Letter to Pat Toomey - Feb. 4, 2017

Senator Pat Toomey

248 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Toomey,

Donald Trump was elected by the working, disenfranchised middle class. I have a unique perspective because I saw where my Berks- and Leigh-County-based family was in 2008, 2012 and 2016. It’s not what you would think.

My family is evenly divided between Blue Dog Democrats and middle class, Catholic Republicans.  In 2008, nearly everyone voted for Obama. In 2012, a token few went to Romney, but most still had faith that Obama would bring some kind of change to places like Reading and Allentown. In 2016, about half voted for Trump. At least a dozen former Obama supporters who I know intimately voted Trump into office, reaching for the most outlandish option in the hopes that he would “shake up” Washington.

If you want to survive Trump’s four years as a politician, distance yourself from him now. He’s appointing billionaires and deregulating Wall Street, and you’d better believe that we’re paying attention.

On Friday, Trump threatened the fiduciary rule, which protects people like me and my family from self-interested brokers. The fiduciary rule requires that brokers must make decisions in the best interest of their clients, not in the interest of their own portfolios.

We need Dodd-Frank and the Volcker Rule intact, to protect the American people from another runaway financial crisis. We don’t want to bail out the banks with our tax dollars any more.

P.S. Betsy DeVos is still a terrible idea. Come to the right side of history. She’s a terrible idea for Pennsylvania, and the nation. I know because I’ve been doing the work of education – and paying attention to the politics of it – for 15 years longer than she has.

~~~~~

To learn more about how YOU, reader, can fight back against Republican extremism, check out the Indivisible Guide. It was written by Obama White House staffers, and modeled after the ways in which the Tea Party worked against him throughout his Presidency. It's our turn. 

We Can All Write Our Reps -- Here's How

I haven't been blogging, but I have been writing. Mostly letters to my representatives, in the following categories:

• U.S. Senate (mine are Toomey & Casey)
• U.S. Congress (mine is Evans)
• PA Senate (mine is Williams)
• PA Congress (mine is Roebuck)
• PA Governor & Attorney General (Tom Wolf, Josh Shapiro)
• Philly Mayor, five city council at-large reps & one district rep

With the exception of a few city councilwomen, these are all straight men. Most of them are white. The exercise in learning who they were and that they represented me -- while I hadn't really bothered to learn much about them -- was eye-opening in itself. 

They are all Democrats with the exception of Pat Toomey, so he gets more letters from me. Interesting fact: U.S. Senators have multiple offices in various districts of the state (PA has seven; I imagine smaller states may have fewer). That means for each Toomey letter I write, there are eight copies: one to each district office, and one to the office in Washington, D.C. Even if he doesn't read one of them, his staffers will. 

As I share about my letter-writing on social media, several people have asked me for a copy of the letters. I debated sharing these letters on this blog. Was the content "queer" enough? Did it have anything to do with happiness? 

Jenny adeptly pointed out on a very cold walk the other evening that if it's coming from me, it's queer enough. And while happiness may not be in our politics right now, this is how I'm keeping my sanity. So here goes. 

For a how-to guide for your own activism, read the Indivisible Guide. Then feel free to steal any of my language or letters to send to your own representatives. 

Angels and Miracles for Trump

I just watched John Dickerson's Christmas interview with Stephen Colbert, and it has me thinking about the worldview I derived from my early Catholicism.

Stephen Colbert and I were both raised Catholic, and there's something in our perspectives that matches. We were taught to believe in angels and miracles, so it's possible for us to believe in things we do not understand. We were taught to question and doubt our own thoughts and desires, which allows a way in for radically different perspectives.

Angels and miracles create a space, for me, to imagine my way into my father's psyche, a man I love who thought Donald Trump was the right choice. I can imagine it even though my logical mind resists it. 

"An unquestioned belief is almost vestigial," Colbert says. "It doesn't motivate you in any way...a belief is a filter. You have to run things through it, so you know how you see the world. It's a lens, not a prop."

Trump's election is the last thing I would have wanted for our country. But it has opened an opportunity for me to question and recommit to my beliefs and choices. 

The result? I'm grateful for the meaning I find in my work. I believe more than ever that exercise keeps me sane. I love my friends. Sonia is still my favorite. 

Two things I plan to do differently in 2017: call more Congressmen. Write more everything. 

Amen. 

Confession: I've Been a TERF

I just finished this page-turner. Reading it, I felt like I was in college again, but college was cooler (and easier).

The most disconcerting revelation: I've been a TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or at least, I held one belief in common with them.

"Janice Raymond and Sheila Jeffreys have argued that trans surgeries are a form of mutilation, carried out for political reasons because of the way gender is constructed in male-dominated society."

I wouldn't have used mutilation. But I had to admit: I'd had similar thoughts, and thought myself completely original for having them. Did gender reassignment surgery serve the patriarchy by confirming a false dichotomy?

My question also came from a new-age belief that we're born into this world with circumstances and challenges to learn lessons. I thought it followed that the gender we're born with had something to do with our destiny on earth.

Of course, it does. But that doesn't negate trans experiences, or anyone's choice to have gender confirmation surgery.

I dropped my skepticism about the necessity of surgery after I met trans people who seemed truly happy and -- dare I say it? -- "well-adjusted" after surgery.

Open Letter to Trump Voters

I know who you are.

You are the Italian, male partner of my cousin who owns a small pizza shop in a dying factory town. You're ambitious but always complaining that you can't find good help. Sometimes, you note the race of your employees that don't work out, and I remain silent. I never questioned to your face that you might not be a very good boss, especially to people who don't look like you.

You are my white, male cousin who served six years in the Navy and had a young marriage turn to dust. By the time you found your second wife and fell in love, you were no longer motivated to explore the world or move out of your comfort zone for a job. You moved back to the county where you were raised and got a job at the paper where your dad worked.

When you were traveling the world with the Navy, you imagined more greatness for yourself. Now you work 9-5, struggle with health issues, and find comfort in the evangelical church. I truly don't know what to say to you. I don't understand why you would look the other way when faced with a hate-spewing monster, or worse, vote for him.

You are my aunt, the stay-at-home, Christian wife of my mother's brother whose interests and hobbies are limited to scrapbooking and other forms of nostalgia. Although you take a passing interest in my work with urban youth, I don't correct you when you frame our conversations about my work in terms of "us" and "them."

I never tell you, "If this is how you see the world, then I'm not on your team."

I wasn't always silent. In my early twenties, the end of college and early working life, I engaged each of you in conversations, some of which ended in tears. The tears were always mine. These were the Bush years and the first Obama election.

What will I do about Thanksgiving and Christmas this year? My black friends on Facebook are inditing me to engaged in a deeper way with my racist family members, to point out hate speech when it comes up, to speak up. Despite the fact that I have so much more knowledge now, I'm reluctant.

Facts and passion may not be enough to change the minds of my relatives, who have decided that we are living in a subjective world, that objective truth and objective justice do not exist.

I don't want to relive the tears of my young cousin's wedding, my aunt going on and on about the number of new Hispanic mothers she sees in her work, always on welfare, always having more children. Her cheerful judgement of their worthlessness. Then, I did speak up.

Her husband, my uncle, doubled down. "You don't know what we see," he said. "You might see something different where you live, but you can't see what it is like where we live. And we're paying for them."

I think that's when I left the room. It's not that I couldn't see; it's that I have different eyes.

The nurse is my godmother, the one who was supposed to be responsible for -- I don't fucking know what -- my spiritual understanding, my enlightened upbringing.

This week, a black woman I know was walking down the street and was trailed by three white Trump supporters. "You'll be under ownership again soon," they said, and laughed.

They laughed.

In South Philadelphia, there were at least two instances of pro-Nazi graffiti.

At the University of Pennsylvania, black freshmen and others were personally, directly threatened with lynching by an online troll who texted threats to their phones, possibly from the University of Oklahoma.

If you voted for Trump, here is what I need from you: denounce his sexist and racist rhetoric today. Do not wait. If you voted for him because you believe in the same God as Pence or because you're dissatisfied with your possibilities for the future, denounce his sexist and racist rhetoric today. If you voted for him because something he said resonated with your lizard brain and you really believe he's going to be a positive change for America, denounce his sexist and racist rhetoric today.

And if you voted for him because of his sexist and racist rhetoric, dear God, don't you DARE call yourself a Christian.

In either case, read a book (something not by Sarah Palin, please). Make friends with someone who doesn't look like you. Get some new eyes. You've made a mess, and we're all going to have to clean it up.