Resilience, Resistance, and Reclamation
Building a Democracy To-do List
Friends:
On November 5, 2024, 73 million Americans voted for a new president, which 68 million voters feared and loathed. I am in the latter group, and it’s been an emotional remainder of the week. This week, my newsletter is focused on resisting autocratic rule and reclaiming a country that is rooted in the principles and freedoms of democracy. Democracy requires an informed and engaged citizenry.
I write about the journey of aging and politics is a factor in the policies that affect older people. By 2030, there will be over 70 million Americans aged 65+. What was missing from both sides in this election cycle was any significant discussion about aging in America: affordable and appropriate housing, equitable access to healthcare, caregiving, increasing poverty and homelessness among elders, and funding of social safety nets for elders. I plan to watch these issues and see how the new political leadership addresses them. I know you are exhausted from the political season and may disagree with me politically. Still, I hope you will consider the content of this week’s newsletter necessary and join me in becoming more informed and engaged.
Moving forward,
Sue
The day after, my house was quiet. We spent the morning reading about the many reasons why it happened the way it did. Even our pets were subdued. Brain fog from a late night, sleep riddled with anxiety, and deep sadness made me useless for any creative work.
So, I cleaned. My office, the kitchen, my garden shed, and my laundry. The cathartic cleansing served as a metaphor for washing away the lies, vulgarity, and cruelty of a deeply troubled man now elected to lead our country.
Like many, I feel hollowed out—angry, sad, afraid, appalled, devastated. In 2016, I spent the morning crying after the election. His re-election, something I couldn’t believe could happen again, settled into my body, carrying the emotional weight of both sorrow and fear. I felt an unsettled comfort in the shared grief expressed in the texts and emails from friends.
Over the last few days, my inbox has been filled with Substack newsletters offering solace in the form of poems, quotes, and suggestions for building resistance.
Democracy requires civic engagement by an informed citizenry, or it will die.
After several days of profound sadness, I am ready to begin the work of resistance and reclamation. I have created a Saving Democracy To-do List. I borrowed some ideas from other writers and added my own. Regardless of who you voted for, these ideas are suitable for everyone.
Saving Democracy To-do List
Look to your local communities for purpose and projects. Ask people for help. Help people who ask. Find your cause.
Check your assumptions and anger about politics and people. While volunteering at a booth for my local Democratic Chapter, a lifelong Republican told me he was not voting for Trump because he was dangerous and crazy. Other volunteers in my chapter heard similar statements. Voters living on the edge or in poverty often vote for hope, not issues. Or simply don’t vote. Offer factual information, not condemnation.
Exercise daily to keep endorphins and energy flowing.
If you need a reminder about how we got to this place and who’s truly in charge of our country, the brilliant and outspoken George Carlin can help you. The American Dream
Help your local libraries to coordinate workshops and presentations on civics, the Constitution, and navigating media literacy.
Stay informed and engaged about resistance activities. World history has experienced many tyrants and autocrats. Read any or all of Anne Applebaum’s books.
Dedicate your energy to what social activist John Lewis called “good trouble.” Doom-scrolling, laying blame, and checking out achieves nothing.
The most often-cited influence on voters was the economy and the rising costs of everything. One man told a reporter he was voting for Trump because eggs cost $5. Several factors led to the rise of food prices, as described in this article: Why is Food So Expensive?
Read our Constitution, Articles, and Amendments and participate in educational webinars & We The People podcast at the National Constitution Center.
If you haven’t done so yet, read the entire 900 pages of Project 2025. It is the Christian Nationalist’s playbook that the Trump administration is expected to utilize. If implemented, it would dramatically change our government and our culture. Project 2025 PDF Download
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Make and share your art: write, paint, weave, knit, quilt, photograph, bread-baking, storytelling. Art feeds our souls.
This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.
Toni Morrison
Seek and create joy.
Joy is essential even in the hard times. Especially in the hard times. By protecting and nurturing your joy you make space for yourself to thrive so you can do more, accomplish more, fight more. You make space for others in your life, to share what you have, to build community. Joy flourishes in community. It grounds us. It helps us stand with our feet firmly planted so we can move with power and with intention when we need to. It allows us to make a difference. To speak out. Written by DongWon Song.
Need some help finding joy? Watch Maya Angelou perform her poem Still I Rise.
Read Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark: The Untold Story of People Power. “With Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable.”
Spend time with nature each day. Meet your local flora and fauna. Speak up for their survival.
Fall Fungi; Big Leaf Maple The biggest loser in this election is our home - Earth. A climate change denier, Trump said he wants to increase oil production, sell public lands, defund environmental programs and scientific research, and end climate change policy actions established by Biden. From Yale Climate Connections: If implemented, Project 2025 “seeks to undo much of that progress by slashing funding for government programs across the board, weakening federal oversight and policymaking capabilities, rolling back legislation passed during Biden’s first term, and eliminating career personnel.”
The Alt National Parks group summarized Trump’s awful environmental record from his first term. You can view it here.
Put your hands in the soil. Soil contains a microbe called Mycobacterium vaccae that acts like an anti-depressant, increasing serotonin levels. Grow food, healing herbs, flowers, and berries for the birds.
Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
Nature is my healing balm, so I walked along the Klickitat River for several hours. I will continue to be a voice for those not valued in our culture.
Thank you for being here. If you’d like to support my work, you can do so by:
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Taking out a paid subscription to this Substack.
Share your resources and ideas for my SavingDemocracy To-Do List.
Thank you for this list of wise and thoughtful suggestions, Sue. And special thanks for the Joy Harjo poem, a particular favorite of mine. It is good to be reminded that the humblest parts of our lives, like that well-worn kitchen table, are the grounding for all we do. May the Klickitat, the earth herself, and your community of friends be sustaining and nourishing. Always. Blessings to you.
Never underestimate the power of joy and beauty for lifting your spirits. Nothing ethereal here. I'm talking plain old happiness or an evening sunset that stops you in your tracks. A cat unexpectantly jumping in your lap and giving you a look while purring loudly that says. 'You are my people!' can feed your spirit nicely.
I say our best plan of action is to ignore the old orange fart. He craves attention. I am seriously thinking of cutting the cable. He looses all momentum without an opponent or audience. His track record of accomplishment is dismal. We will endure the damage he will do in his ignorant ways but I see his cohorts soon to be full of infighting in their attempts to replace him. He will drop each as he gets wind of such activity, or should he just imagine it. It won't be pretty. That is why we need to feed our spirits and bone-up on our civics and be ready to strengthen our democracy when opportunity presents itself.
I do disagree when you say neither side provided plans for improving our lives. Kamala had plans with ways to pay for them to provide in-home care for seniors thru their Medicare, the building of 300,000 new affordable places to live and to challenge price gouging by food producers among her other proposals.