Stitch & Resist

Today we meet to work with our individual moral fibers (crochet, knit, crosstitch) in an effort to create community to build resistance for the current amoral political climate.

This is my “leftovers” gathered into one ball.  Once it gets to big for the basket I get to make a monster blanket.  I’m normally do a 100 row granny square, this time I’m going to do a different 100 row monstrosity. 

Why is this a glimmer?  Every time I look at the basket, I smile and get excited about the winter.  I should be able to work on it, stay warm and relive all the projects I’ve done.

I Protest

Last Saturday, January 31, I actually left my room, stood on a corner, held a sign, and protested. I didn’t get shot, I didn’t get arrested and nothing more than people flipping me off happened. My response to those disapproving souls was to blow them a kiss.

My sign read –

Stop the devils servants. Justice for Good and Pretti!

A little more religious than I would like, but if men can murder innocent people and either curse their victim or run away, what else can you call them.? The happy part was there were more honks than fingers and more than 175 people crowded on the corner in front of a business profiting handsomely from the current administrations shinanigans.

I won’t deny I was afraid. Even though we don’t have ICE en masse in our city, but like I said in Right of Way I live in a community with a large immigrant population. What has been interesting since the protest, and the subsequent meeting after to learning about our software ‘EveryAction’, I am not crocheting like a woman on a mission. I’m still crocheting, but there isn’t this “Dear God, make it stop!” kind of screaming in my head when I do it. Doing something about it, protesting and volunteering, has staunched the bleeding from that particular open wound. I am still trying to figure out work in this economy as an older person and I’m scheduled for eye surgery next month all the while watching the totals on my credit cards mount exponentially. As trivial as ‘not manically crocheting’ sounds, it’s a blessed start.

In the back of my head I still hear the evil pixy telling me my miniscule action don’t really mean anything. My boycotting stores, my protesting in a mostly red community, my help with the membership team for TRAC Indivisible…all of it. I am insignificant, I’m useless, and nothing more than a floating dust mote in the political arena. I ignore the little malicious sprite and remember: The Right likes to compare my political personality to a snowflake. A snowflake is a delicate ice crystal that will melt if it’s not cold enough or if it comes into contact with any kind of warmth to be absorbed and forgotten into the earth. However, when snowflakes stick together they can have the force of an avalanche whose influence will for miles.