Not a wave, not everything I wanted, but a check and possibility a balance and a call to accountability by at least one house of Congress. Possibilities that did not exist yesterday. It is politics and you never get everything you want. In 2016, there was nothing for me. Today, Julia is over joyed that Scott Walker is out—8 years, or is it 28, of union busting, gutting Wisconsin schools and selling the state to the highest bidder could possibly stop. It saddens me to see how much of the country is still red in the worst way. Not the conservatives of my youth (that I did not agree with but respected) but a racist, misogynist, white national basket of deplorables with leaders ready to lie and manipulate almost without reason and certainly for political expediency. Still, the deplorables and their leaders have ushered in a wave of opposition that has been depressed and despondent since 2016 and uninvolved for a good long time. Women and people of color have stepped up and I believe that they are here to stay. Brava! Bravo! Walking outside this morning, I felt Madison breath a sigh of relief—shoulders look a bit lower, music sounds a bit more vibrant, the cold air feels a bit cleaner. There is tittering in the coffee shop this morning and a shit-eating grin on my face.
Now to work.
State of my world:
I began this two days ago and wrote more in the morning, the day after Judge Kavanaugh complained the his “family and [] name have been totally and permanently destroyed.” He also said what goes around, comes around.
Yesterday, on the month anniversary of the massacre by a 19-year old using a semi-automatic style weapon at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead and 14 injured, students all over the United States walked out of class to protest gun violence and to demand action by their lawmakers. These clear, young eyes see the NRA’s emasculation of the GOP, the party which controls all three branches of our federal government and 33 state houses across the USA. They see that the best the GOP president can do is host a roundtable discussion about violent video games after the NRA made him walk back his gun control comments. I’ve heard and read “grown-ups” criticizing students for meddling in issues they do not understand and insinuating that the protesters only wanted to get out of classes, but possibly those “grown-ups” know a very different kind of student than I know. I applaud the students who organized demonstrations of all sorts yesterday and who intend to demand more from the rest of us to end gun violence with gun control. 
