Acts of Resistance

Healthy Opposition

11/26/2024

Photo by Linoleum Creative Collective on Unsplash

Resistance: A child's super-power

Parents understand resistance. Think about it, as your child develops from toddler to teen you face innumerable moments of opposition every single day.

It's time to put on your shoes.
Please put on your shoes.
Put .On. Your. Shoes.
Shoes, Now!

And, even then, you may find yourself carrying your shoe-free child to the car.

Our child's resistance is their super-power for developing healthy boundaries. How you respond to this opposition often defines your parenting style - but that's a topic for another post.

Opposition is healthy boundary building

A child's ability to exploit the weaknesses in our parenting, although challenging for parents, is essential to their healthy development - it is also incredibly healthy for a democracy.

What we know as parents about resistance can be used to develop a guiding paradigm in our political-lives:

Constant opposition wears the opponent down - it creates chinks in their power simply through exhaustion. When exhausted or overwhelmed by the opposition, power-holders may make mistakes or over-reach.
On the other hand our kiddos know that constantly testing the boundaries is a way to see what is solid and what is not. Political resistance reminds those in power that we know there are boundaries which must be maintained for a healthy democratic government- and we expect them to color within the lines.
While a toddler's opposition to anything may change moment by moment, anyone who has raised a teen knows they are capable of long-term, strategic opposition! Thus, in political resistance, we should take a note from a teen's playbook - take a long-term view of what must be done to reach your goals.
And, finally, any teen knows freaking their parents out about a less important issue is a reliably successful tactic to distract them from something far more important to the teen. So, actively curate your news - legacy media and most of the social media/blog-o-sphere make money by keeping people alarmed about current events. Don't get distracted from the important issues!

Resistance record-keeping

I continue to read and to write - again, reading and writing can be subversively resistant actions. For example, I am excited to borrow a copy of Tim Snyder's On Tyranny from my local library. (Wow. In a weird way I am impressed that all of the copies of Snyder's books in my county's library consortium are out and the hold queue is lengthy! - simply a good thing all the way round. Except maybe for my patience muscles...)
After writing a letter to my Congresswoman urging her to vote No on H.R.9495, I was disappointed the bill passed the House on November 21st. Now it's time to contact my Senators.
Vetting various reliable news sources continues. A family member recommended Democracynow.org, but said, "It is very progressive and independent weekday morning news, a lot of international and environmental justice news, and well done. It tends, therefore, to be depressing a fair amount of the time." Don't be afraid of reading sources that can leave you upset, but avoid anything which is sensational.

I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and that you are figuring out how you can stand in opposition to injustice.

You never know what a Nonna can do to affect change when her children and grandchildren’s futures are on the line.
Nonna
0 Comments

0 Comments

And So It Begins

11/12/2024

0 Comments

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Tuesdays' Acts of Resistance

I saw the most inexplicable post yesterday about manstraution - not a typo. Once I actually paid attention and attempted to figure out what was going on, I thought “oh, yeah” this is how resistance begins!

FLO is the “number 1” period tracker used around the world. Now it is quite a large database with 380,000,000+ users tracking their menstruation, fertility and pregnancies - the health information an individual can put on the app is stunning. A few posts were suggesting men track their own “manstruations” with as much chaotic information as possible. When I figured out what this could mean, I enjoyed a lovely belly laugh at the brilliant subversiveness of such a simple act of resistance. I'm sure it's a joke, but still...

And it got me to thinking - we need to record and share with one another what we do to resist when the government moves to take away our rights. Thus, Tuesday Acts of Resistance is born.

Since the Election, I Have ...

Picked up my computer and, after a hiatus, have started once again to write encouragement for parents - writing is an act of resistance. Writing is successful if even a single parent is inspired or can use anything I write to make their lives better. If our government and employers do not actively support parents with meaningful policies, then the rest of us must do so. It’s really that simple.
Written a letter to my House Representative to urge a no vote on the H.R. 9495 “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. I am not opposed to waiving IRS tax penalties for American held hostages. But, I am opposed to granting the executive branch more unilateral and easily abused powers to identify individuals, businesses, and not-for-profits as supporting terrorists without the due process of law.
Vetted different organizations and non-profits to see where to give my time and money. My issues are climate change and human rights.
Stopped reading mainstream/legacy media as news sources - the normalizing of electing a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and one who fomented an insurrection to stay in power while at the same time focusing on why or how the Democratic Party is elitist and that is why Harris lost is morally repugnant and intellectually specious at best. The nicest epithet is “hogwash.” I am currently vetting Reuters and APNews, as well as a number of smaller online sources for news about the climate, as well as human rights. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Taken the first step towards untangling myself from Amazon by cancelling my Kindle subscription. It will take time to move my online purchases to local, in-person purchases, but my goal is to complete this transition by the end of January. An additional note about the use of Libby for reading library books - it is unfortunate, but the equity firm KKR owns Libby/Overdrive, Kanopy, Sora and Teaching.net. Switching from supporting one billionaire to another set of billionaires defeats my purpose in this act of resistance, so I’m still on the lookout for other digital sources. But who doesn’t love the feel of a physical book in hand! Right?
Stepped up to learn a new digital platform - Substack - for sharing my thoughts; again, this is part of a plan to remove myself and my material from Facebook by the end of February. I do ask you to subscribe to this newsletter using the link below, but there will be no fee - raising children in this crazy world is expensive and encouragement from a grandparent should never cost you a dime.

I see all of these as significant personal acts of resistance and I am dedicated for even more resistance as it is needed..

You never know what a Nonna can do to affect change when her children and grandchildren’s futures are on the line.

Nonna

0 Comments