YOU ARE NOT ALONE

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

I’m not a big joiner. If I see a crowd of peopleheading in one direction, my inclination is to head in the other. On socialmedia, I’m more of a lurker. If I do post, I lean toward the positive and humorous.Supporting my author friends is important to me, too. The last thing I everwant to do is to add to the noise or the fear-mongering. We get enough of thatwithout my two cents.

This past week something changed. I recall a line inthe movie, NETWORK. You know the one. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going totake this anymore.” Yeah. I felt kinda like that.

I needed to *do* something. For me, screaming into thevoid hardly helps for longer than it takes the post to load and that’s not verylong.

So, I did a couple of things. The first was to find aneasy way to call my representatives. Hunting around for phone numbers or tryingto craft a succinct statement or voicemail was going to take more time than Ihad. Plus, what is one measly phone call going to do?

I found a website and app called 5calls.org. It doesthe work for you by summarizing the issues, providing talking points, andlisting your reps and phone numbers by zip code. Don’t see your pet issue? It’sstill helpful to find your reps.

It takes a little over five minutes to make my threecalls to my two senators and one rep. I’ve mostly left voicemails but spoke tostaffers a few of times too. Shy? Call after-hours to ensure you’ll get intovoicemail. Your call still counts!

I still needed to do more than phone calls. I liveclose to my state’s capital and saw a nationwide call to march to yourstatehouse. I had gone to a handful marches in the past and wanted to be a partof whatever else was happening. The marches were to bring attention to theopposition to Project 2025. When? On 2/5/25 of course!

The first thing I noticed was that information wasfragmented. There was no clear direction of who was organizing or where andwhen to meet. Many posts talked about “false flag” or other misinformation todiscourage going. There are people smarter than I am about these things, so Iwon’t comment, but the logic was off. It felt like an organization that didn’twant a large showing of support was posting for a march that wasn’t going tohappen? Several friends urged me to be careful, but I went anyway.

And I’m glad I did.

First and foremost, democracy is about the support ofthe people. (I know, DUH!) And this means visible and quantifiable support. MayaMiller of the New York Times reported today that thecongressional phone system has been jammed with tens of millions of calls fromoutraged constituents contacting their representatives. Alaska Senator LisaMurkowsky said the number of calls received by the senate jumped from 40 toover 1600 per minute! And showing up at your reps office counts, too, aswell as marches at your statehouse. Even holding a sign on your town common canmake support visible.  

And when support is visible, it’s harder for politiciansto hide when they try to push through unpopular actions.

Yes, Wednesday’s marches were disorganized. In largepart I believe this was because of the short notice from idea to delivery, butthe two groups – one through 50501 and the other through Indivisible.org –found each other and the crowd grew to thousands. The mood of the crowd wasdecidedly “game on.” It felt to me that the people there were committed tobeing heard and knowing that the march was likely to be the first of many.

It was emotional. Some people covered their facescompletely. Perhaps they did so from the cold, but perhaps they did so out of concernfor future reprisals. Expressions of fear and determination creased the facesof the people I could see. The signs ranged from the typical pithy and funny toheartbreaking. By far, most were homemade with whatever tape, cardboard, glue,markers, and whatever else folks could find in the back of their closets orpilfered from their kids.

I poked my head up from my lurking and posted,emailed, and chatted about suggested actions. One author said, “We are thedrops in the bucket. That usually implies an action is insignificant, but hereeach drop helps fill the void.”

Find what works for you and do it.

Your voice matters.