Erin Passons's Blog, page 5

I’m writing this before election day in case it goes poorly

I. Every Morning

I see it every morning—people holding up signs on the overpass above 360 and Mopac.

When drivers honk their approval, the sign holders wave frantically at them, slicing the wide, open sky with enthusiasm that’s electric and contagious even at a distance.

I always honk, even though I barely notice the signs these days. I have already memorized what they say.

Beto for U.S. Senate 2018

Repeal and Replace Senator Ted Cruz


II. Lost Travelers Like Myself

I first saw him at Mount Sinai church in North Austin, sometime at the end of August. Hundreds of people spilled out from the pews; many stood against the wall and others sat in the choir section, every soul looking out with expectant but anxious gazes. They were lost travelers like myself.

He began, “If you’re a Democrat, you’re welcome here. If you’re a Republican, you’re welcome here. If you’re an Independent, you’re welcome here…”

I came home with four yard signs. I hammered one into my lawn, then posted in my neighborhood Facebook group: “I got three extra Beto signs if you want them.”

They were claimed within minutes.

III. Betomania

It became a trend that summer: Beto here, Beto there, Beto, Beto everywhere.

It started with the signs; Beto signs staked to yards from Hyde Park and Tarrytown mansions to the residential developments at Mueller, up to the Great Hills and Lakeline neighborhoods and all the way down to the dated neighborhoods at Slaughter and William Cannon.

Next came the stickers; Beto stickers on the fenders of cars or plastered on windshields.

Then the shirts–Beto’s signature midnight blue and white mixed into crowds of pedestrians and flying past on the backs of college kids on scooters, or joggers around Zilker park.

Then came the murals of the man himself. Large murals painted on the side of buildings on the east side and in SoCo, lifelike but oversized, humble but triumphant, as if to show Beto was one of us, and at the same time, not.

Finally, as the deadline to register to vote drew closer, my doorbell began to ring daily at all hours.

Always the same type of visitor.

“Hiiii,” they’d begin. “Are you a registered voter?”


IV. Willie, or won't he?

On September 29, my family and I ubered to Auditorium Shores where Willie Nelson was headlining a free concert and rally for Beto.

We weaved our way through wet grass dotted with the unmoving limbs of resting bodies and water bottles drunk and bags open and rifled through—an explosion of humanity charged up but waiting for their leader’s command.

My family and I finally set up our lawn chairs on a spot not even marginally close to the stage (despite arriving three hours early).

The crowd tripled with the moonlight. I waited in line one and half hours for a grilled cheese and didn’t complain because my goodness, this crowd was all potential voters.

Volunteers walked around carrying tablets with signs posted on their backs, “Register to vote here”

Opening acts began to play. Violins and banjos; the random local politician wandering on stage long enough to wave and endorse Beto for Senate.

The twinkling lights of downtown Austin framed Beto as he stood at the edge of the stage and pointed at the crowd, switching between English and Spanish, the crowd cheering before him, fists rising in the air, and even in the distance I could hear the city halt and listen and smile with motherly approval.

Many got emotional. I was fine for most of it. It wasn’t until he said, “Weapons of war belong on the battlefield, not in our schools,” that my hand reached out to grasp my son’s shoulder and I began to cry.


V. “We can no longer live as rats; we know too much.”

Austin was already known for being a blue flame in a sea of red lava, but over the summer, Betomania pushed Texas’s capital even closer to its left-leaning roots.

It woke us.

We signed up to canvas, phonebank, drive voters to polls or paint rocks with “Beto” and leave them in random places within the city.

Our faith fed us; our desire helped us dream.

We watched the polls end poorly, but we chose not to believe them.

We voted and we got our friends to vote.

We got strangers to vote. We woke up the neighbors.

We texted people we hadn’t talked to in years.

We remembered last year when Doug Jones won in Alabama. We thought, if the crimson tide could do it…

So we stood back and watched the numbers changing.

400,000 Texans needed to vote differently than they did in 2016.

Either that or the new voters (millennials) needed to step up en masse.

Either that or half of Tarrant County needed to blow away. (It is hurricane season, I heard an optimist say.)

It was a vicious thought, but we were hungry and hunger made us vicious.

We were hungry and vicious and unafraid.

We were Violet Beauregarde chewing blueberry pie for the first time; we were fat with blue righteousness, ripe and taking up more space; our hope expanding to damn near explosion.


IV. If This Ends Poorly

And if you’re reading this now because it ended poorly, I want you to know: it has not ended.

It has just begun.

Mississippi Blues

There’s an odd pain that stays with you long into adulthood when you grow up in a place that is the exact opposite of everything you represent.

There’s jealousy too, I think. Last March when I was back in Jackson, my dad and I went to the famous St Paddy’s Day parade. Rows and rows of white women in their college sweatshirts and fake Mardi Gras beads laughing with friends and yelling at their children with twice the syllables that need to be (“John” is “Joooohaaaaan” in the Deep South). I could have been one of them, I thought, walking past. if only I hadn’t wanted more. If only I hadn’t asked so many questions in Sunday school. If only I hadn’t reached my hand across the expanse of racial lines. If only I hadn’t winced walking into a room with mounted deer heads. I could have stayed in MS, married a lawyer from Ole Miss, started a family in a white flight neighborhood, made banana pudding for tailgating at football games, went to church every Sunday, stayed unwoke and unaware of the sufferings of the world around me Bc my world was jus’ fiiiine, praise the Lord. — maybe then those plastic shamrock cups with warm beer would taste like mother’s milk. And I would be happy and content and not a fuming mess waiting for Mango Dumptruck’s next tweet, waiting for the ground beneath to shake, for the familiar outrage to swell and take my breath away. 
I loved you, Mississippi. But you could never accept me. I didn’t fit into your mold. That’s why I had to go.

Movies taught me that if you’re funny and smart but not t...

Movies taught me that if you’re funny and smart but not traditionally pretty, you will always be the sidekick. You may get the laughs, but you won’t get the hero. If you’re lucky, you may get to ride off in the sunset with a creepy or perverted supporting character, but you will never have a starring role, not even in the story of your own life.

Equipped with that knowledge, I played the second fiddle for years. I dropped into the background at bars and at parties. I became a shadow. I thought I was being kind to the boys who approached my beautiful friends and me. (Relax. See? I’m not interested. No need to pretend with me.) My friends seemed grateful too. They didn’t have to worry about volleying potentially embarrassing conversations between their quirky, unpredictable friend and a potential hookup. The freaky fifth wheel had fallen off on its own.

It’s taken god-knows-how-long to carve out my existence and value myself for what I am and not what I wish I had been. To learn that: a. I am my own hero. b. beauty is only skin deep c. real friends will give you a chance to shine too, and d. who da frick needs a man anyway?

I look at movies now and think, that guy’s an idiot for wanting Ms. Vanilla when her best friend is a rainbow cake of funny topped with awesome cream. #HisLoss

(And btw, I did get my happy ending after all.)

old thumb drives are the best lol, you can find all kinds...

old thumb drives are the best lol, you can find all kinds of drivel! I don’t recall when I wrote this but it’s not bad, as far as old writing goes

***

Movies taught me that if you’re funny and smart but not traditionally pretty, you will always be the sidekick. You may get the laughs, but you won’t get the hero. If you’re lucky, you may get to ride off in the sunset with a creepy or perverted supporting character, but you will never have a starring role, not even in the story of your own life.

Equipped with that knowledge, I played the second fiddle for years. I dropped into the background at bars and at parties. I became a shadow. I thought I was being kind to the boys who approached my beautiful friends and me. (Relax. See? I’m not interested. No need to pretend with me.) My friends seemed grateful too. They didn’t have to worry about volleying potentially embarrassing conversations between their quirky, unpredictable friend and a potential hookup. The freaky fifth wheel had fallen off on its own.

It’s taken god-knows-how-long to carve out my existence and value myself for what I am and not what I wish I had been. To learn that: a. I am my own hero. b. beauty is only skin deep c. real friends will give you a chance to shine too, and d. who da frick needs a man anyway?

I look at movies now and think, that guy’s an idiot for wanting Ms. Vanilla when her best friend is a rainbow cake of funny topped with awesome cream. #HisLoss

(And btw, I did get my happy ending after all.)

An Activist Delayed

Very thankful and honored to have an essay appear on the https://ourepicblog.com.
"It’s almost cliché for a mother to write about the birth of her child as the miracle of her existence, the fons et origo, the event that cut a line down the spine of her life, dissecting her very existence into two separate but unequal halves."You can read the rest of the essay here. 

this is where hope lives

Dime con quién andas,y te diré quién eres. this is where hope lives, in this riverbed of bonein this wasteland of dust and tumbleweed roads, in this weight tugging at america’s hips, in this refugee sand trap strapped to a single star,guiding weary travelers to the opposite of home. this is where hope lives, on burleson road,where an apache warrior named joe dispenses water bottles and free advice, at least we’re luckier than those sons-of-bitches in California!sonoma valley’s baked alive,forest incinerated, property losses.at least when trees die here, they die of natural causes. but at the corner of capital and barton springs,there’s a white cross where a young boy used to be thatheartily disagrees with joe’s assessment.death is death, and whatever lives here, can die here too. so hope roams. it travels north to mount sinai church,and for 2 hours, guides its people to the promise land,microphone in hand,a caravan departing from Galveston,zig-zagging across the stateuntil it arrives in el paso via the rio grande. for 180 minutes, hope wore a face and two ears,it said, you belong here. don’t disparage. its people lowered their guard andstepped forward with their stories. rosaria’s father was an immigrant and a veteran.she buried him that morning.(her body shook as she spokeas if a geyser had exploded inside herand her eyes were siphoning the burst.hope thanked her father for his service,and just that tiny gesture dried thecurrents of her grief) adam was the human embodiment of student loans.(his arms thrusted outward as he spoke,but by the time hope replied, the gesture diedand so had the weary look accompanying it.it seemed the divine promise forgave mistakes thattexans made while attending college) jolene lost her job to a company overseas.(she moved side to side as she spoke,dancing the broken two-step of the unemployed.hope moved in and touched her shoulder.her body stilled, and you could tellit was the first time she’d exhaled in years) hope wore a buttoned-down shirtand by the time the second amendment reared its ugly head,its entire front was wet with sweatfrom the desperate requests of 1000 voters. hope’s followers left with bags of buttons and barbed wire,supplies for the long road ahead— whispering, wouldn’t it be grand to make waves in a landthat rain has forgotten? and will you tell them in californiawhen the smoke clears that they’re welcome here? because if hope can live here, it can die here too,amid yard signs of black and white desire. even in the promise landhope can’t make waves without water.

the endangered species list

the sky leaks texas gold, black ink bleeding cobalt heat.

nuzzled among the metal wings of giants i drive on ribbons of steaming gravel to the arrival gate where you wait.

i said, “welcome back to satan’s oven.”

you laughed and answered with a slow drawl.

(you’ve been in nashville too long.

the south has a way of sleeping inside southerners.)

at burleson road we stopped and bought water from an apache warrior named joe.

“at least we’re luckier than those sons-of-bitches in california,” he said, patting the lone star flag to his forehead.

“sonoma valley’s baked alive.

forest incinerated, property losses.

at least when trees die here, they die of natural causes.”

is any death natural? i thought.

in big bend, indigo snakes molder in the sand, macabre trophies, bread for scorpions.

can we call death what it truly is – a new beginning?

anyways it’s dangerous to leave and forget the state of the state where you live.

i handed you the water.

at home our son was studying the rivers of texas. bravos, pecos, sabine. he said, “did you know colorado is spanish for reddish?”

“then texas must mean bright red, red red, like the color of a crime scene,” i said.

“texas is changing,” you replied. “look around you.”

i laughed. austin is a poor litmus test for the rest of texas.

the test strip stains blue no matter the circumstance.

besides, I had looked around.

on west gate and william cannon, midnight blue and white election signs stamped every yard with four letters.

at mount sinai church, i brought home a sign of my own, after two hours of being waco in a texas-shaped crowd of voters.

180 minutes of traveling west.

one caravan, 1000 passengers.

the microphone left galveston and zig-zagged across the state until it crossed the rio grande into el paso.

rosaria’s father was an immigrant and a veteran.

she buried him that morning.

adam was the human embodiment of student loans.

jolene lost her job to a company overseas.

can you guarantee a job for me?

beto wore a buttoned-down shirt and by the time the second amendment reared its ugly head, his entire front was wet with sweat from the desperate requests of 1000 voters.

but he kept talking.

and we kept listening.

in the end i took my buttons and barbed wire.

because why not? a change was coming.

if the eastern indigo can survive a crimson tide, then surely their southwestern cousins stood a chance to hook a win?

and wouldn’t it be something to make waves in a land that rain had forgotten –

and will you tell them in california when the smoke clears that they’re welcome here?

we can’t make waves without water.

Father's Day

He made me pick him up early from his friend’s house so we could buy you a Father’s Day gift

—you, the “noob” who arrived in his world when he was six.

Often you get upset because he doesn’t talk to you, or he only replies in one-word answers.

I never thought to question his curt; I was always taught men don’t say much because they don’t have much to say (you are an anomaly)

But you take his aloofness as not caring much.

And here I thought all Y chromosomes were shaped the same.

But you should have seen him picking out your tie.

We must have stopped in every shop.

He picked up one after the other,

examining each pattern for the correct answer,

not unlike you reviewing his math homework, every check-off a silent declaration of love.

Maybe that’s how men talk–soundless to the ear but amplified to the eye.

You should have seen him pick out your tie.

He asked the cashier if they had a box.

He carried the box throughout the mall and to the car,

I had never seen a head held so high

And when I dropped him off, he said don’t forget to give it to Doug and said I won’t.

You should have seen the way he smiled.

Mother's Day

Here’s to the woman who spent nine long months retaining water, growing and stretching into a living vessel.

Here’s to the woman who, years later, stares into the mirror of her former self and ties the knots of her body together, every inch of loose skin a physical reminder of love.

Here to the women who teaches her sons to dance and her daughters to throw; who wears her heart on her sleeve and her courage in her convictions.

Here’s to the late nights and the early mornings, to the absence of sleep because the baby is crying or the teenager is out past curfew or the adult children are in places unknown, recapturing the dream that was once America.

Here’s to the working woman worried she’s not there enough for her children, and the stay-at-home mom who cleans diapers all day, fantasizing about adult conversations.

Here’s to the woman with a special needs child, who enters the delivery room a mortal and walks out a warrior. Here’s to the fierce kind of all-conquering love uniquely her own.

Here’s to the woman who traded her youth or postponed her retirement, who rinsed the dreams from her hair and the desire from her bones to spend her life raising a miracle all on her own.

Here’s to the miracle postponed. Here’s to the woman whose womb has only known winter. Here’s to the home she grows with life from the light of other women’s summers.

Here’s to the woman who loves her children too hard or too soft, who knows the terror of a speeding car or a sizzling plate, who lays down beside her frightened child and wipes the fear from their crying face.

Here’s to the woman who saw the speeding car too late.

Here’s to the woman whose child was a spark that flickered once, then surrendered. Here’s to the blankets that remain folded and the bottles that stay dry. Here’s to the could-have-beens and the should-have-beens. Here’s to the love that continues to burn long after the last amber of life has been extinguished.

Here’s to the woman sitting outside the clinic, diverting her eyes from the protest signs, promising the cells multiplying in her womb, “This isn’t a goodbye. This is a ‘see you later.’” Here’s to the promise kept.

Here’s to the woman who never wanted to be a mother, but welcomes other women’s children as her own.

Here’s to the woman who still dreams of the children she hasn’t spoken to in years, because love is a long, winding thread that fractures at times, but never severs.

Here’s to the Mother Marys and the Mary Magdalenes and the Mary Janes; here’s to the fertile and the fertile of heart and the unselfish and the brave, here’s to the generations of women who wrap their arms around our nation, whispering, “Shh. I’ll keep you safe.”

How to Identify Kremlin Trolls on Facebook

After the 2016 election, I added over 2000 Facebook "friends"—most of whom I believed were fellow liberals—in the hopes of filling my feed with like-minded posts. Little did my new friends and I know, many of these accounts were actually Kremlin trolls. Over time, they slowly wedged more and more into our social circles.

Over the past four months, I have researched these accounts, looking for similar characteristics that I can share to help others identify these trolls. While no two trolls are exactly alike, they share two fundamental characteristics:
One: A Public ProfileThere is no sense in spreading propaganda if no one can see it.

Two: “Post Blasting”Do they post articles, memes, any type of political content, seconds, minutes apart, multiple times? Then you probably found a troll. (You may also have also found a bot, which is an account set up by Facebook pages to share their posts. Look at the posts they’re sharing—if it is only from one source, then they’re probably a bot.)

Okay, so you found a public account blasting a ridiculous amount of posts. Here’s some more signs to look for:
Employment is Listed as Unemployed or RetiredIt makes it harder to verify the person’s authenticity if they don’t have a place of employment.

Profile ImagesKremlin trolls often use generic images related to their political affiliation, or those of famous people. Some will use images of regular people, and reuse the same image over and over cropped and panned out. Don’t try to Google Image these photos; the Kremlin is too smart to use an image that you can find via Google Images. Due to the poor quality of these images, my guess is that many of these are scanned.

PagesTrolls are often recommissioned several times over. When a troll account is recommissioned, say, as a liberal troll, they clean up on their images and posts from when they were conservative trolls.
Pages, however, is a section of Facebook often ignored by trolls. They spend a lot of time “liking” pages that fit into the image they are trying to convey, but they forget to remove “likes’ from a previous personality. If you study their page “likes,” it’s quite possible you’ll find page “likes” for conflicting issues – such as a “like” for “Trump is a Big Orange Clown” and a like for “Trump for 2020.” Trolls will also forget that they are on their hacked accounts, and “like” pages in their native language, or a topic that is juxtaposed to the account’s identity—for example, a retired Presbyterian school teacher from Indiana “liking” a page for Ukrainian strippers.


Grammar & PunctuationIn My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins famously bemoaned, “There are even places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years.” Yeah, well, he had a point. Those who live outside English-speaking countries are taught proper, more formal English, and Russia is no exception. Look for posts with thoughtful, well-laid diatribes that read almost like term papers.

Trolls don’t often comment on their own posts, but when they do, look at their writing style in their responses. Their English is never quite as good because they have to make up sentences on the fly; look for stylistic discrepancies between their posts and their comments. Some don't even bother to reply, but use a meme or image instead.


The Space Between the Last Word and the Punctuation MarkAlthough it’s technically punctuation, this deserves its own category. Trolls add spaces before a period. We don’t know why. A common thought is that it is done by the translating services that the trolls use.


Sharing of “Memories”Trolls don’t post a lot of personal posts – although they have gotten better. They do looove to post memories on their wall as a way to validate their account. The thinking is, if it appears to be an old account that has been around awhile, it can’t be a troll. Wrong. Older accounts are used by trolls more than new accounts. Older accounts can actually be bought on the dark web, and the older the account, the more expensive.

Overuse of Divisive NicknamesRepubiKKKan, Killary, tRUMP…

Shares an Overwhelming Amount of Image-Heavy ImagesLet me explain. The typical meme created by an American relies on the language, not the image. The American sense of humor is different. We rely on more sarcasm and irony. Russian memes are heavily photoshopped –many skillfully so—and rely on the image itself to make an impact.


Share Ad Nauseum Content Related to the Most Divisive Topics in AmericaUsually this falls under racial tension. Starting last week, it switched to gun control.

Shares Fake or Overly Biased ArticlesThink: Palmer Report


Signs Not to Look ForRelationships. Old hacked accounts come prepackaged with relationships, so if you think “oh, this person is not a troll, they have five cousins.” – think again.Geotagging. Just because an account’s post is tagged in Trenton, New Jersey does not mean they were in New Jersey when it was posted. It is very, very easy to trick Facebook’s geotracker, and you better believe Kremlin trolls have the right tools for the job.The fact that they share non-political posts, or posts about Russian hacking means nothing. It’s a ploy. They do that to throw you off their scent. In fact, trolls are usually the first to accuse others of being trolls.
Once you find a Russian Troll…You’ll find a hundred more. Keep searching. Keep reporting. Go to the pages that they share from and look there too. Liberal and Conservative pages are plagued with troll accounts. Here are some of the pages that pop up over and over in my research:

The Palmer Report (if you want to the space before the punctuation mark in action, look no further)

Rachel Maddow Fans

Democratic Moms
https://www.facebook.com/Democraticmom/

Expose Trump
https://www.facebook.com/exposetrumpnews/
(Their website, learnprogress.org is no longer working. They haven’t posted in forever.)

Proud Liberals and Proud to be a Democrat are the same fucking people. There’s no information on who manages it.
https://www.facebook.com/Proud-Democrats-2021255211434727/
https://www.facebook.com/ProudToBeADemocrat/

Impeach Trump and Fight Trump are the same people.
https://www.facebook.com/impeachtrumpasap/
https://www.facebook.com/Fight-Trump-1876828232546679/

Same People, same shit:
https://www.facebook.com/We-Are-Liberal-1036841469686059/
https://www.facebook.com/Liberal-American-610045389164725/

Sketchy, divisive, clickbat promoting a blogsite called truthbait.com that has no contact information.
https://www.facebook.com/ILoveDemocrats/

I’m not implying these accounts are run by trolls; however, many pages are. Facebook pages was how Putin got his start in the Facebook game. Accounts were simply created to push the page posts.

Remember, you can also block from seeing Facebook pages, which is really your best recourse from being exposed to propaganda.

Continue to report troll accounts to Facebook, but do not expect a high success rate. Facebook keeps these accounts because, due their prolific posting habits, they increase engagement, and that makes Facebook money.