Greetings all,
For those who don’t know me, I am a formerly politically illiterate tech geek living in Austin, Texas.
I voted all of my life but I was never really an informed voter. I’ve lived in the same house for 25 years and until 3 years ago I didn’t know what districts I lived in or who my representatives were or why it even mattered.
Then Trump got elected and I sat up and paid attention. Besides watching the news and subscribing to various newsletters, I stopped reading my novels and started reading books like Dark Money, and Democracy in Chains and God Save Texas and What you Should Know about Politics But Don’t and then Democracy in One Book or Less and The System and After the Fall and etc etc etc - I’m currently reading Adam Schiff’s book.
I joined RepresentUs and Common Cause and co-built Texas2020.org with my colleague Paula Barkan and a bunch of talented programmers and creative peeps. I joined the communications team of Indivisible Texas Lege this year.
The foundation of this Substack project is because of a group I started in 2019 to try and create a community to get women to be more inspired to be politically informed and knowledgeable. It’s called Vino and Voting and we get together and sit in a circle and discuss a topic. I have a chef and fabulous wine and usually some cool guest political gurus. I chose to focus on women because here in Texas, many women are silenced by their opinionated and many Republican husbands. So I wanted to create a safe space and also a space where everyone spoke together, collaboratively and I make it clear that there are no stupid questions and I’m new to politics too.
But, as much as I love my Vino and Voting girls and the organizations I volunteer for, all of these years later, I still feel like I’m beating my head against the wall and I haven’t made a dent in waking people up.
I’ve been researching past political changes and how and why they happened. In my life, the big win was gay marriage. I was never an activist but I donated what I could to the fight for gay marriage. I went to DC for the March on Washington in 1993.
I never ever believed in my lifetime that I would be able to marry a woman in Texas. But, in 2018, I did, at my home, in Texas, and it’s legal!! ;)
I ask myself, how did this sweeping change that affected the whole country happen? My answer is, it happened because it directly affected people’s lives. The lack of gay marriage and the prejudice against gay people deeply hurt my life and so many of my friend’s lives. So, we created a movement and we made change happen.
I look at things today and I believe with all of my heart that this country is heading toward authoritarianism - a word I barely understood until fairly recently. But, now, I see what is happening in Hungary and China (Hong Kong and the Uyghurs), the Philippines, Brazil, Russia, etc etc etc… the world is becoming a very dark place.
Has it always been dark and I am just waking up to it? Some people tell me that… But I don’t believe it. It is possible that I am older and wiser and less self-involved and not distracted by dysfunctional relationships and friendships and now I am just seeing the world clearly.
For those of you longterm politically savvy peeps, has the world always been this corrupt?
Regardless, I feel like I am standing on the Titanic shouting “Iceberg” while everyone dances and sips martinis or is sleeping.
Is there hope for change?
The thing is, from my perspective, the one thing that can change things is our vote and our voices. I jumped to attention when I saw all of the voter suppression laws passing. I started going to rallies here in Austin, Texas to try and prevent our voter suppression laws from passing. I was blown away (in a bad way) how few people attended these rallies. No wonder the laws passed…
So, I ask myself, why isn’t the loss of our votes and the rigging of elections with gerrymandering waking up more people and my answer is, it’s not affecting their day to day lives.
Gay rights affected my day to day life. Voting rights (while crucially important) don’t consciously affect our daily lives - so most people really have no idea about what’s happening.
But I see the writing on the wall and I feel desperate to help create a movement so we reverse this spiral towards authoritarianism. I feel like no one is listening.
What can I do? I have time and resources and energy and skills to make anything happen, but I don’t know what that is…
Anyone have ideas? How can we create a movement and save democracy?