Seeking comfort by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I went to a community meeting yesterday morning. Sixty people in a church social hall. We were given a sheet with chants when we came in and, every now and then, we were cheer-led and raised our voices loud. The three government officials who had been invited and who we had been encouraged to greet with our loud cheers, never showed up. Our Democratic US Rep sent a proxy in a blue button-down shirt who read a letter assuring us he would keep up the good fight. Our State Senator (Republican) and our Assembly Member (Democratic) hadn’t even responded to the invitation from the community organizing groups, Community Voices Heard and Citizen Action, that put on the event. The empty chairs with their pictures on them were booed. It was not deeply satisfying but it was something.

I texted a friend when I got home. “Sixty people in a church social hall vs the juggernaut,” I wrote. “Feeling kinda sad.” “Sixty people in a million churches,” he wrote back, “may have an effect.”

All the people I read and respect, mostly on Substack, keep telling me, with guarded optimism, that this is how the change we so desperately need will come: from the bottom up. I sure hope so. God knows that, for the most part, it’s not coming from the top down, though there are some politicos who get it and are doing great work. (Gavin Newsom is not one of them; as another friend said in response to Newsom’s comments about transgender athletes, “He is dead to me.”)

• At the confirmation hearing on Tuesday of Christopher Landau, nominee to be Deputy Secretary of State, and Matthew Whitaker, nominee to be U.S. ambassador to NATO, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) asked: “Is President Trump a Russian asset?” (Read Closer to the Edge for a clever and incisive breakdown of how that went.)
• You may have seen pictures of Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) standing to the side of Trump as he entered the Chamber before his speech on Tuesday. She is holding a small sign that reads: “This is NOT normal.” You didn’t see the sign during the speech. That’s because it was snatched out of her hands a minute later by Rep Lance Gooden (R-TX). This was shortly before Trump boasted (what else) that he has “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.” When she appeared on CNN on Wednesday, Stansbury said, “I’ll just say that my sign was an SOS to the world.”
• On Wednesday, Boston mayor Michelle Wu and other mayors testified during a ‘sanctuary city’ hearing before the House Oversight Committee. “The false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals, or immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm that is actually what is undermining safety in our communities,” Mayor Wu said. “If you want to make us safe, pass gun reforms, stop cutting Medicaid, stop cutting cancer research, stop cutting funds for veterans.”
• Hours after being censured on Thursday, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) gave a speech on the House floor. “Mr. Speaker, and still I rise,” Green began, “and still I rise a proud, liberated Democrat, unbought, unbossed and unafraid…I am not in any way upset with the Speaker,” he said, before expressing his appreciation for the officers who escorted him out. “They were very kind to me, the officers… I did disrupt,” he went on, “and I did so because the president indicated he had a mandate and I wanted him to know that he didn’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid.” Meanwhile, it’s apparently fine for the president to refer to a sitting senator as ‘Pocahontas’ during his speech. I don’t hear anyone suggesting he get censured for incivility.
• Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is on the second leg of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of red states. This weekend, he spoke to huge crowds in Altoona WI and Warren, MI. Last weekend, he spoke, also to huge crowds, in Omaha, NE and Iowa City, IA. According to Newsweek, videos of his rallies are “taking off online.”

I think I gathered all this to comfort myself. I don’t want to fall into despair. I need to know that there are courageous people, politicians and not, stepping up to meet the moment. At the same time, I can’t ignore the disgraceful things that are happening every day. Lauren Boebert referred to Al Green’s cane as his “pimp’s cane.” Mike Johnson is being pushed to censure the Democrats who joined Rep. Green in the House well and sang “We Shall Overcome.” Trump is being pushed to pardon Derek Chauvin for the federal charges. Musk said on X that “this is something to think about.”

Things are going to get worse before they get better. The cruelty of the current regime has only just begun. The “othering” has only just begun. Because of my family’s Holocaust history, I have a bone-deep knowledge of how bad things can get. It’s no wonder I am doing what I can to find some comfort.