Where is the Responsibility?

Testing...Take 2! 🎬

Let's try that one again! 📣

Happy New Year! Doesn't January 1 feel like a lifetime ago? 2025 was definitely the world shaking year it promised it would be!

The year felt like a blur and a painstaking long 345 days of fascism.

While fascism has been filled with surprises, 2025 was mostly predictable. Why? Because the fascist wrote a detailed report ala Mckinsey, the global consulting firm, about how they planned to take control of the government and bring back the conditions that founded this country: slavery and genocide.

Their Project 2025 playbook was so detailed that they were able to accomplish so much. The regime was a smashing success in their first year! By October, they had completed half of Project 2025. They're even already at work with their next playbook. Oh goodie! Something to look forward to.

But I don't want to talk about the fascists today. Instead, I want to address the people of 2025. Many people didn't see Trump 2.0 coming and spent their 2025 shocked, which can be baffling given the aforementioned playbook. So what gives?

While Minnesotans are putting their lives and city on the line to fight ICE, we see a lot of online outrage, but a lot of business as usual. There's a lot of finger pointing about who's responsible for this mess. As if figuring out the "real" culprits will stop fascism. Sadly, many jump to blame & shame.

"Those [insert ableist comment] [insert marginalized identity] didn't vote right!"

It's convenient.

Blame the other and then move on.

But where is the responsibility in that?

If it's those people's faults, then it's not mine. I can still be "good" without the responsibility. (referenced in today’s poem) We'll be passing the potato of blame for eternity leaving the fascists to run wild on their dreams for this world.

We've Lost Our Responsibility.

The simple truth is most people didn't do the work to stop Donald Trump from being elected President.

Admitting the truth leads to actions.

We can't build mass movements of siloed, resentful people. That's the MAGA way. The way to liberation is liberation.

But liberation requires complexity.

The media, Big Tech, elite capture, and white supremacist capitalist patriarchy have been working overtime to divide us. They work to numb us. To get us parroting their game.

Why are the loudest people online still blaming poor, rural white families for voting MAGA when they didn't phonebank, didn't canvass, didn't even share voting information to their millions of followers?

And yet, it's a poor family ravaged by a hurricane in North Carolina's fault?

Where is the responsibility?

This attitude trickles down to everyone. It's someone else's responsibility. Won't the dead ghost of JFK just come and fix it all?!

It's almost as if the left has bought into the right-wing talking points, which says "oh you are so weak. Don't you need a strong man to save you?"

Many people are answering the call, "Yes, when will someone come save ME"

But that's just a story....

And you know how I feel about stories.

It has been THE story for hundreds of years. Society needs a strong white man to steer the ship and maintain order. But the world is changing and so are we.

2025 was the year the Old World backlash was loudest, but that's what it is. A backlash to the New World, where the chains of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy are finally stories in a history book.

Sometimes we need darkness to show us to the light.

We have a choice about 2026. We can choose to act & build or blame & divide.

2026 is the year we reclaim our collective power. A Muslim man is the mayor of New York City. The billionaires are shaking in their boots.

Their greatest fear is that we take back our agency.

After "the President of the Free World" invaded and kidnapped another world leader. I saw many calls of "what do we do now?!"

We organize. We create. We boycott. We protect our neighbors. We live. We LOVE. We connect.

It is that simple.

Is it that simple?

After the election, I was sitting at dinner with Boomers who had done all the voter outreach work in 2024. They were fearful and didn't know what to tell their loved ones. They were used to having answers.

I told them, as a two spirit queer kid, the answer is connection. It is community.

They looked at me skeptically, "it can't be that simple."

And I said, "Oh but it can! Have you ever had a life changing conversation with a stranger? Have you ever let your walls down with a friend and they loved you even more for it? Have you ever felt the humming in the room of a group of organizers creating together?

I experience it every day. Every day. I see it in the decolonized spaces that reach for humility and respect to build trust and love. Talking to strangers in the streets. In intentional gatherings and workshops, people's eyes light up. Not everyone has the words, but they know the feeling. That good feeling in your body that many of us have lost. (Join us next Thursday)

The solutions are here. We just need to pick them up together.

The fascists greatest nightmare is us.

They're funneling billions to stop us.

Honestly, I'm flattered!

2025 felt like the hazy period after a crisis. Too many people were waiting for the ambulances to show up when we really need to make our own tourniquet.

Mamdani's campaign proved we can do that globally. The people won in the billionaire's backyard, because they did it together. This year, let's all make a resolution to take back our agency and build a better world together. We just got to get to the roots for the real change to happen. (see what I did there?)

Alright, quiet on set.

Take 2....And Action!