Right Place

A lot of the time being in a deep red state can wear you down when it comes to change. It is easy to beat yourself up when it comes to change, and not see it immediately. You are not lazy for being exhausted from living through your history textbook. You are not lazy for not being the perfect activist. You are not lazy for change not happening sooner.

We have been fighting against something we have been taught our entire lives. Nobody expects you to keep your figure, job, or values. This is a literal recession, war, and right wing domination you are not expected to handle this better. This time has been unprecedented since we were born because if you came with the millennium then you came with technology. We are some of the first generations in this country to even talk seriously, about the changes we can make to our oligarchy. This information is now more spoken about and readily available than ever.

You also now have the information about the war, right wing domination, and the recession. You are getting this information constantly and sometimes before you even realize you got it. The algorithms are meant to drown you and keep you feeling silenced. Most of us remember liking one video of Gaza and then seeing ten to fifteen videos similar after it. You start to feel as if it is the only thing you can see. You are not meant to thrive in the conditions they have set for you, because the conditions are meant to block known ways of protesting. We need to find new ways to protest, which adds another mental layer of work.

What makes this even harder? Most of the platforms we use to connect are actively suppressing us, so we can’t connect. This community we are building is going to have to start elsewhere and then branch out back to the communities we knew. The issue is so many of us are convinced too far to one side of the isle. I have been a mostly life long democrat but I can admit, it is hard to connect with older folk. It felt like a pain I have known for a while of, ‘why didn’t you do more’? In most of our lives there has to be someone to blame for something bad. Nothing bad can ever just happen, because that doesn’t make sense for us to rationalize. As a Gen Z, I truly believe that every generation did what they could do to stop this from happening. They got the information they had available to them, and did what they could. Growing up many generations after mine and near it in America, bonded over a shared traumatic experience. School shooter drills.

While you were in school, the joint experience was shared by a lot of people. Everyone knew about the fire drill or the whole school knew the football team. The common ground was forced upon you. Now in the adult world people have to find their own common ground. Some are learning to trust their government to provide, while also seeing how distrustful it can become. Others are following blind nationalism. This presents a challenging balancing scale, most people do not want to tip. This ties back to our community building, we were not taught how to connect with those who did not have a previous common ground. COVID made this worse for many of us. It is going to be hard to make small talk, when you are used to being able to bring up events. You are not weird for hating small talk, talks about weather, or if you don’t care about their kids' latest soccer game. It is hard to not want to talk about things that you think should be common ground…. shall we say revolution? When something is so plain to us, we may lean to think it is common for everyone.

This can lead to feeling like the boat is on fire but nobody cares. This can cause a sense of unneeded urgency- pause let’s be clear. Fascism acts as a cancer not an active shooter. We were in recovery, but right now we are in remission. I’m not saying fascism and scary stuff isn't here, but for morale sake; remember we did this before. We can and will do it again.

45 and 3rd lady are not as powerful and intimidating as they appear. Cancer spreads slowly but it is metastasising, or at least trying to grow. I do need to recognize that 45 and 3rd lady are not ‘the cancer’ but more the faces of it most recently. The ‘cancer’ for this article purpose can relate to fascism, oligarchs, and capitalism; catch it all in a fatal swoop friends :)