. The list is long: people of color, people with disabilities, Muslims, Jews, women, gay, lesbian, transgender, asexual, queer, queer adjacent, interracial couples. any non-Christians, people with children (this affects your sons as much as your daughters. Let’s not kid ourselves.) Immigrants and foreigners. It’s a long damn list.

That’s a whole lot of people in this world who don’t feel safe because of our President Elect. I’m not going to use his name here. Like my previous post on this site, using his name does nothing but give him power.

A margin of my country, of our country, hates us.  If you voted for him and you disagree with this statement, then I need you to look closely at the other people who did.

What are we going to do about it?

A lot of people are scared. A lot of people are going back into the closet. A lot of people are making choices about their public facing identities, about what they choose to tell the world. Many people are choosing not to have children, because this, this is too much. This man is the embodiment of hate, and bringing a child into the world right now isn’t right to them.

A lot of people are angry. Betrayed by a nation which elected a reality TV star filled with hatred for president.

We have to do better. Not just for our children, not for future generations,  but for ourselves. Because we, the adults, will be cleaning this up for the rest of our lives.

We have to put on our stompy boots, make our signs and march (or roll, if that’s how you attend protests, stompy boots can still be worn with wheelchairs.) We have to write our Congressmen, and our Senators. We have to support the ACLU, and Lambda Legal, and the SPLC. We have to research and learn the systems of our nation the best we can, because we cannot allow this to hurt us any more than it already has.

We are going to lose rights. Many disabled people will lose health care, and they may not survive that loss. Queer folks may lose their rights too, and how would YOU survive if they took away your marriage, or your right to an accurate gender?

If the change you were looking for was to be heard? We’ve heard you.

But more than hearing those who voted for the President Elect, I heard the people who didn’t vote.

Your absence from the polls made this a brutally close race. If you were absent of your own free will (and not all of you were) I want you to sit with that.

I want you to sit with the fact that you are a part of this.

You  made a choice by not making a choice, and now many of us must fight for our lives.

My advice to you, if you want to make change? Make a personal agenda. Not all of us can fight for all things. Pick two out of the billions of causes. Pick gun control, or education, or reproductive rights, or disabled rights. Find a cause and champion it We need champions now.

Through it all, I’ll be here, writing. I’ll write fiction, but I’ll write nonfiction too.

I will tell you what I think.

One thing you can do, right now, is to make sure you don’t make disabled people feel unseen. So many people are posting lists about who is impacted by our President Elect. Don’t leave us out. We are here, and we are scared.

I wanted a different future for us. I wanted a different choice. But this is the one we got, so now I have to rise up, because I will not be silent while my country is led by a bigot.

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