special early u.s. election prep edition of postcards

fucking yay!

96 hours out

Hi, this is a special early edition of postcards bc the U.S. presidential election is in four days. A friend posted recently being like, “So if Trump wins, what’s the plan? What are we doing guys? Does anyone know?” And to be real, no, I haven’t seen hardly anyone in the Left saying specifically “here’s what we’re worried about and here’s a plan to respond to it to keep our people alive.”

(However, before I go on, I just want to say that one place that IS talking about it and one resource you should check out about the election and fascism and strategic responses if you get nothing else from this newsletter, is Ejerie Labs’ Fascism Barometer. Ejeris Dixon is a long time (humble) genius, and this link will take you to the audio and transcript of episode 1, which has the clearest (Black, radical, working class, queer) analysis of the moment I’ve seen, as well as a lot of tools and resources I find helpful and accessible re the fascist playbook.)

ok continuing:

The lack of much discussion of “here’s what we’re going to do” from the Left(s) is I believe for a lot of reasons that maybe boil down to:

1. As Kelly Hayes pointed out last week, the modern U.S. left that has been boiling up radical demands for social change for the past 15 years, every idea we’ve put out there has been pushed back on very effectively in a relatively short period of time by the Right. And we don’t have an effective, scaled up counter strategy/ network(s)/plan, let alone a people’s army (armed or not) to fight the militias on the ground.

2. Honestly, while there’s certain scenarios that seem likely (Trump wins and things are fucked; Harris wins and Trumpers/ fasc activate their on the ground plan; it’s a toss up because of it being such a tight race plus massive election interference so the voting count/ decision is held up for days/ weeks and in the meantime Trumpers/ fasc go ham) my spidey sense also says that something completely different is coming. I don’t know what it is but I feel it.

Because of this, as much as I usually lean towards prep, it’s been hard to game out specific scenarios to prep for. More what I feel is the need to be awake, nimble, responsive not reactive. Much prep is less a go or stay bag (though having a bag with some food, money, meds and ID is always a good thing, whether you stay or go) but more mental preparedness to face emerging situations.

However one situation that seems likely is as follows: I lived in Washington state in 2020-2021 when the election and January 6 happened. Much of WA is thick with 3 Percenter, Proud Boy and militia shit, we dealt with those assholes running around beating people up and pulling bullshit for years. I don’t think this was well known at all outside of the state, but for a lot of 2020-21, Olympia, the state capital, was overrun with white militia assholes driving around in their trucks every day waving their American flags and guns and terrorizing everyone. Most of downtown got boarded up and it was like the war of the insurrectionist anarchists of Oly versus the Proud Boys. Eventually the assholes invaded the governor’s mansion, Inslee freaked out and it got put down, but in the meantime many people in Olympia lived every day being terrorized in a deliberate theater.

A friend of mine who lived in WA then and me talked this week and she had some good points around: we don’t know what’s going to happen but one likelihood is that we might see some of the above playbook (militia fascists showing up to local voting places, county Boards of Elections, etc) and just driving around stirring up shit to terrorize and destabilize folks, especially in swing states. Like, for example, PA where I live, where you have some big and medium predominantly Black and Latinx cities surrounded by rural areas that are majority white and Trump heavy with a historically high concentration of Klan. A state where everyone is getting 15 calls and texts a day because PA is one place that wins or loses federal elections.

Mark Lamont Hill was on Democracy Now on Wednesday stating that he didn’t think whatever bullshit happened would be one big January 6th attack focused on the capitol, it would be a lot of little January 6ths at local sites. Check out his interview and also Imara Jones on how fascists/MAGA are using anti-trans hate tacticly, both good reads/ listens.

The same friend was like, I’m telling people to prep like it’s early 2020 mixed with a tornado or hurricane: be in touch with your folks. Stash a little food, have cash on hand, have a plan with your closest neighbor or comrade. Fill up your tank, get extra meds, all to the degree that you can.  Think about who you would go be with or ask to come be with you if shit got hairy. Think about how to communicate if internet or electricity is attacked (something that fascists have done before and recently.) Preparation is anything around what you can control, in the face of what you can’t control.

I would add, mentally prep for some disturbing and triggering shit. Think about self and community defense which are big words for, in my world, I live in a city fasc are afraid of, and I know my neighbors ok and have friends within 4-5 city blocks who would check in with each other and be together. Consider deleting your Signal threads or places with sensitive info and have their paperwork packed into a go (or stay) bag

Another friend recently posted asking if people had a current movement home, or had ever had one, and if so what was it and what did it feel like. I answered that my current answer was “sort of” and was both really broad- disability and transformative justice old and new heads across North America who I am in contact with- and hyperlocal, ie my current extended friend network in Philly and about two hours away that checks in on each other. And, that I used to feel more of a broad anti-authoritarian/ revolutionary BIPOC left in my 20s and a broader QTBIPOC led radical cultural/ political formation from about 2005 on. The latter shattered because of differences in class, access and political and personal differences/fights, grief and COVID and total exhaustion, and choices and ability to access money and neoliberalism, or not.

Sometimes I miss that sense of a more scaled up, organized Left network. Mostly I understand the reasons why it broke. Sometimes I think, there’s a million tiny one person to a couple friends crews, and this way we are less easy to see or pick off.

Underground can look a lot of ways. A Philly friend said this city is full of a million people waiting (and already doing) to cook food, do work, blockade the block, throw down. Another friend said sex workers have all the skills to survive this, too bad you don’t listen to us.

In this astral time where I hang out by my altars with the spirits, I think as I often do of my grandma fleeing Singapore on the last boat out to SL during World War 2, fleeing the Japanese army invasion, as her home burned and she lost everything but two books of photographs. What does she teach me about surviving the utter loss of everything, and then living into what still comes after.

I think also about my feral inner 22 year old who ran away from the U.S. and their abusive family. About all the skills they had at surviving alone, building relationships and making money and medicine off grid. Surviving sometimes through prayer.

The crux I sit with was that when I moved away and hustled to get status in another country, it was in part because I had read the Parables and was like. I know what’s coming. 27 years later, I have held onto those prized and privileged dual papers, and I also have the prize and privilege of people I love here on this side of the fake border who I will not abandon to save myself. Like most of us. My therapist asked me, honest question, if I would want to live if everyone in one of my communities died. I told them I didn’t know. That that meme that was going around saying that Western psychology believes feelings are individual, anti colonial psych understands they are collective and inseparable from the group, the bigger. Some of the answers are, who I was before certain friends died died with them, I didn’t outlive them. Who I have regrown to be is different and valuable. And that I have lived because of spite, because of refusal to let my abusers take me out, because of a fist in the colonizer’s eye, becaue of pleasure, because of responsibility.

And yet, I don’t want to run and be like deuces, good luck, smell you later. I may have written about this before.

There is the feral of running, and the feral of staying in a thicket snarl quiet loud of unintelligible to those who don’t know how to read us. So many of us know the feral of running. Pick your fighter, maybe both, neither and other.

An addendum: everything I write is disabled. If you’re asking, where’s the disability in this, it’s everywhere - in the crazy Cassandra knowing of the coming thunder, in the self and inter/ trying not to be co-dependence, in the crip disaster prep that already always happens, pool electricity and how to keep insulin cool with dry ice and Zeer pots, and how disabled people in nursing homes, prisons, homes and psych wards are left to die but also resist that death.

Some resources and places that are actually talking about this shit with solutions and ideas:

Vision Change Win’s Election Safety Toolkit (free download)

Ejerie Lab’s Fascism Barometer podcast

These thinking and steps from Project South

Damian’s chats about election security from a radical tech worker perspective

Elliot Fukui’s Surviving the Apocalypse Together workbook and No Comrade Left Behind Go Bag ideas.

If you didn’ see it linked upthread, I still find #PowerToLive’s dis survival resource list to be a handy source of info about generators, electricity, and other survival needs.

I’ll close with a long Kelly Hayes block quote:

What does it look like to emerge from this moment? What is the path out of this horrid interregnum? The answer is not as sexy or immediately redemptive as anyone would like. A left in disarray, that is completely disconnected from the fundamentals of building power, a left that is steeped in alienation, is a left that has to get back to basics. While we must never abandon our transformative demands, we must recognize that there are no shortcuts in our immediate path. Our enemies are not on the brink of failure. This empire is not coming undone. There is a revolution slouching towards Bethlehem, but it is not ours.

Strutting in circles on digital runways can transform our politics into mere sideshows–signifying everything, yet producing nothing.

To build a different world, we will have to begin at the beginning. We will have to rebuild our skills, and in some cases, this will feel like relearning a forgotten language. However, that language still exists. The power of fellowship still exists. The ability to work across difference can be cultivated. Strategies can be devised and sharpened. The work of base building can be relearned and reenlivened. There will be openings and ruptures that bring new opportunities, but to meet those moments, we must develop skills, infrastructure and relationships that can propel transformative change….

We must recognize that our radicalism and our indignation will not carry the day…It is an uncertain path, but the path exists. We will need patience and humility to traverse it.

We have so much work to do while the world burns and heaves. The only promise I can make is that I will be here, doing that work alongside you. I am steeled by the firm belief that, come what may, possibility is worth fighting for. We, as human beings, and the creatures that surround us, are worth fighting for. You and yours are worth fighting for, and so is the world. Remember that during this terrible interregnum.

I too believe this, and I am in it, for better or worse or come what may.

Two notes:

Crips for E Sims for Gaza launched an Arabic translation and plain language edit of our how-to guide. Arabic translation by Alia Kassab here. Plain language edit is by Noemi Martinez Turull here. Both made possible by Design Justice Network’s Care Pod support. Oh we also have a website now!

And “queer, Black, neurodiverse nonbinary immigrant who loved spicy foods and the sound of Black people laughing” radical, book worker and curmudgeon Peta Pottinger died September 24, 2024. A fundraiser for funeral and memory costs is here. Peta was a friend, lover and co-worker at Modern Times Books, beloved and known to many. Thrown down some coin if you can.