The Need to Vote is Clear; The Future is Not

September 27th, 2016

For an entire day, I cannot feel my face, cannot surface what’s going on with me. I’m agitated, nearing depression. It feels like being underwater. Real life is happening all around - my kids want their sippy cups filled with milk; my partner kisses me before going to work; there are dishes to be done and emails to be sent. Why do I feel like the living dead?

It’s not until I’m in racial caucus later that day, when others are talking about Donald Trump’s way of (dis)engaging and discrediting people of color, that I realize I disassociated during the debate the night before and hadn’t returned to my body since.

All of a sudden I come to. I’m yelling about how he used methodical tactics to discredit, to demonize, to intimidate, to gaslight. I’m talking about my relationships with countless men before Donald Trump. I’m referencing personal trauma. Some of these caucus people barely know me. I’m spewing toxicity.

I’m so fucking mad.

The white men in caucus are quiet, until they’re directly asked to respond (when does that ever happen?). The white women seem to get it, nodding their heads in resonance or shaking their heads in recognizable rage.

Sunday October 9th, 2016

He’s literally stalking her. Like she’s prey. Like he’s charged with eliminating the audacity of every woman every where to occupy positions in leadership. I wonder if she can hear him breathing. I wonder if the terror of the psychic field between them is impacting her ability to stay focused. I wonder if her husband does this to her at home.

I don’t think we will ever know the depths of Bill Clinton’s misogyny. I wonder what kind of internal contortions she’s performed in order to remain married to him. I don’t blame her; I blame the system. What womyn hasn’t assimilated to heteronormative patriarchy to her own demise at some point? And yet, I don’t want contortion running this country. That’s not all she is. But still.

Contortions and outright supremacists are two different things. I think about all these people equating the two of them...the lesser of two evils, they say.

This time, he’s put in the position of having to defend his comments about sexual assault: “I just grab them by the pussy,” he said.

White, gay, cis male moderator Anderson Cooper seems hell-bent on making him face the implications of these words.

“Did you brag about sexual assault?” Cooper asks.

Trump starts talking about ISIS, about the way womyn are treated in Islam, about terrorists.

This is clockwork. No self-reflection. No responsibility taking or accountability. Find the bigger common “brown,” “non-Christian” enemy and remind people who the “real” villains are.

When asked if they can point to anything good about each other, she references his kids and he mentions her perseverance.

“Hillary never gives up” he says.

I wonder what kind of presidential candidate she’d be if she had given up. Given up on Bill. Given up on sacrificing the lives of black and brown people for the sake of political and economic profitability. Given up on contortion.

She probably wouldn’t be on this stage.

That’s the point. I have a fantasy, a waking day dream, where she gives up, walks over and in the moment when they’re supposed to shake hands upon the conclusion of the debate, she socks him dead in his face on national television for all to see. I don’t want this in real life, but it is my fantasy and that matters.

Wednesday October 19th, 2016

He says “bad hombres.” He calls her a “nasty woman.” Did you notice that anytime raced or gendered beings/realities came into his speech the focus was on crime, on burden or something else rhetorically negative?

This is the straight, cis, white male imaginary in full effect: they cannot see our gifts, what we invest, what we harbor in the way of genius and creativity, what could potentially heal/liberate this nation because they are so terrified of how our full personhood, beyond their projections, beyond their dominance and control, will eliminate the reign of their superiority.

And it would.

But who needs reminding? There is a better life than a life predicated on false superiority. The demise of their power *will be* their liberation.

When the discussion turned to abortion, she hit on the often psychologically, economically, religiously, culturally, politically fraught territory of reproductive choice/s.

I had an abortion in 2001. It was the best and worst decision of my life. I won’t go into detail. But she did.

She acknowledged the necessary limitations needed on government to determine moments of enormous personal consequence.

I’ve never felt more genuine respect for a candidate's complex analysis and affirmation of womyn’s reproductive lives than I did listening to her talk about Roe V. Wade in the third debate. Then he said the word “ripping” and I disassociated again. Heard very little else for the next hour of debate.

Today

I’ll vote in just days. I wish my options were different. And I’m a pragmatist. For me, nothing feels clear when it comes to politics in this nation. I actually wonder if voting means anything given Citizen United’s capacity to determine elections.

I wanted Obama to stop deporting people, to stop bombing brown and black people abroad. I wanted him to not just say “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” but to make policy to protect all his potential sons and daughters out there terrorized and murdered by police.

He didn’t.

Can anyone stop the imperialistic pulse at the center of this nation’s character? I am not convinced.

What then does it mean to divest from the center? As a citizen who feels responsible? As a parent who wants to model engaged planetary accountability to that which is larger than me? As an anti-racist and radical feminist who is queer and committed to incarnating space/places for liberation and thriving among those most marginalized? As one who believes, in the way of my religious tradition, that something must die for rebirth to occur.

There are ancestors who would rightly roll over in their graves if they knew I didn’t cast a ballot. So I will. But not without feeling like I’m punking out on some level.

My mom is still living. I can’t dishonor her by not supporting the first womyn president. So I will. But not without follow up accountability.

I keep telling myself that more localized efforts on my part will result in less immobility, less depression, less hopelessness. But, after using most of my political and community organizing energy this fall to no avail on stopping my local city commission from passing policy that criminalized the poor and will, definitely, be used disproportionately against people of color--I am not convinced.

Inaction is not an option for me. My children will inherit the future that I am (by drops in the bucket) collaboratively determining alongside all of you.

Sometimes resistance is writing. Sometimes I get though by making this about pro-active mental health strategies. Sometimes my children are the only source of mobilization.

So, someone, please, years from now, when I’m gone, tell them that I grappled, that I wrestled, that I fought, and even when I couldn’t conjure any political will in the face of defeat, that their faces wouldn’t let me quit. And I didn’t.

Emily Joye is trying to figure the impossible out while being queer, anti racist, a mom, wyke, student, worker and Earth lover. EJ currently lives in Battle Creek MI though she's a native Californian. She loves theopoetics, collage, Amos Lee, toddler laughter, artistic resistance, her mother, Jesus and kink.