Get Angry and Get Busy

Here's a list of actions to take to get busy fighting back against this hostile takeover of our government, our rights, and our healthcare.

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After Republicans voted to take healthcare away from an estimated 12-16 million Americans so they can give ICE billions of dollars to terrorize people and give their oligarch buddies a tax break, it’s pretty easy to feel despair. Defeat. Demoralized.

But instead, get angry. If you’re angry already, get busy.

At the bottom of this post is a list of actions you can take right now.

Look at how the Right took a Supreme Court ruling on abortion that was “settled law” and played the long game to roll it back and actually take even more freedoms from women. One thing the Right doesn’t do is sit around feeling defeated.

They yell at their representatives, carry Don’t Tread on Me signs, and make sure their misery is felt by any who might even think of voting their conscience instead of voting to appease the too often violent, rabid base on the Right.

For years, progressives and liberals have been told that they need to be more polite, they need to get along to get along, they need to play civility politics better. They were told Occupy Wall Street protests weren’t being covered because they were so radical, yet the Tea Party got coverage for demanding that pre-existing conditions not covered via Obamacare.

Was carrying loaded assault weapons into town halls a better version of civility politics? Because the Tea Party did that when Obamacare was under debate. Lawmakers were threatened. One was tragically shot in an incident that killed several people. Is that civility politics?

What good are civility politics, really?

I ask this as someone who believed in civility politics. I was raised on civility. I was raised to believe that working hard and asking politely was the way. But that was before our country took a turn from which it has not recovered — perhaps it was the election of an erudite Black man who was superior on every front to the racists whose jealousy of Obama propelled one of them right into the White House.

Maybe it was when George W. Bush marched us into an invasion of another country based on a lie and the entire country was gaslit by the media and tastemakers to believe they had to support W and the war or else they weren’t patriots.

Maybe it was pardoning Richard Nixon.

Most assuredly the last blow to civility came when Republicans refused to do their duty to this country to convict Donald Trump on his impeachment for his deadly attack on this country.

Yet, they are never held accountable for this egregious assault on our country and the Capitol Police.

When an entire party has defaulted to defending a convicted felon no matter what he does, including attacking the United States of America, and the media treats those people like they are in a legitimate political party whose “side” is equal to the other “side, the country is already lost.

These events tell the story of how we got here. Maybe some in the Left owns a measure of complicity here as well, for playing purity politics and sitting out elections when they feel a candidate’s imperfections mean they can afford to sit home.

After all, those who decided they could not vote for Hillary Clinton gave us this Supreme Court that gave Trump immunity and the factions who loudly proclaimed that they would not vote for Kamala Harris (because of Gaza, because “socialism”, etc) are now being threatened with deportations and the situation in Gaza is even worse.

Are any of these people ever going to own up to the emotions behind the thinking that they had the right to actively seek the destruction of basic freedoms as punishment for not getting everything they wanted, thereby putting themselves in the position of power to ruin the lives of millions of people? It’s doubtful. So we need to leave them behind in the decaying dust of their own making.

We need to get busy with good trouble, one step at a time. Brick by brick we will insist on rebuilding this country, and just like conservatives did with Roe, we will push to get MORE than what was taken away. We will insist on it.

We need to be organized at the local level, starting today, running candidates in every single position there is. We need to get ruthless about grabbing power at every turn. We need to be loud when we disagree and loud when we agree. We need to take every ounce of this anger and despair and turn it into tangible action today.

We will not be shamed by gatekeepers looking down from their multi-million dollar salaries to lecture us about civility. We will get busy primarying every single Democrat who fails to do everything in their power to protect us, our democracy, this country, and the rule of law.

Here’s a list of things you can start doing today:

Here is a list of town halls where you can show up to make your voice heard.

Here is a list of organizing events over the summer.

Donate here to flip the Senate blue.

Here is a “highest priority” action link to help Georgia voters update their voter registration.

July 17 is Good Trouble Day. Join here “to Make Good Trouble Together & carry on John Lewis' legacy of fighting for justice & equality.”

Join a Free America peaceful and joyful protest here (lots going on almost every day.)

Volunteer from home with phone banking around the country with Reddit’s Vote Dem spreadsheet here.

Attend local Democratic meetings so you can have input into how things are being run and what candidates are getting help. (Yes, even if you’re sick about Democrats, in fact, especially if you’re sick of the whole establishment grift.)

Volunteer now to be an election protection worker here.

Please add your own thoughts below, and be sure to include ways people can take action. Remember, we turn anger into action and we refuse to give in to despair. We refuse to become what they want us to be. We are not broken, and we will not bow down.

How do you plan to turn anger into action? Share your thoughts in the comments below.