Someone's Baby

God, those photos of the men stacked up in a concentration camp in El Salvador... Piled up like commodities, made faceless, dehumanized by their captors both foreign and domestic. 

Each one of them was someone's baby. Now grown, they are heaped upon each other, discarded, hope stolen, kidnapped from their own families. 

Part of the beautiful, terrible magic of parenting is that all children somehow became my children. One of the daily horrors of the previous Trump administration was protecting my own tender, gorgeous infant in my arms as babies his age slept in cages, wailing for their own mothers, standing alone in court, parents lost to them in an extrajudicial system that has expanded to horrifying overseas operations in this term. I couldn’t save them all. I could only hold onto one.

Now, we are given this vision of adulthood for men. Trump's supporters continue to dehumanize migrant men, framing them as dangerous criminals to justify the lawless detention and abuse they are suffering, when in actual fact so many of them came to our country to escape violence. They trusted us to be better than the criminals they endured.

And each of them was someone's baby. 

How can I look at my own sons, brilliant and beautiful, and not fear that they might also someday be treated with such disregard and hatred? Am I really supposed to trust the capriciousness of racism to protect them from such a fate, knowing how racists are motivated by their own extreme insecurity and fear? 

Racism protects no one. Insecurity and fear breed only violence and spasms of dominance. Relying on whiteness leans into the same dehumanization that delivers the results we're seeing now. Racism overspills the imaginary lines constructed by those that cling to it; it’s coming for all of us, eventually, regardless of our skin color or the content of our character. We all become faceless before it, reduced to the meanest calculation of our value. The only answer is to see it for what it is, and tear it down.

I look up at our administration, and see an array of broken men, insecure and fearful, drawn like moths to a flame toward the biggest bully. Tortured by their own fathers, hating their own mothers, beating their own wives, neglecting their own children. These criminals--some subject to the very due process denied to the men of CECOT--we tolerate, as they rain down further abuse in hopes that someday, finally, they might feel strong enough. 

And each of them was someone's baby, too. 

Many of them are famous for their stories of human failure. We don't have to guess at what made this administration this way, because their politics of grievance spell it out each day. They can never be stronger than the abusive fathers that tormented them as children or abandoned them, but they work each day to keep women under their heel and a hierarchy of racism available so they can feel taller as the bodies stack up. They can steal someone else’s father and throw him away like garbage, but they can never repair their own fractured souls by doing so. They can sell fear, but they can never feel safe.

What will it take to ensure that my own sons won't be failed men in this way? Will my daily work be enough so that they see others as fully formed individuals, each with their own dreams and difficulties, and emerge into adulthood with their empathy intact? 

They are my babies. I see them with hopeful eyes, wrap my love around them, and grieve for all the ones I cannot reach. With the spectre of failure looming large, I try my best to fight this fight on many fronts. 

We were all someone's baby. May we hold each other gently, and grow beyond this hateful brokenness of insecure men with too much power.

Of Trials and Taxes

Today held an emotional morning of civic responsibility. Perhaps mourning, too. At the risk of seeming susceptible to seeing my own life as a movie, the timing felt significant. Maybe that’s just the poetry of life, though, the synchronicities and symbolism. 

I was on standby for jury duty this week. I have wanted to serve on a jury, and I often feel disappointed or even disdainful of folks swapping tales of weaseling out of this call to service. However, I have still yet to make it to the point of serving, and the journey to today’s visit to the courthouse was a long one. 

The first time I was called years ago, I had a new baby and I didn’t know what to do except bring him with me. When I showed up with an infant on my hip, they let me know there is actually a way to be excused for this without the adventure of hauling the little one all the way to the courthouse.

Then, I was called just before final exams for my interior architecture courses. With no guarantees that the trial could be concluded before I needed to sit for my tests, I could not serve, though the judge talked to my as if I was his own recalcitrant teenager trying to evade responsibility. I let him know that, if I felt I could reasonably attend to both duties, I would love to serve. But, little matter. Dismissed.

My next postcard came just before my second child was born. I was heavily pregnant, and, again, no guarantees about the length of time, neither the trial nor impending labor. Working with the clerk (over the phone this time) I was advised about postponement to a future date to allow time for birth and breastfeeding a baby. 

So, today. I got the call, and I gathered my supplies: A book to read while waiting, snacks and tea, but also my most portable breast pump and a chiller bottle for milk—because my baby is still nursing, and attending to milk supply is both a nutritional concern for him and a comfort and health issue for me.

When I arrived today, the clerk at the jury assembly room let me know that the trial looked like a short one, but also that I had a valid reason to request being excused. He invited me to sit down and watch the introductory videos with the other potential jurors.

I nearly cried as the reels played. I am sure I’m not the only one carrying a lot of stress from the daily disarray we’re seeing from the federal government. The uncertainty, the disappearances of those who speak up, or who are viewed as “other.” As a judge spoke of the right to a fair trial, of our ability to serve justice in one of our three branches of government, I felt part of my heart break open. 

Not long after, we were all called to a courtroom, where the judge spoke eloquently of her thanks to us for being there, and also of the few duties of citizenship: mainly, taxes and jury duty. 

“And here we are, on Tax Day. But what we’re asking of you here is for your time, and for your careful consideration. It is a privilege to be able to be here, and you may ask how you were so lucky to be chosen.” She explained how the pools of potential jurors are assembled, “a cross section of our beautiful city,” and reminded us all how important it is to show up for each other in this way. 

Those fractures in my heart sang again; I don’t think very highly of paying taxes today, at least on a federal level. Many of the agencies that mean the most to me have been deliberately destroyed, their dedicated staff scattered to the winds, their work undercut or abandoned. To the extent that I can see what I am paying for, there are abductions of people seeking hope in America, and frequent golf trips for an egomaniac while food aid and medical advances are nixed from the program.

But, wow, I care about the judiciary. Of those aforementioned three branches of government, one is viciously lawless, one has completely abdicated its duty as a check on executive power—and yet one stands. The courts are holding the line, more often than not, enraging those that would seek to make the orange oaf our mad king. His allies gnash their teeth and pull their hair as rulings land that hail back to those constitutional constructs meant to balance our governing bodies. 

The scales are delicate, imperfect, and yet they hold. Due process matters. Resisting violence with resolve and clear eyes matters. These are some of our highest accomplishments in civilization. We bend the moral arc toward justice not only in the streets, but in the courts, too.

Our judge asked anyone who could serve to take a ten-minute break outside the courtroom. Anyone requesting consideration of a hardship was to remain. I stayed, ready to discuss my circumstances, but not yet convinced I should present them as a barrier to service. We sat in the seats later to be used for the selected jurors, and in a row we passed the microphone along. 

First, a woman with a crucial conference before the week’s end. Dismissed. Then, a student with an impressive course load nearing the end of the academic year. Dismissed. A mother, scheduled to fly on Friday to her son’s university orientation. Dismissed. For each story, the judge listened, asked more questions where needed, and congratulated the big milestones and hard work of those receiving dismissals. 

Then, me. I took the mic, and said that I am currently breastfeeding a baby. The judge offered me a dismissal, too, but I said that I felt strongly about serving, and that if I could be accommodated to pump then I could probably do it. 

She smiled and said, “This is a special time.” And, my god, it matters to have a woman present to adjudicate these things, both legal and where that intersects with the personal. This was no cold analysis of the rules, but a moment of empathy, delivered with the awareness that my youngest will only be little once. 

I thanked her, gathered my things, and left. I missed my baby. I felt a little deflated that my contributions could not be greater in this moment. Always, the timing. Upholding so many duties, some fleeting and essential, both biological and bureaucratic. 

Where we show up matters. I’ve said many times recently in private conversations that I wish Americans would understand voting as a civic responsibility, akin to paying taxes; not always exciting, perhaps mostly not, but a duty and a privilege. Today, with checks to write and the erosion of our highest ideals plainly before me, I held in my hands for an hour or so the ability to bolster our last bulwark of co-equal powers. And, gently, I was told that I was probably needed elsewhere more, because time is short. 

I walked past the square where less than two weeks ago, I donned my patriotic finery and protested alongside my family: No Kings. We the People. I want my children to see this, and know that we need to stand strong in these moments. I passed Abraham Lincoln, sat seriously in bronze, inviting me to consider it all in front of City Hall, where I’ve voted, yes, but also witnessed weddings and celebrated arts in our city. So much in this beautiful building.

Our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness have their best chances in a framework of mutual care. That framework requires a sense of responsibility, and it requires us all to show up as we can to maintain it. 

I walked on, home to my child. I held him close. This time is special. 

On Tariffs

 I don't feel like this is being said enough, so I'll take a stab at it myself:

Tariffs hit the poor harder. They are a regressive form of taxation, as opposed to a progressive one that would demand more money from the rich. 

Why is that? Well, think about it: One of the privileges of being wealthy is that you can pay other people to do tasks for you. Those are services, and tariffs are charged on stuff, things being imported--not on services that people perform for you. 

The less money you have, the more of it you spend as a proportion of your income on actual things: Groceries, clothes, technology, you name it. This is part of what is powerful about the spending power of average people, that those dollars keep moving through the economy in a flow of business that creates local jobs and keeps stores open in your neighborhood. 

If you live paycheck to paycheck, it's because you keep spending your paycheck. Your money isn't locked away somewhere, because you need it now for things like food and rent. 

Now, obviously, the rich also spend money on physical things--sometimes really big physical things, and sometimes so much money there isn't any left. 

But the really big game in wealth is having so much money it can be put away, siloed into different investments for years or decades at a time, quietly growing. If you have enough money that you don't have to spend it all each month, you can slow some of it down, put it away for later, and find ways for it to accrue interest and become an even bigger pile of money. 

To bring it back to tariffs, whacking up the price of food 25% has almost no impact on the rich, because their food budget is such a small proportion of what they're spending. For the average American, who cannot withstand a financial shock of a random bill of $1,000 one month without serious consequences, a 25% increase in the price of food jeopardizes the ability to pay rent, and thus be housed, or to pay for some other essential item. 

Tariffs don't raise money off of foreign governments, they wring money out of average consumers. Think of them like a sales tax, an extra cost mandated by the government that gets passed straight on to customers. 

Trump idolizes a particular moment in American history when a huge amount of revenue was generated by tariffs, before income taxes came in to even the burden by asking the rich to pay their share. That's what he wants to take us back to. (He also loves the leverage that he gets when he creates difficulties that people have to make personal deals with him to avoid. That's the extortion racket bit.) 

Finally, the richer a person is in the USA, the less likely they are to pay even income tax. This is what I think is the most infuriating part: All of this chaos and cost is being borne by us to privilege a group of people who are already dodging most of their tax obligations. 

If you're wealthy, one of the many services you can pay for is an accountant to advise you on investments to make to lessen your taxes. You can create trusts, write down losses, shuffle debt, and shift money around so that you appear to have little to no income. Sometimes, this is overtly fraudulent, like Trump's gaming of his properties' values, where he told banks they were worth more so he could borrow more cash, and he told the government they were worth less so that he would have lower tax obligations. 

So, to bring it home: If you're poor, you have to go buy your own soap, sponges, mops and rags, and if any of them are imported, they now cost you extra because of tariffs. 

But if you're rich? You can pay somebody else to clean that up for you, and no import duties apply.

Don't Feed the Fascists

A quick thing about the day of boycotting ahead: I’m participating, and if you feel at all moved, you should do so, too.

The idea is to abstain from shopping at big retail chains: Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Amazon, etc. There’s no need to starve your local independent stores of business, but deliberately turning away from billionaire-led enterprises that are helping to support this kakistocracy we’re all being subjected to would be great.

A digital blackout also makes a lot of sense. Give yourself a break from social media, or any media that is allowing itself to be wrangled to legitimize or sane-wash this intense, awful political moment we’re in. Other creative answers could be to unsubscribe from email advertisements, or to leave things hanging in the carts of places you might normally shop that are your targets in this boycott.

One day makes an impact, and if you can do more, even better! In a world of increasing speed where we are inundated with advertisements and enticed into a lot of convenience spending, it’s easy to lose track of where we’re flinging our money and what it’s supporting. Even a day of boycotting can be an excellent reset as we think through how we want to participate in this capitalist mess we’re all stewing in. And, of course, if you keep it up, that sends an even bigger message.

Collectively, protests and boycotts can shift cultural tides. Already, boycotts have triggered shareholder conversations about how corporations have bent the knee to the orange oaf on their policies. Your wallet isn’t the only place to flex muscle right now, but it’s certainly worth doing to the best of your ability.

Don’t go hungry. Don’t miss out on medications you need or essential items. If you forget, just reset. Treat it like a meditation; if your attention drifts, just let yourself come back to the practice at hand. Focus your frustrations outward and back to action, rather than wasting energy on self-talk that demands perfection.

A friend of mine years ago said, while we were protesting against the impending invasion of Iraq, that she hoped that people acquired a taste for protest, that they learned to find that solidarity and strength in demanding better. Overwhelm is understandable, but all actions start small. Start where you are.  

Valentines in Unpresidented Times

This time last week, I was up late finishing up the handcrafted Valentines that my second-grader and I had dreamed up for his classmates. I had a bunch of little heart-shaped cards to cut out, and was looping craft felt together to weave little pockets to hold sweet wishes for twenty-some children. 

A noise my kiddo had made in the car on the drive home that day had reminded me of Hamilton, so I put that on for us to listen to. After his little hands tired in our festive factory that night, I sat up with my headphones on to carry on where we'd left off in both the project and the songs. 

As I was working, the muscle memory kicked in: I remember how to do this. I remember what I did before, when this orange monstrosity overtook our government before; I made things, I listened to music that compelled me to keep moving, and I let my mind wander to words I wanted to string together. I probably listened to Hamilton a thousand times in those years. 

When I was pregnant with my second, I was so worried about what would happen next, and wondered whether it was wise to throw the dice another time on the potential upheaval of a baby. Many people said to me that it would be different this time around, because I had already learned so much from doing it the first time. I certainly had my doubts. 

Really, that has turned out to be true. I've been here before. I remember. There's a deep muscle memory about that heave-ho of early parenting that makes the dance smoother, more familiar so quickly this time around. 

But, honestly, with my firstborn, it was never baby that made things hard. It was the insanity of the adult world, the intensity of doing the sacred work of raising a small human against the backdrop of daily cruelties with little help, pushing back the tide of history being made in the worst way to keep a peaceful place for my baby to thrive. 

So, having yet again indulged in one of the most profound acts of optimism humans can embark upon, I have been rewarded with another blissfully cheerful, easy baby, to be raised amid absolute stupidity from the generations that came before. It feels punishing, foolish to be having to fight these fights again. I am profoundly angry at those that were too foolish or lazy to prevent this awfulness from descending upon my babies’ childhoods again. I wish I could protect them from the perversity of all of this, and could give them back the bandwidth that is stolen from me in my hypervigilence.

And, yet, it is easier. I have done this before. I have collected my materials, put on musical motivation, and tried to find the words as I wrap my life and strength around my baby once more. It is tiring, but there's only one way through, and my version of it advances on many fronts. 

Now, of course, my previous baby is a big kid. He has so many questions. As we race along with lyrics that outline the creation of so much that's being shredded now, I develop new muscles and unlock unknown dexterity to supply explanations for history repeating and unprecedented times. I do this even while I struggle to make it make sense to myself. And it happens alongside the ordinary joys and pains of life that goes on even as this chaos rages. 

Around here, we are working to expand love, share sweetness, and also stand up for what's right.

A week ago, I pushed aside the horrors to engage my hands in the creation of some love and normality for the children around me. And I find that the contrast gives me fuel for the fight ahead.

Dancing and Scribbling, Silence and Sound

I'm just going to give myself a moment here to grieve some personal losses. These are far from the most important things happening, but I feel them nonetheless, and how they register in the moment is part and parcel of this project of chaos and disarray we're all being subjected to. 

Plus, I just spent some hard-earned therapy bucks talking about this a couple of hours ago, so it's top of mind. 

I had a really wonderful weekend. On Friday, I went to an awesome Weird Al burlesque show that was just so, so good. Took myself on a date, made some new friends, loved it. Saturday, I had the pleasure of joining friends at a birthday celebration, seeing Tim Curry in conversation with Peaches Christ at a tribute for the former, and attending the Edwardian Ball with my husband and some gorgeous friends. Sunday, I sat down for a talk with one of my favorite cousins, and then read a friend's satirical rendering of Oz as Dorothy in my first theatrical performance since, I dunno, maybe high school? 

And when I got home from the last gig, it wasn't too late, and I was looking forward to sharing the highlights on social media. Except, I didn't. Because, when I stepped out of IRL interactions and caught up with the news, the horror of this "flood the zone with shit" fascist government takeover had reached a fever pitch. Watergate, but throughout all of our federal operations, globally, and encompassing our most sensitive data, had gone down. So, I stayed up too late writing about that instead. 

I have two small humans to look after here. I'm more protective of my energy than I used to be. It is both a treat and a logistical feat to enjoy so much time out and about with friends old and new. It was invigorating to connect artistically with San Francisco so much! I needed that, and I wanted to share that. 

But I am also trying to avoid creating content for a billionaire collaborator helping to skew our information environment toward authoritarianism. For countless years, I've tried to report rape jokes, hate speech and harassment on Facebook, only to be told again and again that those don't violate community standards. Though having a drag name or breastfeeding a baby apparently do. 

I don't want my words fed into an AI training set (too late for that) nor do I want to abandon the years and years of building community that has happened here. It gives me the ick to be here, picturing Zuck trying to look cool for Trump, erasing transness and opening the floodgates for trolls to run the roost. 

When Twitter was going down in flames after Elon was forced to go through with purchasing it, I went back to save my data and say goodbye. I didn't expect it to hurt, but it did. I'd built connections there, and I had to leave them behind. A lot of people I valued talking to on that platform had left already. 

But this is about more than how gross tech billionaires are. It's also about the silencing and distraction from joy that all of this noxious shit brings. 

Right now, we are in the midst of intense pollution of our information ecosystem. NPR and NBC have been given notice to clear out the spaces they use to cover the Pentagon to make room for misinformation merchants such as Breitbart and OAN. Meta is getting rid of fact-checking in the US just as we are witnessing the ceaseless lying Trump is known for, instead emulating Musk in turning this duty over to... Whoever. Trolls, probably. 

And TikTok has driven creators trying to share information about sex education and reproductive rights in algospeak to evade murky community guidelines that seem suspiciously conservative, even while the platform praises Trump on its landing page in times of crisis. This is all to the side of the data scraping and profiling that's going on. 

Meanwhile, traditional media are settling case after meritless case in hopes of surviving Trump's bullying lawsuits and maintaining some sort of position to cover what's happening. (Of course, their sanewashing of GOP actions helped create an appearance of false equivalence between the parties, which helped get us where we are today.) 

So it doesn't feel good to be online, at least not in the places I'm used to. And it's gross to imagine, but for a few well-placed votes spread across key states, partly paid for by an insane tech titan, we could have missed that all of these CEOs were waiting in the wings to aid in authoritarian control of information, hiding the slimy impulses we see playing out now. Should I be grateful about this transparent cravenness?

In an alternate dimension, much like our own, we're watching corporations extolling the virtues of their diversity initiatives to curry favor with a black, female president. They end up building the pipelines of talent that are more representative of how our country actually looks, and reflective of the gains we've made in the last few decades in getting more people to the table, even if they are doing it to land federal contracts. President Harris is signing executive orders to usher in new generations of medical practitioners who use evidence-based medicine bolstered by healthcare research that includes sex and race into its purview, and tech companies are creating products that make that data more useful to the citizens that paid for the science behind it. 

And, in that alternate dimension, I still have misgivings about privacy and social media, but I at least feel alright about being there to promote my friends' events, and to talk about my own. Indeed, the followers I have are from a time when I mainly shared dance and art, though not without my own commentary about the world in which it is happening. 

Instead, I only feel right about using this platform to resist. I probably will share the joyful photos, because joy is so important now, too. But it is sullied in this place. I come here for my friends, but this joint is run by fascists, and I want to spend the precious time and attention I have wisely, and elsewhere. 

While this kakistocracy extends its claws like this into every corner, life goes on, in its fullness. The joy of a beautiful weekend runs alongside the fury at what is being stolen from us. The need to connect sits awkwardly alongside the discomfort at the channels available and the megalomaniacs with their hands on the switchboards.

Attached: Two Dancers by Salvador Dalí, pen and paper, 1949. Which somehow expresses how I felt this weekend, chaotically dancing and scribbling through the storm, or being the eye of it.

On Millions, and Billions, and Zeroes

Well, after the horrifically illegal weekend Elon had, all of this Silicon Valley capitulation makes sense. These super-rich assholes all talk to each other, and I have no doubt that Musk laid out his plans for his bought-and-paid-for presidency to each of them personally, as clearly as Project 2025 was written out for anyone who could be bothered with a cursory education on the stakes in this election. 

Faced with an invitation to oligarchy or the threat of being targeted for showing some backbone, they have opted to line their pockets further, standing aside or assisting as vulnerable groups are scapegoated and the mechanisms of our government are turned away from anything hopeful and toward vengeance and cruelty. They are wittering away about AI while propping up a man who promised to be a dictator. (Skynet seems closer than ever.) 

Having gutted FBI leadership, stolen tranches of our data, and grabbed the purse strings of our nation in the most flagrantly unconstitutional manner imaginable, it's clear that Musk and the orange oaf have paralyzed our federal operations in preparation for a coup, which is happening before our eyes. They did it to yank the chain and assert power over anyone who might resist, and didn't care that the ability to access food aid or medication would be disrupted for millions. 

Public health data that we paid for with our tax dollars is being erased. Women's health was immediately on the chopping block, along with any mention of transness or research that assumed that humans come in varieties beyond straight, white, and male. Already, doctors have lost resources that help them provide basic care to patients, and the CDC is being gutted as we stare down another potential pandemic. Some of us are not going to survive this. 

And, because both diplomacy and humanitarian efforts are beyond the perception of these kleptocratic weirdos, USAID has apparently been destroyed for refusing to let an unelected private citizen and his band of fascist toadies access sensitive security information. This will hurt globally, and offers a vacuum for adversarial states to enter where the US has abandoned its influence. 

As a reminder, it was not half of the country that voted for this: it was less than a quarter. No one voted for Elon. About as many people voted for Kamala Harris as did for the bloviating monstrosities before us. Trump's voters are a lost cause, and literally nothing he can do is bad enough to dissuade them--it's a cult. 

But an even bigger group than either of those could have voted, and simply did not. All of those folks held the door for the destruction and robbery happening now. They handed Trump the presidency and two compliant houses of Congress by simply not bothering to show up. The Undeclared, "Kamala is a cop," "I'm not excited about either candidate," "both sides" non-voters are just as complicit in this mess as Bezos, Zuck, and apartheid boy, though the former are certainly not going to enjoy power nor profits as a result of this collapse. 

The extremely rich do not care about livable wages, decent jobs, or the improvement of basic living conditions for people in this country, or anyone outside of their gated compounds. They do care about money and flattery, however, which are perhaps the most common currencies among billionaires. As a reminder, we all have more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire--you are never one paycheck away from that level of wealth, but the majority of people in this country live one layoff, one health scare, one natural disaster away from penury. 

Perhaps one of the greatest swindles Donald Trump has managed to pull, as a poor person's idea of a rich person, is the MAGA mindset that his followers are no longer temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but billionaires in the making. They stand slavering away as his tax cuts and executive orders, which will never benefit them, offer welfare to the the super wealthy, hollowing out our common funds for infrastructure and basic needs, and giving the choicest bits of our nation's assets to cronies that flatter him. That is the point of this chaos. 

We still collectively have the power to do something about this. The people who don't want this still outnumber those that do. But the work ahead will certainly be more difficult and dangerous than the simple pragmatism of a ballot cast.