If you blow up the photo below you will see a letter written to me from the late Congressman John Lewis from 2008. If you look in the lower right corner of this photo you will see a photo insert of a red file folder about an inch thick. These are all the letters I have received from my representatives over about 4 decades. This was when you received their responses via snail mail.
Letter from Congressman John Lewis and File folder of letters
These days, your representatives respond to you by email. I urge you to call them, contact them, and then print their email responses.
I miss my phone and letter debates with the late John Lewis. I still remember one of our debates that descended into a full fledged argument in a grocery store parking lot in our town of Atlanta. That’s the beauty of being in Atlanta. Many of your elected officials live and shop where you do. So, you can give them your opinion while you check out your groceries.
I bring this scenario up because there is something very different when you receive a physical letter as opposed to an email. The letter has a real signature. Each one of these letters are a personal piece of history. Politics today is quite impersonal—and it is messing everyone up.
We are now confronted with politics as only spectacle—the pithy quote on social media, the doctored video that creates a sense of urgency when there is no need for urgency, or the edited video that creates a fictional persona instead of showing the real person behind the title.
I’m glad Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are hitting the road and going on tour to talk to people all across the United States to find out what real people are thinking.
Communication from a distance is fine. Technology has made it possible for us to share an idea with thousands of strangers. Yet…
No matter how easy posting on social media, text messaging and sending emails are, there is no replacement for speaking to someone face-to-face or listening to a live voice or reading a real letter with a real signature. That personal touch is sorely lacking in both the Democratic and Republican Parties, and it is destroying democracy with almost the same degree of swiftness as Felon 47’s cruel policies.
It is one thing to put your finger up in the wind and assume what you need to do to be re-elected. It is quite another to look a constituent in the eye and answer a tough question or admit you don’t have the answers. Democratic voters are starving for that attention; and I pray our elected officials figure this out before it is too late.
I remember back when Arthur Herman Bremer shot former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. Wallace ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had been an avowed segregationist for most of his life.
He became a humanitarian after he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. To his credit, he did assist Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm with passing legislation that aided workers and farmers. Their alliance, brought on by his tragedy, was unique in the annals of American political history.
Wallace assumed he was invincible. Yet, no matter how much power you have or think you have, you cannot hold that power forever.
No matter how many times you kiss the ring of those in power, and swallow your pride and principles for the approval of those in power, you too will eventually be sacrificed with neither your dignity nor principles to hold your legacy together.
The Muskrat and Felon 47 will die, just like all of us will. History will record them as monsters because that is exactly what they are. The politicians who shy away from questioning the rationale of their policies will be recorded as the cowards they are.
Shutterstock photo of depressed man/New Africa
As activist Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” In the end when the folks upon whose altar you have sacrificed all of your principles are done with you, you will be no more than the rest of us. All you will ever be is mortal.
Power does not transfer to the grave. Your progeny will live long enough after your death to be vilified and hated while struggling to figure out what it is that they have done. History will answer them the same way it has answered all others in perpetuity, “Your crime is your having been born unto monsters.”
I’m delighted that folks have decided not to shop on February 28th as an act of solidarity to demonstrate to businesses what our buying power means. It’s a great beginning, but to have real impact boycotts need to last for months or years.
Let me share the following. The image on the left is the now boarded up storefront of what was Buzz Coffee and Winehouse in my hometown Atlanta. The image on the right is from a few years ago. It’s myself and my brother-from-another-mother, actor, writer, poet, cultural curator, and James Baldwin expert Charles Reese. We took this photo sitting at Buzz’s tables on the sidewalk drinking hot coffee out of big mugs.
Buzz was a neighborhood hangout where you might get to view a photo or art exhibit. You might stop by for a breakfast sandwich or piece of pastry. You ran into people you knew and you met people you didn’t know but soon found out the trip was worth it in order to meet them.
Buzz closed a few years ago because the money-grubbing c*nt that owned this little strip of property where Buzz was located raised the rent until the owner of Buzz could no longer afford to stay open. The owner has vowed to reopen somewhere, but so far I haven’t seen any signs of a new location.
Now, there’s a Starbucks about a mile down the street further southwest. I have nothing against Starbucks or people who enjoy Starbucks coffee. Yet, I won’t be going there to get a cup of coffee, just like I won’t be buying Folgers that supports Project 2025.
I only suggest this. When you’re keeping your money in your pocket, take a good hard look at the small businesses in your neighborhood and ask yourself how you can help them? Ask yourself what products can you do without permanently? Then just do it.
This essay is specifically directed to cisgender women. I have heard all of the debates about that term “cisgender.” For the record, I am a Black cisgender woman which means I was assigned the biological designation of “female” at birth and identify as a woman.
I am not a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I am a feminist who welcomes anyone, cisgender or transgender, who identifies as a woman and who is trying to help us women out. I welcome the guys too. The more inclusive you are, the more you learn.
Too often, we cisgender women assume that transgender women’s problems and issues (i.e. access to healthcare, safe housing, safety from violence, the ability to play sports, and etcetera) have nothing to do with us. We could not be more wrong.
What caught my attention in her essay was her analysis of Felon 47’s Executive Order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” I know that’s a mouthful.
The order is designed to make trans women disappear by virtue of eliminating any accurate human definition or category for them. You’re either male or female which is biological fiction. This leaves intersex individuals in the lurch. I encourage you to do your own research about intersex individuals and also research what hormone therapy does to and for a transgender woman’s body.
When you consider that less than 1 percent of the US population is transgender; along with the fact that only 10 transgender athletes currently play on the collegiate level, you should know by now that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to meet a transgender person in your lifetime. You may meet them, but you may never know they are transgender.
The Executive Order says virtually nothing about transgender men. Trans men are ignored because the point of the order is to restrict and control all women’s reproductive choices.
Rosa pointed out that the language in this executive order establishes that a person is formed at the moment of conception. The order insists that anything blocking or interfering with the process of reproductionis against this order. In other words, she argued that this anti-transgender order can just as easily be used as an anti-abortion and an anti-birth control directive against cis women.
Individuals who seek to control the reproduction of cisgender women use people’s biased and misinformed opinions about transgender women as litmus tests before they place restrictions on cisgender women.
Felon 47 and Republicans have used transgender women as their political football for years now. They are obsessed with cis and trans women’s bodies. Yet, this obsession begs the question: Exactly how do they (or you) know whether a woman is transgender or cisgender?
I have had transgender friends and students, but I did not always know they were transgender until they told me. I have also met many cisgender women who looked like men to me. So I stopped making any assumptions about gender based solely on appearances over 30 years ago.
Right wing nuts will eventually insist that there is only one way to absolutely determine whether a woman is trans or cis; that proof will most certainly require that their genitalia be examined.
So, are we prepared for our little cisgender, but tom boyish, daughters to have to drop their panties for anyone who demands it? Are any of you willing to expose yourself on demand? Do these kooks in the Republican Party really think they will easily get away with this?
Republicans, Felon 47, and huge numbers of White Christian Nationalist wackos want cisgender women to believe that transgender women are their enemies, or worse, that trans women are actually men just waiting to sexually assault you when you use a public toilet. I urge you to research what happens to the penis of a biological male transitioning to female.
It is these hyper-masculine Republican kooks who are the ones that cis and trans women need to be afraid of. Let’s face it, anyone obsessed with another person’s genitalia is up to no good. Anyone obsessed with controlling a woman’s reproductive organs has an agenda.
The hard truth is people classifiable as “white” are disappearing. The world has always been majority people of color. Right now, however, the average ages of peoples in countries in Southeast Asia and in Africa range from 20 to 30 years of age. The average age of a European is 44 years old with one of the lowest birth rates in the world.
The negative reactions to transgender women, birth control and abortion are not anchored in any religious beliefs coming from the political and religious Right. They don’t give a damn about cisgender or transgender women of color. They only care about whether white cisgender women reproduce babies. Trans women are seen as not reproducing babies, but that’s not always true.
Let me paint another scenario. Imagine you are a cisgender woman or girl who, by ordinance of Felon 47, has to be either physically inspected by some government-appointed matron or carry some card verifying that you are a cisgender woman before you are allowed to enter a women’s public restroom to simply urinate.
Imagine the requirements for receiving a gender identity card are achieved by having your DNA, your genitalia, and your hormones tested. God forbid you are a cisgender woman whose body naturally produces high levels of testosterone. Two cisgender women athletes were disqualified from competition at the Olympics because their bodies naturally produced more testosterone than the Olympics deemed acceptable. And that’s the problem.
Felon 47 and his henchmen (and women) not only want to invalidate the identities and lived experiences of trans women, they want to create a single standard for who and what a cisgender woman is when there is no one-size-fits-all definition of what a woman is. Women come in a variety of shapes and sizes with bodies that generate different levels of hormones that vary throughout the year, and vary from one woman to the next.
What’s next? Do they throw menopausal cisgender women under the bus because they no longer have the capacity to reproduce or because their hormone levels have certainly dropped since they were in their childbearing years?
Are cisgender women slowly losing the right to determine our own gender identities without the interference of men in power who don’t have a clue what being a woman means to each woman individually? Do we cisgender women attempt to deny gender dysphoria (look it up) as a real condition in some vainglorious attempt to deny womanhood to transgender women who we don’t always understand?
We lose nothing by protecting the rights of transgender women. But we could lose everything ignoring our connections to trans women and the policies that affect their health and well-being, and ours.
I’m a historian. We rarely write about anything until some time has passed. What I have written below is speculation right now. I have some serious questions as these two events have played out (or rather, not played out much) in the media:
Do you remember when Felon 47 was at a rally back in July of 2024, and there was an attempt on his life by a 20-year old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks? Remember that?
Crooks shot and killed a supporter in the crowd, injured two people in the crowd, then hit Felon 47 on the ear. I don’t know about you, but the shot that grazed Felon 47’s ear seems suspicious. A bullet aimed at an ear is likely to lodge into the side of someone’s head. Then Crooks was killed. It is now 2025 and there is still no known motive.
Then remember Ryan Wesley Routh, a man in his late fifties, who tried to take a shot at Felon 47 while he was playing on a golf course at Tr*mp International Golf Club in September 2024? The Secret Service shot at least four rounds at Routh who was hiding in the shrubbery with an SKS-styled rifle. Routh survived and was charged with an assassination attempt.
Thomas Matthew Crooks (L); Ryan Wesley Routh (R).
The last actual assassination of a president occurred in November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald. Later a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as he was being transferred to the county jail. Oswald was shot and killed on live television.
Later in 1981 John Hinckly, Jr. tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan as he was waiving to supporters. Reagan was seriously injured, but he survived.
I bring these events up because killing presidents and presidential candidates has always been extremely difficult. Yet, Felon 47 had two would-be assassins before he ever took office. Were these attempts dress rehearsals? We don’t know.
Here’s the deal. Felon 47 and his puppeteer Elon stay front and center on the news. They remain topics for perpetual discussion and debate.
Right now Felon 47 is all bluster with his threats to invade sovereign nations and put tariffs on everything he can think of while we speculate about the sinister things Elon is doing to our democracy behind the scenes. It is what we don’t see that we need to worry about.
If someone were to actually assassinate Felon 47 who would take his place in the White House? The most logical answer is his Vice-President J. D. Vance.
But we already know that the Republican Party is completely illogical right now; and the Democratic Party is still trying to behave as if they don’t know that the old political play book has been destroyed.
Crooks and Routh could very well be two isolated haters of Felon 47. Yet, both of these men got within striking distance of potentially assassinating Felon 47. Given the excessively high security surrounding presidents and presidential candidates, the real questions are how did these two men get past security and why did they attempt to assassinate Felon 47; and is something else on the agenda?
Leslye Joy Allen 