Bohemian Crip Learns Eco-socialism...

 Last night, I joined approximately 100 activists from DSA chapters around the country to learn about promoting the #GreenNewDeal.(I used both green and red pens to take notes...very festive.) The socialist pitch for the #GND isn't all that different than that which I've heard before, except slightly more focused on corporate exploitation(Which makes sense, I suppose) As I write this, Bernie Sanders is having a Moment, which eco-socialists hope to use to bring, especially his young supporters, into the fold for more climate work.

I learned the expression "energy democracy" which I thought would refer to making utilities publicly owned(and might, eventually, in some places) but refers more broadly to the idea that everyone, whether or not they are homeowners that can put solar panels on their houses, has some stake in our energy future. Going forward, the goal is community based activism, even in poorer communities.

Funny moment when I heard climate book "A Planet To Win" as "A Plan to Win" and ended up sorting through what seemed like a million business books and motivational books by coaches, etc...trying to find the right one again.(Will be reading shortly and will let you know what I think.)

What's Eating America, Part One...

I watched chef and food broadcaster Andrew Zimmern trace the path of food from field to table Sunday.  Basically, it showed that even domestically-grown food owes a lot to people on work visas(of which there aren't enough) Even Trump Tower has a foreign-born chef(according to the research on this broadcast 640,000 chefs were born outside the US.  It is inspiring to see them come together in some places to fight for more immigrant rights and to end family detention.
Less inspiring was further confirmation of the array of exploitations of the  US upon the Marshall Islands(Famous to Arizonans like me because of the adoption-ring scandal)

A fictional "out-take" from a writing prompt book...

Not sure if I'll ever use this, cause I'm not sure how long I'm  going to follow these people. The prompt was "What would you put in storage?"

Spring 2005

 In those days, Chitra saved everything.  Not like the hoarders of later television infamy, but she did enjoy being surrounded by books, family photos, and the occasional bedraggled member of her stuffed animal menagerie.  Add to this, though, indulgent parents who saw the possibility of genius in every science project, and Chitra was leaving her twenties and coming into a new relationship with plenty of evidence of former lives in boxes and bags all around her.She is forcing herself to be ruthless… Gerry’s place is bigger, sort of a gift to himself for his recent city council win, but it’s still not big enough for all of her leftover lives. She tosses t-shirts from high school and half-finished art, but she has not rid herself of her mental baggage,including disappointment that her candidate in the council race lost, and a melting but persistent certainty that she couldn’t imagine herself with the name “Chitra Poindexter”. She opened a box of paperbacks, not so much just books for her teenaged self as dreams in paper covers. She rifled some pages, and as they fluttered against her hand, she marveled at the time she used to have to imagine things.Time, to read and daydream, like sleep, full meals, and volunteers, is one of the things political people learn to live without. It was hard not to burrow into some of her old favorites all the same, but she just read the back covers and put them in the Donate bag.

Will Our Debt To The Second Wave Ever Be Square?

(I'm not sure we in subsequent generations could ever zero it out...they did make that much change. But maybe we could get some kind of forgiveness, as a struggling nation...after all, her gen promised us better healthcare and universal childcare and men doing half at home and never delivered on it.)

I think Rashida Tlaib had the right to boo, but that every right does not constitute an obligation. I wish she hadn't, right? She lets her feelings get the better of her sometimes.

But the reason why I'm still thinking about that is all the commenters who wrote "She owes HRC so much!"(And I suppose that's true, as do I owe women in the Second Wave age range, specifically my own mother, whose contributions to feminism are more private, maybe because she has to help me make my contributions to feminism.) Thank you, again, right?(Not trying to be snarky, here)
But the "ungrateful brat" thing made more sense when we were all twenty years old and thinking we could subdue sexism with the right lyrics, lip gloss and force of personality(Even that is something of a thumbnail, but does anybody really think that now?)
It's hard for me, the gratitude thing.   As a disabled woman, I'm expected to be so grateful, it can be hard to know how much I deserve and how much credit to give myself.(as I've written before, I was Representative Tlaib's age when I finally got a social worker to stop calling me "young lady", you know?) Yes, Congresswomen need to act like leaders and set a tone, but is focus -group doublespeak the best we can do? I hope not.