Mantra For Victory For Hillary

We believe in you
You believe in us
Stronger together

LET’S MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Stay calm and get out the vote!

-message from Foxx

(Magic name for guess  who?     See the YouTube video below.)

 

 

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Boo! Dumpty Trumpty — Halloween on my street #VoteBlue

 

 

This Halloween we handed out treats and talked to parents to find out if they were voting for Hillary.  We got more than a few vehement “yes” es and as one mother pointed out, “isn’t everyone on this street?” Even one of the little trick-or-treaters ran down the street yelling “Hill-a-ary — Hill-a-ry”!

 

As one of the father’s pointed out, he hopes this is as scary as it gets!

 

 

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Caring For An Elderly Father In ‘Trump-Land’#VoteBlue #Hillary2016

originally in The Huff Post/Fifty

I am parked at a light when I notice a bumper sticker on the SUV in front of me. It reads:

Does this ass/make my/car look fat?

The words are stacked on top of each other and to the right of them is a small circle with the clownish face of Donald Trump.

I am running errands with my elderly father near his home (where I grew up) in the working class area of lower Bucks County and Bristol. It’s an area where the Trump signs outnumber the Hillary signs — about three to one. Actually, there aren’t many signs for either of them. And signs for third party candidates are nonexistent. This is the land of the silent majority. To counter it, I have a large blue bumper sticker for Hillary prominently displayed on the back of my red car. The bumper sticker on the SUV in front of me is, in fact, the only other bumper sticker I have seen all day even though I have been on at least five major highways.

My father is 97 and a Trump supporter. The bumper sticker in front of me has made my day and I can’t help sharing it with my father. He is blind in one eye and has severe glaucoma in the other. He used to be liberal (thank you President Nixon) but since 9-11 has become increasingly conservative. When I describe the bumper sticker, he laughs and says “I guess that means they’re not voting for him. Even I can see that!”

In my early 20s in the early 1980s — more than 25 years ago — I came out as a lesbian to my parents. My father said being a lesbian was just one more thing I was doing to “buck the system.” I couldn’t disagree — though I would have changed a critical consonant. I was always rebellious, but I really was a lesbian. Eventually, he came around and loves and accepts my partner as my spouse and as a second daughter. (I am an only child.) Times were different then. I “escaped” from my background, was the first in my family to graduate from college, and then moved to a nearby city about an hour away. Since I left, I notice that things have changed. For one thing the “white” working class is increasing racially diverse.

After the errands on the way to his lady friend’s house, I note a few Hillary signs displayed prominently. On one street, two houses side by side display political signs. One is for Trump and one is for Hillary. I have a private moment of glee imaging the interactions between the neighbors.

On the front lawn of a house near our destination, a Hillary sign is displayed on the front lawn. In the front window, rainbow letters from the Hillary campaign say, “Do the most good.” I know there is no talking to him about politics, but decide to give it another try. I mention the sign to my father, who quotes Fox news to me. Loudly. (This is the only news he watches — when he is not listening to conservative talk radio.) I counter his statements by asking a few questions starting with “How do you think Trump made his money?”

My tactics don’t work. My father changes the subject. He is hard of hearing and refuses to wear a hearing aid so he repeatedly says “ha?” and I spend a lot of time repeating myself. My father is a decent person. He may live in an area that is mostly white and tract house but I never heard him utter a racist word. When my feminist mother was alive, he was pro-choice. I helped him take care of my mother 20 years ago when she was terminally ill, which I chronicle in my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters. When my mother’s hospital bed was delivered to the house by a young black man, my father spoke to him respectfully and invited him into the house.

When we pull up to his lady friend’s house, she comes outside and I show her my bumper sticker. She agrees that the blue sticker against the red car looks very nice. Then she says “Who are you going to vote for?” She looks sincere and bewildered. She is a tiny, white haired 92-year-old woman, a retired seamstress, who still gardens and keeps an impeccable house.

She tells me she was just talking to her son about this. (Her son is a non-college educate white male — who lives with his wife and daughter and told his mother that he is voting for Hillary and that she should too.) “I was going to vote for him,” she says referring to Trump, “but he’s turning out to be crazy.” I reassure her that he was always crazy.

In the house, over a dish of strawberry ice cream, my father’s lady friend laughs when I tell her about the bumper sticker and then she turns to me and whispers (so my father won’t hear) “I think he’s guilty.” I nod in agreement and when my father states that “He is a smart business man.” I point out that another Trump casino in Atlantic City has just gone belly up.

My father’s lady friend has compassion on her face for the people who lost her jobs. Then she nods with concern at my father. She is telling me silently that he is 97, and I shouldn’t say anything to upset him. She is right. As my late aunt once said (about seven years ago), “At his age, it’s good he has any opinions.”

She was right. I promised my mother, when she was on her deathbed, that I would take care of my father. But it is more than that. I love and respect my father. I wouldn’t be here without him.

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Save the date — Nov 8th #VoteBlue #NastyWomenVote #VoteHillary

I walked into an art gallery opening in Germantown Philadelphia recently and saw this poster on the wall.  There are lots of reasons that I support Hillary — but this poster says it all.  So metaphorically or not — grab your pussy — and vote!

As my partner says, “Nasty women are his biggest nightmare!”

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Queer Politics In The Weimar Republic Of Germany: Sound Familiar?

originally in The Huffington  Post

note: This review (in a modified form) will air on this week’s This Way Out, the international LGBT news syndicate based in Los Angeles.  To listen to the program, click here..

Just the other day, I was talking to a historian friend about a conversation she had with a lesbian friend who announced that she wasn’t voting. The friend told her that we’ll just have four years of Trump. This gave me pause. I know more than a few people who have announced they’re not voting. What these people, who call themselves progressives, have in common, is that they are white, mostly economically privileged (but not all of them), and straight.

Of course, I tried to talk some sense into them. But with each one, I was left frustrated and came to the conclusion that they are in denial. Even if they are white and economically privileged and straight, history can change on a dime and their lives will be changed also.

When I heard about Queer Identities and Politics in Germany, A History 1880-1945, by Clayton J. Whisnant (Harrington Park Press; 2016), I was immediately interested. It’s not an easy book to read. The first night I started reading it, I kept dreaming that the United States was sliding toward fascism. Then when I woke up I thought about the presidential election. I guess it’s safe to say that the book got under my skin and that it was published at exactly the right time.

The Weimer Republic and the openly gay culture in Berlin was embedded in my LGBT encoded memory. Whisnant writes about the “homosexual movement” launched in Germany in the 1890s and its various factions (and its scandals and political movements) that led up to the openness of the Weimer Republic in the 1920s.

The author recounts that in the heyday of the Weimar Republic, there were between 90 and 100 gay bars in Berlin frequented by gay men and lesbians. There we also many thriving publications for gay men and lesbians. I found it interesting that the lesbian publications addressed trans issues.

As open as it was, the Weimar Republic was far from being a utopia for LGBTQ people. There were anti-gay laws on the books but German police officers, for the most part, turned a blind eye to the bars. This is more than can be said for U.S. police conduct, before Stonewall when patrons were routinely rounded up, arrested and their names published in the papers (ruining careers and severing family ties).

The author writes about Christopher Isherwood, a prominent foreigner who frequented the sexual underworld of Berlin. Isherwood wrote a series of short stories — The Berlin Stories — which inspired the Broadway musical and the award-winning film Cabaret.

The book also chronicles the downfall of the Wiemar Republic.

This includes the rise of censorship laws that targeted gay and lesbian publications. The book also addresses infighting and factions in the “homosexual movement,” including the “masculinist” faction that abhorred anything feminine or feminist. Ultimately, many of the “masculinist” gay men joined the Nazi Party and were put in concentration camps and exterminated.

Things changed almost overnight. As the author writes:

“In 1930 the Nazi Party won a staggering victory in the federal elections: overnight it grew from a small fringe party with only twelve seats in the Reichstag to become the second most powerful political party in the land. Homosexual activists recognized that they were in trouble.”

The book also chronicles the persecution of gay men and lesbians in the camps and concludes with “Gay and Lesbian Life after 1945.”

Suffice to say that it took decades to repair the damage. Now, as well as historically, is not a time for skepticism, sarcasm or inaction.

There is a lot at stake in the upcoming election:

Think about what a Trump presidency would do to the Supreme Court. Trump has declared that if elected he’ll do what he can to roll back the marriage equality ruling.

You don’t have to be LGBT to have a lot at stake in this election, but it helps.

Think about climate change.

Think about our standing in the world.

And if you are still convinced that you have nothing to lose, think about voting for those who are the most vulnerable — such as the 11-year-old Mexican-American girl who lives in fear of her immigrant parents being deported.

Still, the life you save by voting may well be your own.

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#VoteBlue — A UU talk on “Difference”

This morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I did a reading from Maya Angelou’s poem “The Human Family” and a talk on “Difference” — the theme of this week’s service.

To see the reading and the reflection on YouTube, click here. (You can also view the YouTube video at the bottom of this post.

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” — Dalai Lama

 

I am different, of course. We all are.  In my view that’s what makes life interesting. I would say I gravitate to difference.

I’m a lesbian-feminist who came of age in the early 1980s and I had the good fortune to hear and meet many of the icons and writers of that era — including Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich.

It was at the celebration of Audre Lorde’s life — the “I Am Your Sister” conference held in Boston in 1990 two years before she died of cancer at the age of 58 — when I went to one of the conference’s “Eye-to-Eye” sessions. There, I really began to understand difference.

The idea behind the “Eye-to-Eye” sessions is that you break into a smallish group of people from a similar background and have  a heart to heart discussion.  It was based on Audre Lorde’s philosophy that she writes about in Sister Outsider, a collection of her essays, that we cannot love each other until we love ourselves.

This is the same theory that RuPaul, the internationally known drag queen icon, says every week on his televised program Drag Race — if you don’t love yourself, how the [heck] are you gonna love anyone else?”

(RuPaul is one of my sources of spiritual inspiration.)

At the conference, I chose the white working class women Eye-to-Eye session. The other Eye-to-Eye group that I could have chosen was white lesbians — but lesbians tended to be everywhere in my world back then and it seemed more important for me to focus on class.

I still remember being in that room with the tall windows and high ceilings — sitting on the floor in a circle of women. It was like being back in my high school bathroom.  But this time we were honestly discussing our lives instead of masking our pain with drugs and alcohol.

As I recall, the discussion that we had in that room was liberating.

To make a long story short, I have absolutely no connection with anyone from my background — except that my partner and I are lucky enough to still have my 97 year old father.

But in this election year, I was reminded of my background, every time I turned on the television news.

I found the racism at the rallies — and I think you know which rallies — to be painful. I also find it painful — and appalling — that someone — some unnamed someone in power — is fanning the flames of fear and hatred.  But I also do not think  that all of the people in the white working class will be taken in to vote against their own interests.  I also strongly suspect that the media is just showing us a slice of white blue collar voters who are racist — etc. — and that most people have neighbors and co-workers of all races including African Americans, Muslim-Americans, and Mexican Americans.  And even if they don’t, white working class voters can think for themselves and realize that racism and xenophobia are wrong.

This election is getting under my skin. The stakes are high, and it feels personal.  When people tell me they are not planning to vote — educated people, who might feel more privileged than they are under the circumstances — it kind of makes me crazy.  Of course, this is not a good feeling.

I meditate almost every morning — and it came to me during my meditation that I need to be more compassionate.

I was watching the Discovering Buddhism series number 11 on You Tube, when Richard Gere talked about a practice that was so helpful to me that I thought I’d share it with you. Years ago, Gere started wishing every being — insect, animal, or human — that he encountered with the greeting: “I wish you happiness.”

“I wish you happiness.”

Gere talks about the fact that there are times that this is difficult, and that these are the times when this thought turns a destructive emotion into love.

I have just started this practice and don’t know where it will take me. I suspect, though, that it will make me even more aware of the fact that as Maya Angelou writes in “The Human Family” that we are more alike, than unalike.

“We are more alike, than unalike.”

 

 

Namaste

Oh, and remember to vote.

“I wish you happiness.”

 

 

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#VoteBlue — a UU Dharma Talk

 

Note: The following is a talk I gave at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration Sunday morning July 17 2016.  You can see most of the talk on YouTube be clicking here.

 

When I was a pre-teen, my mother gave me a book called Courageous Women, which was a young adult reader about women’s suffrage.

The book reminded me that not all people have always had the right to vote. The fifteenth amendment, passed in 1870 gave black men the right to vote.   A half century later, in 1920, the nineteenth amendment was ratified, giving all women the right to vote.

The passage of both amendments involved long, hard and violent struggles.

Frederick Douglas, a social reformer, orator, writer, statesman and former slave was a leading abolitionist.

Susan B. Anthony was a social reformer and feminist and one of the women who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement.

There were many black women who also played pivotal roles in women’s suffrage. Anna Julia Cooper was honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a commemorative postage stamp in 2009.

She was known for her statement: “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter in the quiet undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence or special patronage; then and there the whole black race enters with me.”

Only propertied white men had the vote until 1856 the year that it was determined that all white men could vote regardless of whether they owned property or not.

When as an adult, later in life, I became a Unitarian Universalist, I discovered a religion that embodies civic duty in all of its principles, perhaps especially in the second principle “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;” and also in the sixth principle “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

As Rev. Emily Gage, reflects on the Unitarian Universalist Assembly website, “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations points us toward something beyond inherent worth and dignity. It points us to the larger community. It gets at collective responsibility. It reminds us that treating people as human beings is not simply something we do one-on-one, but something that has systemic implications and can inform our entire cultural way of being.

“Compassion is something that we can easily act on individually. We can demonstrate openness, give people respect, and treat people with kindness on our own. But we need one another to achieve equity and justice.”

The larger community and collective responsibility. That’s what I learned about in my childhood book Courageous Women.

My mother was born in 1919 — a year before women won the right to vote. Perhaps having older parents gave me a different sense of history as well as an enhanced understanding that history is important.

In 1972, when I was thirteen, Shirley Chisholm ran for national office.  I paid attention.  Here was history in the making.  She was paving the way for African American people and women of all races to be presidential candidates.

I grew up to have a close friend who not only voted for Shirley Chisholm but was a delegate. And it is not surprising that Chisholm made an appearance in my writing — Art, a novel of revolution, love and marriage. It is fiction but definitely autobiographical when I wrote of my character:

“Five years ago Grace was watching the nightly news when Walter Cronkite announced that Shirley Chisholm, an African American congresswoman from New York, was running for the Democratic nomination for president against the incumbent Richard Milhous Nixon. Grace was just thirteen in 1972, but she remembered thinking things would be different.  She didn’t think she’d ever run for president.  But if Shirley Chisholm could, maybe girls could do anything.”

I voted as soon as I was able too. When I moved to Germantown in my early twenties, I was proud to stand in line with my neighbors — most of them African American men and women.  We were doing what was demanded of us.  Voting is not just a right. It is a responsibility.

Around that time, I came out as a lesbian. One of my favorite T-shirts was a black shirt with a pink triangle on it with black letters on the triangle that read:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This widely-known poem was written by Pastor Martin Niemellör about the cowardice of German intellectuals in Nazi Germany.

My T-shirt was lost in some long ago Laundromat but its sentiment stayed with me.

I could have done without the rocks being hurled through our bedroom window or the numerous instances of workplace harassment, but being a lesbian has given me some firsthand knowledge of oppression. For one thing, it may in fact be natural to respond to hatred with hatred — but it is not healthy, necessary, or productive.  I have not evolved to the point where as it says in The New Testament in Matthew, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

But I do think there might be something to that.

I also learned that we have more in common than we may think and it is very important for us to stick together. Civic duty and collective responsibility is certainly a big part of that.

Ecclesiastes in The Hebrew Bible and in the Christian Old Testament states in part:

“1  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
2  a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3  a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4  a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing   ….”

Now it is up to us. It is our time.

We have one vote, one voice. Think about your one vote and the difference it can make.

It’s time to be counted.

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