“They call them huddles, Vicki, not meetings,” my sister Annabelle said over the phone.
She was telling me about her weekend event with the L.A. Indivisible group that is organizing against Trump, and she was revved. This is my sister who was by my side in the ’60’s.
She was a hippie artist with a long skirt, long hair, her baby girl cocked on her hip. We marched in New York, Washington and Chicago, and ran from the cops when we needed to — our substitute on weekends for football games. When Nixon invaded Cambodia I moved to San Francisco to join an urban commune. We didn’t know anyone then who voted for Nixon.
Now, I don’t know anyone who voted for Donald Trump. So even though there are more of us, a terrible conservative darkness is settling over the country.
It’s only been within the last month that it really sank in that Trump is really in the White House. During and after the election, I was in Nepal hiking in the high mountains on a 50-year reunion with Peace Corps friends with no cell phone and no internet.
Then Christmas, the ice storms here in Eugene and a writing project kept my soul occupied until February, when it hit me hard.
As more about Trump emerges — the $60 million in free money he made from a property sale in Florida to a Russian oligarch, the reality of his cabinet appointees — crony capitalism, incompetents, maybe crooks, along with the swamp dwellers themselves, and his endorsement of deportation, gutting EPA and the State Department. I am pretty blue.
I love our legislators from Eugene and Oregon. They are strong, outspoken and brave leaders of the opposition. But they are, in fact, the opposition, not the majority.
How can our state legislators hold back the tide of corruption, racism, misogyny and the bully pulpit that our “bully in chief” holds?
My first thought was that I should do whatever I can to see that Trump is impeached. Or that Article 4 of the 25th Amendment is used where half the Cabinet members to say he is incapable of doing the job, and if he objects, throw it to the House and Senate for a 2/3rds vote.
We know half the R’s think he’s impossible.
But the voice in my mind says, then Pence would be president and he would sign every awful bill the R’s could send him.
As the R’s in Congress continue to vote for Trump appointees no matter how dreadful and approve Trump’s agenda no matter how despicable, the grim reality hits me. We Dems are out of national political power. Completely and absolutely. Trump is our problem, but the Republicans are the only ones with the legal power to oust him.
We Dems have to take care of our own house. We may be out of power legally, but we have the majority in the country. We have the voice and the people. I need to lend my energy to those who support that agenda. So who is that? What can I do? What should I do?
After I talk to my sister, I go to the Indivisible website. I love it. I search for Indivisible Eugene. I find it. I log on to my Facebook account. I ask to join the Indivisible Eugene Facebook group. They accept me four hours later.
“Vicki,” my L.A. sister had said, “you don’t have to solve the whole problem yourself. Join a group. We will win.”