May 2018 – My Fellow Travelers

Word of the Day: Solidarity

noun: unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group.

Solidarity is one of the most important concepts when you are working for social change. It is a vital concept when you are working to build communities. It means finding your common ground, and supporting each other in those areas where you can agree. It does not always mean that you agree with each other one hundred percent, but that you agree sufficiently to work together and support each other.

Solidarity is standing together for a cause. Sometimes it is a common cause. Sometimes it is an ally’s cause. Sometimes it is your cause.

Sometimes it means opening your mouth when someone is abusive or oppressive.

Sometimes it means standing in the soaking rain outside some politician’s house because you want them to know what you think of their voting record.

Sometimes it means standing beside your allies, through thick or thin, even if you think their cause is insane. It might not be your cause, but it is theirs.

Sometimes it means being the only Liberal or leftist in the room, standing beside a Republican who is talking sense, when everyone else is turning him out because he is a Republican (or the other way around).

Sometimes it means ignoring faction lines all together and standing by your fellow man. When a house is being raised, or you have twelve hours to get the harvest in before a storm, who stops to ask if the person beside them is in the same political party?

Sometimes it just means setting your issues aside for a bit to see what someone else needs help getting done.

TO THE WORLD: WE’RE SORRY

I saw a post on Facebook the other day. It was a photograph of a woman holding a sign that read:

TO THE WORLD:
WE’RE SORRY!
MOST OF US VOTED
AGAINST THIS IDIOT

Sadly, the sign is inaccurate and naïve.

The word “most” implies a landslide. Used in reference to a divided group of things, it means almost all.

Yes, Clinton won the popular vote, but her margin of victory was less than two percent[1]. That is barely a rounding error. I’ve seen articles pointing to a lead of 2.9 million votes. Never 1.9%. In this day and age, 2.9 million is not a lot of people. That is less than the population of San Diego County[2].

Another quote that is common is “A historic number of people voted for Clinton!”, ignoring the fact that percentage-wise the lead was not sufficient for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to choose to contest the results.

So, sadly, most Americans did not vote against Trump. Most Americans that voted did not vote Against Trump.

The scarier side of this, that we are now starting to see playing out in communities and in statehouses across the country, is that enough of our fellow Americans agreed with his ideology to make him President. For those who did not agree with him anyway but voted “against Clinton” rather than “for Trump,” the things he said and did were not deal breakers.

I do not intend to be divisive, but if we are to fix the damage that has been done, we need to have a realistic understanding of the battlefield.

Trump is President.

A majority of Americans did not vote for him, but enough did to make him president.

Enough of our fellow Americans were able to look at a man who spewed bile and hatred on the campaign trail and vote for him.

Enough of them were absolutely gleeful to hear him make campaign promises that sounded more like vile threats, which he has started to make good on.

The DNC had a strong hand in getting him elected, even if that was not their intent. Rather than working to rectify the situation, they spend a lot of time looking for people to blame. Those within the Democratic Party who are looking to fix things are arguing over whether the party needs to shift more to the left or more to the right, and whether the Millennials or Sanders supporters are more to blame for the 2016 loss. They are playing party politics when party politics is what got us here.

We need to strengthen our communities so that it doesn’t matter who is in charge.

The task at hand is going to require a diversity of tactics. What follows is a short list of things that we can do in our communities to help:

1. Campaign for decent candidates, and vote.

2. Organize and attend protests.

3. Get involved in letter writing and phone campaigns.

4. Run for office at the local level, and/or work to elect the right politicians at the local level.

5. Start gathering, organizing, and building the resources and infrastructure to fill the gaps.

6. Those who have the knowledge to carry out any of these tasks need to teach those that do not.

The government apparatus in our nation has been flawed from the start. Those flaws have reached the point of decrepitude over the last few decades. It is starting to collapse. This is why tasks 4, 5, and 6 are so vital. We need good leaders at the local level. We need to develop resources at the local level to keep people fed, housed, and medically fit. We need to do our best to fix the government so that it can do the most good, but we also need to prepare our communities to function despite the government if needed.

For those of you who are uncomfortable with the idea of collectivism without government, I encourage you to learn more about the idea. At the end of the day, our primary goal, the purpose behind the six tasks that I listed above, is to grow strong communities that can provide for their people locally and network together to provide for the common good over larger regions regardless of who is in power.

Just as importantly, we need to band together to prevent those who got Trump elected from being the driving force behind our nation.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-popular-vote_us_58599647e4b0eb58648446c6
[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sandiegocountycalifornia,CA/PST045216

Welcome to the Community

Welcome to our community. Pardon my dust while I get things situated and figure out the ins and outs of running a blog and a Patreon page.

Going forward, blog posts will appear first in the Patreon Only feed on the Patreon site, and then a few days later on the FellowTravelers.net website.

Some of the posts already on the website are a little old and have been brought over from other sites so that I didn’t lose them. They should give you a good idea of the range of things I am inclined to write about. I am always on the lookout for inspiration.

You are free to provide feedback on the Patreon site, or via comments on the blog. I have installed the Disqus plugin which will allow people to log in and comment with various social media logins. I look forward to the conversations. Dialogue is vital to communication, education, and organization. I hope to do some of each through this community.