Time to Care

Authoritarians want our apathy. Protecting each other is the first step of refusal.

Last night our rights were on the line and repression won.

I’m not going to pretend to forecast what comes next. Republicans have already published their wishlist for the subjugation of women and the impoverishment of American families. The question of how we react, rebuild, and (please don’t let fear of cringe lingo stop you) resist is up to us.

Donald Trump is a fascist, or near enough to a fascist that the distinction is uselessly academic. But authoritarianism does not take hold in a single election, a single putsch, a single march on Rome. It needs more than a single strongman leader. Fascism demands the reproduction of hierarchical violence, downward, on every rung of every social and economic ladder. Fascism is anti-solidaristic and ruthlessly divisive, pitting caste against caste, friend against friend, and—if we let it—ourselves against our own morals. Fascism demands compliance and complacency. 

We can refuse by caring for each other.

That means going beyond the bullshit, branded “care” of lawn signs and feminism-when-convenient. We need to organize, where politicians will not, around the people who need it the most. Donate to an abortion fund. Defend a clinic. Mobilize against book-banners, protect trans kids, tell a bigot to shut the fuck up. Stand up for student activists, save a tree, keep fascists out of your spaces. Fight for your school’s budget and against the bank robbery of public education by the private “school choice” movement. Petition for better ballot measures. Unionize at work. Hold your bosses to account. Resist the criminalization of protest. Log off. Find what inspires you, beyond the atomizing effects of the internet. Volunteer locally. Organize against school board warfare. Vaccinate yourself and your kids, help a friend who needs it, refuse to retreat into the private sphere.

The right is relying on our fatigue, and I’d be lying if I said this week hasn’t been an exhausting blow. We need to continue caring, anyway. We owe it to each other.