emigration is never an election issue
June. Complicated month. Yet another opportunity to litigate whose rights are worth defending despite backlash from folks whose whole personality is hating other people; who gets to exist freely and to take up space; and who gets to be described as a person and not merely a generic collection of identities.
I am struck, almost daily, by how common cowardice is. Vulgar and frequent.
Imagine, if instead of keeping what passes for a peace, one made at the expense of the most vulnerable, you instead chose showing up. I think about the talent agent who showed up to picket alongside writers in LA. “I love conflict,” he said.
“Conflict averse” is never a compliment, and yet its adherents are rewarded far more frequently than the their “direct” counterparts.
There are many ways to show up. There are many ways to choose to advocate for other people, even when it is not convenient, when there’s nothing in it for you, when the costs to you are greater than any possible individual benefit. Even and especially when those folks would never even think do the same for you.
Opt for an ounce of bravery and a lot of love. Take a page from the Jeanne Manford playbook this month, and always.
Attribution:
Emigrate is better
than immigrate. Proof: no such thing as illegal emigration.
Further proof: emigration is never an election issue.
I heard enthusiastic speeches. They hate our freedoms,
our way of life, our this, that, and the other, and so on
(not etc). Not everyone agreed every one not “with us”
was “against us.”
— from Usage by Hayan Charara