Is It Working?
When do we see the change?
March 11, 2025
Dear Friends,
I’ve heard from some friends lately asking what they can do and bemoaning the fact that what we are doing must not be working. Respectfully, I disagree. We must continue to:
1. Call our reps once a week.
2. Attend peaceful protests.
3. Speak out—to friends, family, and strangers.
4. Take care of ourselves. Guard our mental health and well-being.
Repeat and repeat.
This is what we can do, and we need to do it. If you are doing all this, it’s time to keep going. If you’re tempted to feel that it’s not enough or not working? Oh, but it is.
Do you feel the rising anger across this country and around this world? I do. It’s palpable. I see it on the faces of women marching in Paris with American flags and Nazi swastikas printed on their bare chests. I see it on the protest signs waving in Astoria, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee, and Washington D.C. I see American and Ukrainian flags flying, some upside down, in the patriot’s lament for an upside-down democracy that is permitting unprecedented levels of corruption and naked greed.
I see it on the faces of Canadians, assembled in the streets of Montreal in front of the U.S. Embassy as they say in French: Canada will NEVER be a U.S. state. I see it in unrivaled civic engagement, in overflowing townhalls for lawmakers, in the people assembled outside addressing hundreds of people who cannot gain entry. I see it on the face of brave patriots like Mahmoud Khalil, who face arrest bravely, trusting that the courts will hold, that democracy still may triumph.
I see it in the fear and irritation among those who voted for him, who offer their flimsy excuses for aligning us with Russia, for slashing the jobs of faithful government employees, for threatening to privatize key elements of government so they can hand out padded contracts benefitting themselves and their millionaire cronies.
This is what a rising tide feels like, swelling beneath us with the power of a rising massive moon, lit from within and fully luminous. This is what righteous indignation feels like—“Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men [and women]?”
I do. I do.
My friends, massive organizations like governments change slowly and this is by design. We don’t actually want them to swing back and forth like a pendulum with every passing political fad. This is why the designers of our constitution made massive changes so difficult—they wanted gridlock and conflict. They wanted messiness because this would force consensus and coalition building. They wanted the exact opposite of what we’ve seen the last few weeks, which has been unprecedented executive overreach, intended to move as wildly as the mood swings of our current menopausal President. Our movement is still working within the system and this is why it appears to be slow from the outside.
And the reason why is because at this point, the courts are still holding. On the whole, the courts are ruling against their illegal and unconstitutional actions, blocking them and hampering them, pushing back and reining them in. As long as they do this, our job is to keep applying pressure. Keep getting into good trouble. Keep letting our elected officials know how much we care.
Some day in the future, the time may come for more extreme actions, but as long as the courts hold, our job is to hold with them and continue to engage in legal acts of civil disobedience in the great and long tradition of social reform movements that has always existed in our beautiful country.
Keep the faith. Get out on those streets. Make your voice heard and rest when you need to. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers waited seventy years or longer to earn the right to vote in these United States of America. Tap into their strength and honor their legacy as you hunker down and kindle the light of solidarity in the midst of this raging storm.
Love,
Marianne
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