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Shobhit and I went to the Town Hall with Representative Pramila Jayapal last night. It was amazing.
And, just because I think it bears repeating, I am going to post again what I posted
to all my socials last night—even though I also already posted it once here on my blog, in the
Bluesky digest of yesterday's posts from this morning. I feel strongly enough, that it is important enough, to repeat it in its entirety here:
For too long now I have been wildly disillusioned with and deeply cynical about the efficacy of protest—in retrospect, just playing into the hands of my oppressors. I might as well start saying voting doesn't matter. Both of these things could not possibly matter more.
But on the protest point, I have been turned around on this completely in the last couple of days. Last night we watched the season premier of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and the episode predictably focused on the deeply cruel and hostile takeover of the new President Fuckwit administration. One of the many points he made was that massive protests in his first term were actually critical in getting many of his orders and initiatives blocked or slowed—anything and everything counts. The same will be the case now.
At the Town Hall held tonight by our spectacular representative here in Washington's 7th Congressional District, Pramila Jayapal, she strongly reiterated this point multiple times: taking to the streets to protest makes a huge difference, as does calling and writing to your representative, even if you know she already stands for the same principles as the vast majority of her constituents.
I am so glad I went to this Town Hall. It was a genuine eye opener, and Jayapal was amazing—not perfect, of course; I have to be careful to remind myself of that: neither she nor any other elected official is, and must always be held to account. A couple of attendees actually did this more than others, insinuating she isn't doing enough, sometimes with good reason. But she always responded well and respectfully, and I was on board with everything she said.
After a surprise, brief appearance by Governor Bob Ferguson, Jayapal also hosted a panel with critical representation across all the panel guests: Jaelynn Scott, Executive Director of the Lavender Rights Project who spoke about the attack on the trans community; Malou Chávez, Executive Director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who spoke on the assault on immigrant communities; and Michele Storms, Executive Director of ACLU of Washington who spoke about all the legal avenues of fighting this administration's broadly illegal actions. The panelists were sobering but engendered hope in the many things we can do right now if we work together; Jayapal's remarks were genuinely inspiring; and the audience questions that closed out the program were almost uniformly smart and elicited illuminating responses.
Most critically, it left me with a renewed commitment to attending all the marches and protests I can. And if you're reading this from another part of the country, *especially* if you are represented by a Republican in Congress—you need to be contacting them to express your outrage. Getting back to that bogus idea that votes don't matter: Pramila said not one Republican is standing up to the litany of outrages occurring right now, but the one thing that will move them is hearing from their constituents. You know who elected officials actually listen to? THEIR CONSTITUENTS. Why? BECAUSE THEY VOTE. If they fear they may lose an election, they will change their tack.
Fucking. Vote. But also: Speak up. Speak Out. Resist. Protest.
It was heartening to see the turnout tonight. Shobhit and I arrived 40 minutes before the event was scheduled to start, and the line was stretched around to literally the opposite side of the block. By the time they started letting people in, and we reached the entrance to the Town Hall building, the end of the line had stretched full circle around the block to right in front of us outside the entrance! And it should never be forgotten: *that* is where the power lies. With the people. With us.
I hope to find more Town Halls to attend as well, including for local state representatives. A lot of gratitude was rightly expressed tonight for the rights we have protected locally that do not get the same protection elsewhere, but not even that will last without getting involved in the same way, if not even more vociferously, on the local level.
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It's been both strange and fascinating to see how traction has varied in response to those posts depending on the platform. Bluesky, the one constantly heralded as the best one out there now, has garnered no responses whatsoever—no replies, no likes (at least as of this morning). Due to it having the tightest character limits per post, the thread did have to get strung out into 16 posts there, which may have been a factor. But I did not want to have to edit anything just because of the platform.
On Instagram, where there are similar character limit challenges, I've so far gotten four likes and no comments. I had to split the last few paragraphs of my rather long caption out of the regular caption and into the comments myself, and there Instagram is displaying them in backwards order, which is annoying, but whatever.
The post on Facebook has 11 reactions, 3 comments, and 1 share (which, interestingly, is not public, so I have no idea who shared it).
On Threads, however, the thread has blown up—even though there are also character limits there, just not as low as those at Bluesky; the thread there is broken up into 9 posts. As I write this, it has been liked by 180 people; 16 people have followed from one of the posts in the thread; and 9 people have replied, with varying levels of civility (mostly fine, but some counterproductively judgemental from people purporting to be on the same side). And I'm not mentioning this to brag, to be clear—even the comparatively larger traction on Threads is a grain of sand compared to something actually going viral—only to demonstrate the curious differences in how something like this seems to be going over depending on the platform.
Of course, Facebook, Instagram and Threads are all owned by Meta which makes them arguably all the same thing, even if different groups of people use different ones of them. Only Bluesky is purported to be truly independent and decent, but as I said, no one seems to be paying attention there. There's something to be said for the message getting out at all on the other platforms.
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Shobhit walked to Town Hall from home, and I walked there from work. He got there at about 5:10, when the registration email had said doors would open at 5:15 for the event scheduled at 6:00. Even by then, the line was stretched to the middle of the opposite side of the block. When I caught up with him just after 5:15, Shobhit was about two thirds of the way down the block around the corner from the entrance. We did not notice until we reached the entrance, at about 10 till 6:00, that the end of the line had stretched all the way around the block to the building entrance again. (See photo at the top of this post, taken at 5:49 p.m.)
The whole event really was an amazing experience. I got teary eyed more than once just because I found it so inspiring. After the event, while we were walking home, an older White guy—and, as Shobhit noted, the crowd was about 90% older White people—asked me what I thought. "It was amazing!" I said. He even engaged me in conversation, and I told him how I had been very cynical about protests and events like this have changed my mind. When the guy, who started kind of huffing as we all hoofed our way up the hill on Seneca, was finished with the conversation he said: "I'll see you out on the streets!"
I sure hope I don't see this post again years from now and just think about how naive I was, how much worse things would get. I already expect things to get truly dire from climate change alone (in many places it already has; just look at the L.A. wildfires), but it would be nice to one day look back on this era and feel proud of what we accomplished in resistance. I'm ambivalent at best about the prospect, but to Pramila's point, we can't sit back and be complicit.
Shobhit and I went home and then kind of checked out: we made sandwiches for dinner—Shobhit did mostly, while I wrote up the long caption for my Facebook post—and then we watched the final three episodes of
Nobody Wants This on Netflix, which was just wonderful, highly recommended.
I'll bury the most fantastic news here though: Shobhit was offered a part-time job, doing something he's far more qualified to do and has to do with accounting, at an hourly rate high enough that he'll make nearly as much from that alone, at 12 hours a week, as he did working
30+ hours a week on minimum wage at Total Wine. He has another possible part-time prospect that is similarly well suited to him and we'll see where that goes, but things are really looking up for him right now. He might just finally be able to break out of the retail industry after having to work in it for over eight years. Shobhit's not all that capable of getting excited about much, but I would have to insist that this is
very exciting, and long overdue for him. And it's clear that his decision to join multiple local boards has, in the long run, really paid off for him.
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[posted 12:32pm]
