This Silly Dreamer Is Fucking Terrified

Can we stop debating “woke” and actually do something?

About a decade ago I was on the phone to my mother and somehow got on the subject of guns. During this conversation I said something to the effect of “…Lowell (hubby) is a pacifist and won’t shoot a gun…”. My mother replied, in all seriousness, “How will you shoot and drive as you get your family to safety at the ranch?”. Actually it was probably more like, “Lorene, goddammit, you can’t drive and shoot at the same time, you better get him in line fast.” She was serious, she was scared about the state of America and her kids being flung far and wide around the country where she couldn’t keep them safe.

I find myself in a somewhat similar predicament. You see I’m married to a Jewish man and have a Trans son. And I’m a woman. Between the proud boys and their national day of hate and a speaker at CPAC earlier this month stating that ” … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level”, and everything about the rollback on Roe and the data around young girls and suicide and depression I feel like I’m on high alert 24/7. But I also feel as if I’m running in place…not finding solutions or seeing anyone else finding them. I know, there are a lot of good people working extremely hard on all of these issues but I’m still scared because we are moving backwards.

Now I’m not one for my mom’s type of solution, but I do think we can do something—what if someone who is holding the next big conference puts their scheduled programming aside and we hold a great big idea summit? With client-types and government types who pledge to take action. Is it Pollyanna-ish? Probably. It is dreaming big? Fuck Yeah! But we are at a tipping point: Anti-Semitism is up. Our girls are depressed and suicidal. Books are being banned. Entire American histories are being denied. They are taking away our body autonomy. Our smallest, most innocent folks are being murdered. We have the most most mass shootings and on and on.

You might be saying to yourself, that’s not how things work. But when you have a government and society whose power structure is violently legislating/acting against over half of it’s population, then I say nothing is working. I might be dreaming big, but don’t you think it’s time we all do?