When's The Right Time To Write Your Phone Number On Your Body?
Life in the US.
One of my Facebook connections went to a PRIDE parade today. Excited. They had cool signs, of course. Before going, she was debating whether the group should write phone numbers and names in marker under their clothes. Just in case.
Because: America.
When I went to the giant March For Our Lives in DC a few years back, I brought a backpack full of first aid stuff for hemorrhaging. Seemed like a very target-rich environment to me. I wanted to be ready. Our group had other emergency plans we discussed ahead of time just in case. Didn't think of the phone number thing.
Of course, we're better at handling worst-case scenarios when we talk through them first. Or think through them. There's lots of data that shows that.
But where is the line for when you need to have your phone number under your clothes or not? I mean do you need to do that just getting groceries?
I was on the phone with a friend last night who talked about where his kids go to school. He said he thought it was pretty safe. He hoped so. It took me a second, but I realized he was talking about the same damn risk. He was hoping some angry dude with a rifle wouldn't show up where his kids go.
But the truth is: we don't know. Nobody knows.
Do we need to like tattoo the phone numbers on us? The names?
But it isn't just the assault rifle risk.
The PRIDE event in today's world unfortunately is a target for all kinds of god-awful stuff. Who knows what.
What about things like the U-Haul full of dudes in Idaho headed to a PRIDE event like a month ago? Someone called that set of hateful yahoos in.
What about next time, when nobody sees something and says something... and another U-Haul full of angry dudes gets to a PRIDE event?
Here's the thing. We basically have an established insurgency in the US. It's here.
So what are we going to do about it?
In day-to-day life, we all have to make risk decisions. There are things you can do to mitigate your risk, or to respond as best you can when the worst-case scenario happens where you are. Whether it's at a parade or a church or at a grocery store or at work or at school. Good freaking heavens.
Bigger picture, I think we have to act like stars exploding. I think we have to be a brilliant explosion of light everywhere.
I think we have to energize the majority to fight fiercely for the country we want to have.
I think we have to fight fiercely to love humans. No matter who they are.
I think we have to fight fiercely to get our freaking rights back. And to make sure we don't lose more. To secure them. To do that, we have to fight fiercely to win elections in all the places. Like to actually seriously try and do that.
I think we have to fight fiercely for all of the people in all of the places. Because it isn't just our rights that are at risk. It's our history. It's science. It's our day-to-day lives. It's who we love. It's how we love.
I think we have to fight fiercely for who we are. For who we want to be. For who we can be.
If our government falls, the people who are already in the worst positions will end up paying the biggest price.
Government protects. Government is supposed to help facilitate equality.
We need to make ours do that. Right now it sucks.
It's totally not doing that. It hasn't for years. Really we didn't even get it set up to do that until the 60s. And then we've been fighting to keep that in place ever since... as it's gotten massive and spectacular pushback.
We have a way to make this star exploding thing happen. It's not a hippy dippy bunch of bologna.
It's actually really more just a metaphor. Meant to inspire.
Because we can do big huge things. We can do different stuff than what we've been doing.
Check out our 5-part plan.
When we light it up, the people pushing fear and hatred and intolerance can go back to their hidey holes.
We can drive this country in a different direction than what they want.
We can flourish and thrive and love and live. I'm convinced we can get there.
Plus we can absolutely do better than what we're doing now. Because this sucks. It's not sustainable.
It's going to take all of us doing lots of things. But we can do it. We can make shift happen. And we can do it at scale.
Keep the faith - in us, and in democracy. We have to believe we can keep it. I do. How about you? You in?
Onward. Let's make this shift happen.