Shout Out


He’s ranting and raving and tweeting a storm
and making his hatefilled incitements the norm.
Complicit Republicans holding the reins
are holding their tongues too while counting their gains.
No need to revisit each trumpian word
their quiet subservience clearly occurred.
Where silence is deafening, people take note,
our loudest resistance is heard when we vote.

Quoting The American Prospect’s article entitled “Voter Registration is the Real Resistance“:

The 2018 midterm elections will test whether resistance to President Trump and anger over his policies can turn out enough progressive voters to buck both the orchestrated assault on voting rights and historic midterm election voting trends.


From partisan and illegal gerrymandering to onerous voter-ID laws to the absurd Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, the Trump administration and red-state lawmakers are working on many fronts to prevent and dissuade large numbers of eligible voters from exercising their most fundamental constitutional right. The target of these efforts—single women, millennials, and minorities—are the three groups of Americans most at risk of disenfranchisement and the most likely to support progressive causes and candidates—but only if robust registration efforts reach them.


Single women, millennials, and minorities—the Rising American Electorate (RAE)—make up nearly 59.2 percent of eligible voters. But these citizens don’t register to vote or turn out in proportion to their share of the population. In 2016, even though they accounted for nearly six in ten members of the vote-eligible population, the RAE made up a little more than half (52.6 percent) of the total electorate.

Continue reading …

He’s ranting and raving and tweeting a storm
and making his hatefilled incitements the norm.
Complicit Republicans holding the reins
are holding their tongues too while counting their gains.
No need to revisit each trumpian word
their quiet subservience clearly occurred.
Where silence is deafening, people take note,
our loudest resistance is heard when we vote.

cc 2018 Susan Eckenrode

 

Silence is Betrayal

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
The words of Doctor Martin Luther King
hang heavy in the air. Intentions fail
to halt the arc of hatred’s brutal swing.

The centuries of organized oppression
are coming to a climax. You and I
must take a stand for justice. Shy discretion
is not a virtue when the stakes are high.

As hard-won rights are carelessly dismantled
before our eyes, the growing battle zone
erupting in the streets cannot be handled
with slacktivism. None should march alone.

Resisting with a vengeance, beat the drum
and shout in unison, “The time has come!”

===
Mary Boren, 6/28/17