We're Still Here

Be here now.

Dear friends,

Sorry I haven't shown up in your inbox for a wee spell. My daughter has been visiting from Montreal this week, and I've taken the opportunity to 'be here now', in the moment, enjoying her sweet company, even while the chaos continues all around us. I've still managed to fire off a few fiery emails to various politicians (can't stop, won't stop!), but mainly I've been hanging with my daughter who lives too far away.

The night it all started, when it felt like the world was ending (but it didn't).

I can still feel the brutal gut punch that floored me the night of November 5th, 2024. I was watching the US elections with a couple other 'lefties', our moods sinking as each state declared their support for the felon-pedo-rapist. I have always managed to live in a bubble of like-minded people, so it was completely unfathomable to me that 70+ million voters could be so fucking gullible. That night, as it became clear exactly where things were headed, we switched off the TV, and I trudged home under a cloud of intense dread. The door to disaster had just been unlocked by 70+ million voters whom I still haven't forgiven (not to mention the millions who didn't even bother to cast a ballot). A very small majority of American voters had just unleashed the cruelty and chaos the entire world has faced every day over the past 16 months. It felt like the end of the world, and yet, we are still here.

Sixteen months later, we're still here to find moments of joy and connection in the minutiae of our daily lives. The orange menace and his fascist hench-people have wrought heartbreaking havoc on communities all across the planet, but they have not eradicated any of the demographics they've set their sights on. And while each day brings new horrors, they have not been able to overpower us. If anything, they've empowered us, brought us together, united in our determination to care for our friends, our neighbours, our communities, for each other.

When a gut punch becomes a kick in the butt.

From the moment he took office in January 2025, every day we have been hit with one new atrocity after another coming from the White House. Every day has been another brutal gut punch as we watch our democracy and decency seized by the idiot class. But what if these dark timea are less a time of death and more a time of rebirth? From the very start of this shitshow, more and more people have been coming to life, turning that gut punch into a kick in the butt, a call to join others in fighting for what and who we love.

When SCOTUS recently handed the Southern states Jim Crow 2.0, I was moved to tears seeing the rapid and powerful response of those whose rights are being denied, along with their allies. Nope. SCOTUS and the Tennessee legislature may have thought they were throwing us a punch in the guts, but it was a kick in the ass that got everyone on their feet and ready to fight back. SCOTUS thought they would help the racists remove the Southern black population from the democratic process, but they aren't going anywhere. They're still here and fighting for their rights.

I am in total awe of the citizens who keep showing up to protect their immigrant neighbours from the violence of ICE. In Minneapolis, in Chicago, in Portland, and now in Newark NJ, thousands of individuals have come together, risking their own safety to protect others. People are writing and calling their representatives, donating to support organizations, and basically not sitting back quietly while their neighbours are tortured behind bars in for-profit prisons (you can call The Geo Group who operate Delaney Hall and yell at them at 561-893-0101). Stephen Adolph Miller thought he'd make America white, but immigrants are the heartbeat of a nation and they aren't going anywhere. They're still here and we're fighting to protect their rights.

We're still here.

In August 1942, Harald Turner announced that Serbia was the only country in which the "Jewish question" was solved and that Belgrade was the "first city of a New Europe to be Judenfrei". In March 1947, Harald Turner was executed by hanging for his crimes (karma's a bitch). He thought he'd murdered all the Serbian Jews, yet here I am, the daughter of a surviving Serbian Jew and the mother of Jewish children. Buddy hung, we survived. We're still here.

Colonizers have spent centuries scheming to eradicate Indigenous people from the lands where they landed. Colonizers have spent centuries committing unspeakable crimes and doing untold damage to Indigenous people who never wanted to give up their lands and lives (and still don't). Too many colonizer governments and corporations continue to rape, pillage and plunder Indigenous lands and Indigenous people, but, throughout history, Indigenous people fought back, stood their ground, and refused to be disappeared. They are still here, still fighting for their lands, their waters, their rights.

And just don't get me started about the relentless attempts to disappear trans folk! What the haters don't understand is that, despite all the anti-trans rhetoric and rules and outright lies, trans folk have always existed and always will. Trans folk are still here. They are members of my family, my community, my world, and I am grateful for their existence.

Every attempt to silence media backfires.

Censorship is the name of the game when it comes to fascism, but this regime's attempts to control our access to truth has turned into a game of whack-a-mole, and I'm pretty sure the independent journalists are winning. I haven't watched 'The News' for years, and I am careful with how much I listen to it on CBC radio, as they've become more and more about rage-bait than the dissemination of actual information. But over this past year and some, I have become a dedicated follower of almost a dozen independent journalists/analysts. Despite the flagrant attempts to silence the media, it just keeps popping up in new forms. The truth-tellers are still here.

As you might expect, most of the independent media accounts are busy keeping us abreast of the never-ending chaos emanating from the White House, helping us make sense of the insanity. However, I recently took out a paid subscription to Canadian journalist Brandi Morin's Indigenous Insider and encourage others to do the same. Brandi is a powerful voice for Indigenous rights all up and down the Americas, and she is very vocal in calling out the Canadian government's and Canadian corporations' continued violation of these rights. I know the US government really wants to shine on the shitbag stage, but Canada can hold its own when it comes to fucking over Indigenous communities and the environment. Brandi brings our focus back to this side of the border, and she needs our support to do this important work.

You are here.

Fact: Shitty people do shitty things. They seize power. They destroy everything. They always have. They probably always will. And yet, throughout human history of shitty people doing shitty things, there have always been the resisters, those who refuse to succumb to an enshittified world full of violence and hatred, ugliness and oppression. And this is where we are now. Finding new and creative ways to grab our world out of the hands of psychopaths and idiots, and to reclaim our humanity, and maybe even make it better. As terrifying as this era is, history tells us that we can and will survive whatever they throw at us. We cannot ignore the tragic fact that far too many people have fallen victim to the cruelty, and many more are under threat, but we can try our best to turn this shit around.

Wherever you are, I hope you are spending time in the company of who and what you love. I hope you are able to push the overwhelm aside enough to understand that though it feels like we are living through a time of hatred and cruelty (we are), we are also living through a time of immense love and solidarity. I hope that you will remember every day that living our lives in a loving way is an act of resistance and, when this shitshow is over, we will still be here together.

Sending you love,

Jessica (she/her)