To my neighbors,
A Letter I Sent to My Hometown Newsletter
Many of you perhaps remember me. Some have probably moved to town since I left, which was over a decade ago now. I went to college back east and then graduate school in Iowa and then moved to New York. I was an editor at BuzzFeed for a few years and then last summer, rather unexpectedly, I sold the book I’d long been working on and quit my job to finish it. It’s being published by Scribner, probably in 2018. It’s about schizophrenia. It’s called A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise. I hope someday you’ll buy and read it.
I’m not writing to tell you about myself, however. I’m writing to share some perspectives on this election’s outcome and what I hope you will do going forward. I have cried every day this week. I have cried for my friends who are LGBT and my Muslim friends and my black friends and my Hispanic friends and my friends who are immigrants and my disabled friends. I have cried for my friends who are sexual assault survivors. I have cried for women. I have cried for the earth.
I cried for the ramifications this election result will have upon my own life. For my own reproductive rights. For my boyfriend, who is Jewish, and a comedy writer. For our work, given that we are members of the press. I have cried for the people about whom I’ve written this book, people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disabilities, people who are already some of our society’s most vulnerable. This week I texted with a friend who’s a schoolteacher in Houston; many of her students are undocumented. “The kids are terrified,” she wrote back. I spoke with a friend who’s trans and lives in a rural place, a place where many voted for Trump. He said he’s now had conversations with people who truly didn’t contemplate how this vote would affect his life. He transitioned during the Bush Administration and spoke in shock, in disbelief, that his life was actually going to get worse — perhaps worse than ever before.
But I am picking myself up. We all have to. I’ve begun doing what I can, and figuring out what more I can do. I don’t have a lot of money right now but I’ve begun donating monthly to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. I truly hope you will give as much as you are able to organizations that support marginalized groups of people. (There are many lists going around online of organizations to donate to.) I also want to urge you to pay attention to the brand boycotts that are beginning, targeting retailers that do business with the Trump family. This includes Amazon, Macy’s, TJ Maxx. (Again, if you Google this you’ll find lists.)
I urge you, generally, to think about what it is you can do. Examine your skills and your resources and put yourself to work. Volunteer. Organize. Fundraise. This week I emailed with a friend who lives in rural Oregon and works in healthcare for disabled people, people with autism especially. He wrote about how he’s going to get involved in local politics. I chatted online with a friend who lives in Iowa and is a Mexican immigrant. He spoke about his intention to volunteer with undocumented people in that state. People I know in New York are signing up to accompany their Muslim neighbors as they commute. A friend who works at Planned Parenthood is holding gynecological information sessions, in the (likely) event that we lose our reproductive rights altogether. People I know online are volunteering to pay for trans people to get their passports renewed correctly before the administration changes.
I am writing you this letter because it occurred to me that this is one thing I can do. I hope you will share it, or sentiments from it, with your network of people. That might mean posting on Facebook or responding to the family listserv or picking up the phone. That might mean being prepared to have real conversations with your relatives when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner.
I know that in California especially there is a tendency to want to mentally separate yourselves from the rest of the nation. I know that amongst white liberal Californians this tendency is especially strong. I am not going to lie: I certainly fantasized about moving back west this week. Or leaving the country. (And of course, if at some point because of the work I do I do need to leave the country, I will.) But, for now at least, I do not believe that this is the time to turn away from our countrymen and our democracy. Something that is very clear to me about this election result is that white people elected Trump. Liberal white people, I believe, have a particular responsibility to do all we can to fight. We are privileged and we can no longer afford to be complacent. It may be easier, as a white person, to stay quiet during times like these but our silence is not innocent.
There is not a day I am alive that I do not miss Muir Beach. I miss the air, the taste of it when you crest the hill. This week I bought a bouquet of eucalyptus branches and put them on my table. I set them beside an abalone shell that I’ve carried with me as I’ve lived in Providence and Iowa City and now Brooklyn.
Thank you for reading this letter. I send you love and strength during the times to come.
Take care,
Sandra Allen
p.s. I have a weekly newsletter you can sign up for if you like: tinyletter.com/sundaycontent.
