The aftermath, good and bad.
First, let’s cleanse our palates with something weird and fancy.
Ok, so. I was at the Houston Women’s march Saturday, along with about 23.000 other folks, and it was GREAT. We made protest buddies on the train heading downtown; a few at first, and at every stop, more and more people piled on, all of them ready to make some noise in the name of goodness. Marching (ambling, really, 23,000 bitches do not a fast moving group make) through town, I saw not a single counter protest. I saw a wonderfully diverse group of marchers being supported by a wonderfully diverse group of cops (who told us they volunteered for this duty). I saw signs in support of abortion rights, black lives matters, Muslim rights, LGBTQ rights, affordable healthcare, trans rights. . . I don’t think I’m going to remember everything. I saw lots of signs in more general support of civil rights/human rights, because when everything you care about is threatened, how do you choose?
It left me energized and hopeful and ready to keep fighting, although also a little emotionally exhausted.
And then I came home and kept up the high reading about all of the other marches and demonstrations, seeing all the awesome signs and awesome people.
And then the backlash started piling up, not from the other side, but from within. And it is a necessary and important thing to recognize where we’ve failed and to improve; we can not shut our ears to constructive criticism. It’s just (and this is my personal problem) it makes it harder to keep the momentum up sometimes. So, please forgive me if I turtle up a little bit out of self-preservation. I’m not giving up or shutting up, I’m just feeling rubbed raw right now and I need a minute to let it scab.
For today, I’m signing George Takei’s petition standing up for American Muslims. Tomorrow I will do another thing.
Neurotic Owl 
Thanks Nara – one more easy action taken