To the anti-protest segment of my Facebook feed: why u so mad?
Why are you furious that people are vocalizing their anger at the inhumane, unconstitutional, and ill-considered ban of refugees and those from certain Muslim countries (the ones that don’t have Trump business interests)? A ban that sent people who had already been extensively and exhaustively vetted away from their families, their jobs, their educations to face uncertain (and in many cases horrifying) futures in countries they could no longer call home. Our country was founded on the principle of acceptance and the promise of hope for those in need. Even if you can do the mental gymnastics it takes to justify this hideous act, why are you so mad that we’re mad about it? How do these protests negatively impact you and your life?
Why does it make you angry when millions of people peacefully march for a woman’s right to adequate healthcare, control of our reproductive freedom, and equal pay for equal work? An astonishing number of you seem shockingly unaware of how richly you’ve benefited from the work of people marching and those who marched before them. Again though, remind me, how is this protest is negatively affecting you or your life?
Why does Black Lives Matter make you angry? Why do you post that no, Blue Lives Matter, as though they cancel each other out, and sputter furiously about a football player’s peaceful protest because he should just be thankful for his fortune? Why do you think that speaking out and marching against the deaths of innocent black men, women, and children is somehow undermining the also-terrible deaths of police in the line of duty? Our laws and our common morals hold that murder is bad. You are right to be angry when police are killed, so why are we wrong to be angry when people of color are killed at a disproportionate rate by those whose job it is to protect all of us? But also, how are Black Lives Matter protests negatively affecting you or your life?
Why does it make you angry that a woman of considerable accomplishments used her public platform to decry the leader of the free world’s mockery of a person with a disability? Not mocking those with disabilities is the lowest possible hurdle of human decency and yet many of you chose instead to lambast the woman who correctly called out objectively grotesque behavior. Spectrum of common decency aside, though: how is Meryl Streep’s Oscar speech negatively affecting you or your life?
Why does it make you angry that people are protesting to protect (and in some states restore) the freedom of LGBTQ+ people to patronize your business, rent an apartment, have a job, and marry the person they love? How is this protest affecting your life? How are your queer neighbors with kids in your kid’s class negatively affecting your life?
Why does it make you angry that saying “Happy Holidays” has become commonplace? Your holiday is included under this innocuous umbrella but, more importantly, you have been and continue to be perfectly free to use the winter nicety of your choice. Here are some photos of Obama and his family and their enormous fucking Christmas tree. Here they are wishing everyone a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS. In what ways are people who say “happy holidays” negatively affecting your life?
Why does it make you angry when people protest the well-documented destruction of our environment? You live here and your great-great-grandkids might have been able to as well if you hadn’t chosen misplaced outrage over empirical facts. Again, for posterity: how are the pipeline protests negatively affecting your life?
Why does it make you angry when people march and fight for safer gun measures? Literally no democrat is or has ever been trying to take all of your guns away. Every piece of legislature is aimed specifically at preventing catastrophic and wholly avoidable deaths without infringing on your rights. If I was in the business of making reductive memes like the ones that you share, mine would say REPUBLICANS BELIEVE IN ARMING TERRORISTS AND WEAPONIZING TODDLERS. But most importantly, how is the fight to make gun ownership safer negatively affecting you or your life?
If you believe that abortion is wrong, don’t get one!
If you like guns, buy one! Buy two, even!
If you like posting racist memes on the internet, you’re free to do that! I am also free to judge you!
Some of you believe that inclusion and equality pose a threat to the American Way (whatever that actually means) and have voted and posted and tweeted and yelled to protect things that have never been in peril. And in doing so, you’re helping to create the exact scenario you rail against. Imagine your favored policies, tweaked a little bit:
Your children are banned from wearing crosses around their necks (or can’t for fear of physical and verbal attacks for which there will be limited or no recourse). Your brothers, wives, and children are harassed, detained, and killed for no reason other than their appearance and a society trained to be wary of them for it. Your vision of motherhood is shattered when legislation demands that you must remain child-free because it’s what one specific faith (let’s say Bahá’í, just for fun) has deemed right, regardless of what that means for you personally. You work at the same job for years, taking on extra projects and unpaid hours, only to be told that a different person who has contributed the same or less deserves a better title and more money than you. Your husband or wife loses his or her health insurance and the right to visit you in the hospital because your marriage contract is no longer valid. You will have to lie about the nature of your relationship to the people in your town for fear of threats and violence and loss of your job.
When you and others like you get angry about these indignities, attacks, and miscarriages of justice, you’re told to sit down and shut up. That you should be happy with what you have. That your less-than status is all you are entitled to in the land of liberty and justice for all.
This wild scenario is the reality for tens of millions of Americans, and yet there you are, telling us to shut up.
Some of you decry that the liberal agenda is being foisted upon you, that you aren’t truly free, yet it is you who has enabled what may prove to be the greatest imposition of a non-dominant ideology on the American people. When we fight and march, we do so also to protect your beliefs, your bodily autonomy, your freedom of expression, your freedom of faith, and your right to seek recourse when these things are taken from you. My right to carry a sign that says the GOP should get fucked is the same as your right to carry one calling abortion murder. My right to post this on the internet is the same as your right to post about what whiners we are.
However, your belief that yours should be the only beliefs now stands to significantly negatively impact our lives (and by ours I mean all of ours). In your misguided fight for freedoms that were never imperiled, you’ve helped to usher in a reality in which many of our freedoms (yes, yours too) are actually at risk. So before you post another eagle/flag/wonka with a block-font caption about how we should be quiet and be grateful and accepting of the new reality, consider that we’re yelling and fighting for you too.
But also, seriously, why are you so mad?
Looking to do your part? One way to get involved is to read the Indivisible Guide, which is written by former congressional staffers and is loaded with best practices for making Congress listen. Or follow this publication, connect with us on Twitter, and join us on Facebook.
