There’s Some Good In This World, Mr. Frodo, And It’s Worth Fighting For

Featuring an event TONIGHT that you should sign up for!

So, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? As it turns out moving is not conducive to maintaining your extracurricular activities. Coming soon to a Substack near you: a post about my apartment search, about regression and coping mechanisms, about the moderate tragedy of my bank account and an unscrupulous capitalist system designed to make money rather than to house people. 

But I’m not in my new apartment yet - there are still two weeks of packing or tossing or donating all my stuff, still many expenses left to pay and goodbyes to be said, so instead here’s some stuff that happened while I was gone: 

Vote Save America launched Organize or Else: Somehow we are once again barreling towards the most important election of our lifetimes. Somehow, still, each election is more important than the last. But our next president may have the opportunity to nominate new Supreme Court Justices, to shift the balance of the court or entrench it for a generation. The next president will continue to fight climate change or will accede to the demands of the oil industry in exchange for campaign donations. We can face the many crises of the modern age with a House majority cannibalizing itself or we can take back the House and pass legislation that moves us toward a better, thriving world. Across the country, there are people in every community, in every state house and governor’s mansion, in every race, at every level of government fighting for peace, for justice, for an economy where we can all thrive and a government that works for all of us. 

That’s something we all can do. Whether you’re donating, writing letters and postcards, texting or calling voters, or heading out to knock doors, you can and will make a difference. Democracy means that the possibility rests on all our shoulders. We can all fight for the world that we want to see and know that it makes a difference, and we are never alone. The Vote Save America community is full of smart, generous cheerleaders, people who can’t wait to help you figure out how to use your skills to fight for democracy. You can join us on slack here. And if you sign up for Organize or Else you can get volunteer opportunities geared toward your location from campaigns that will make a huge difference.

If you’ve been feeling anxious or scared or depressed or angry about the state of the country, about the election, or about politics, I can promise that the best antidote is action taken with a community you believe in. And you can’t do any better than VSA. Plus they have a training series starting on Monday to walk you through messaging and tactics. Today’s (5/20) training on messaging will feature Navigator Research,

Dan Pfeiffer

, and me! Sign up here. 

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Israel continues its assault on Gaza. Over 30,000 people are dead. The World Food Program has declared a famine. Aid isn’t getting in. And as Israel prepares its invasion of Rafah, millions of people have nowhere to go to escape the bombardment and invasion. The Biden administration has not made headway in getting a ceasefire, and they continue to send weapons and aid to the Israeli army. You can contact the White House here and tell them it is absurd and abhorrent to aid in this continued massacre, and demand that they prioritize an immediate and permanent ceasefire. You can call your Representative in the House and your Senators and demand the same. I made a guide to walk you through it. 

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Donald Trump is sleeping through his hush money trial. I just think it’s important to remember that Trump used campaign funds to silence a woman he slept with because he didn’t want voters to have that information when heading to the polls. And now that he’s on trial for committing such an obviously corrupt crime, he can’t stay awake during the trial. In the past few weeks he also praised “the late great Hannibal Lecter,” bragged about doing nothing on gun safety, bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, and said he is more qualified to be president because he’s won more golf tournaments than Biden. Amongst other things. I don’t know about you but I DO NOT WANT HIM TO BE PRESIDENT AGAIN. 

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A worm ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and then died. I could probably just leave it there, but I won’t. Here’s the thing: RFK Jr. will not be president. It is practically impossible for a third party candidate to get elected to President in this country. This is in part because of the winner-take-all Electoral College system. A third party candidate has to defeat the two main party candidates in enough states to get 270 electoral votes. If RFK manages to be as viable as the Republican and Democratic candidate, and no one gets 270 electoral votes, the election gets tossed to the House of Representatives where each state delegation gets one vote. They are not going to vote for RFK Jr. And even if he could be president, he’d be a bad one because he is a right wing MAGA affiliated conspiracy theorist.  

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They Announced a Sequel to the Red, White, and Royal Blue movie! To be fair, my love for the book this movie is based on could be its own post, but for now I’ll just say that it’s one of those books that crawled into my heart and made a home there. It came to me when I needed it personally and politically and I love it very much. And I’ll take as much of it as I can get. 

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What I’ve Been Reading/Watching: 

• Bridgerton Season 3 Part 1: riveting, sexy, incredibly fun. Deeply annoying that Netflix is waiting until June to release the second part. The streaming machinations to try to make more money continue to baffle!  

• The Emperor and the Endless Palace: fascinating, completely unique and totally captivating romantic fantasy. I had to put it down for a while because the only real work my brain could do was apartment hunting, but I’m really excited to get back to it. 

• CSI: Miami: I have, for some reason, gone back to this early pandemic binge watching choice, and it’s not good, but it is a lot of fun to see all the guest stars and I don’t ever really have to pay that much attention so it's good background while I’m working. 

Alright, that’s it for now, folks. Fingers crossed I’m back in your inbox on a regular schedule now, but god only knows 🙃