Women’s March in LA, January 21, 2017

When my husband suggested we take our two daughters to the Women’s March in response to Trump’s presidency, I was reluctant. For one, I’m an intellectual snob. Nothing makes me cringe more than tattooed, outraged leftists who feel it’s okay to attack a single man—to make effigies of him (and his family!) surrounded by crude slogans about what he can do to their pussies. For another, it felt like a distraction. This is how democracy shrivels: shell game hucksters have us focus on disappearing civil rights while their friends rob our wallets. By the time we realize what’s happened, we’re broke, and our power to rebel is that much smaller.

I was also bothered by the notion put forth by some marchers that pro-life women were not welcome. For that matter, I don’t see why Trump voters were not welcome. Or those who abstained from voting all-together. Many people who voted for this man don’t actually like him. Why not fortify a bridge to meet them, rather than nuke it?

Full disclosure. I happily voted Hillary. I’m rabidly pro-choice. I think climate change and antibiotic-resistant disease are our two greatest threats to civilization. My greatest fear is that we’ll get attacked by terrorists on Trump’s watch and he’ll retaliate until we’re bankrupt, while simultaneously usurping all civil rights under the fear-mongering pretext that it’s for our own good. Well, not him. He won’t do that. But that’s the problem with being unfit. The money guys behind him will do it, so they can keep robbing us blind for four, and then eight years.

We have a problem. An unqualified person has assumed the most powerful job in the world. He has appointed people to his cabinet who will privatize our public institutions. Many of these were failing or inefficient. Corrupt, even. He will use this pretext to break them, then loot them. This should never have happened. That it did happen means our system is broken. There is an underlying infection. Donald Trump is not the problem.

Reservations aside, we went to the march. It was inspiring. Women and men and children from all over wore pink hats. Everyone was polite, cheerful, happy. I loved it. So did the kids. So did my husband (thanks for making me go, JT!).

We did see a Trump effigy and while some people laughed at it, I explained to my kids: “This is wrong. You don’t make fun of your opposition. You take a position and build an argument using logic and facts.” It occurs to me that this is also the problem. Our beliefs are so greatly reinforced by bubbled social media that we become emboldened to make less logical arguments—to say increasingly stupid things, because we’re preaching to the choir, anyway. These stupid things take on a specious validity among our bubbled faction because no one calls us on our crap. They become fact. And up rises a Neo-Nazi or alt-right or whatever the fuck they call themselves. And they do it for validation. For friends! For likes!

Thirty years ago, I was pro-life. I’d been raised to believe women’s desires, once they became mothers, were necessarily less important than everyone else’s. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have called myself a feminist. It wasn’t cool. Maybe it would have made me seem less attractive to men. I acted slightly less smart than I was, and tailored my personality to the man I was talking to. Ten years ago, I was in the middle of a writing career, but spent way too much time pleasing people and acting cute. I thought that was part of the job. It was, actually. But that doesn’t mean I should have gone along with it. Thirty years ago, racism was so prevalent that I couldn’t see it. Now it’s become obvious that black people are getting murdered and jailed, their right to vote revoked by a private prison system that profits off their baloney incarcerations. Sandra Bland’s mom still hasn’t been given her belongings, and no one’s explained to her how a six-foot-tall woman hung herself from a five-foot-ten beam. Thirty years ago a transsexual who got beat up deserved it for being so stupid as to dress “like that” in public. Now, it turns out, it’s pretty mean to beat somebody up because of how they’re dressed. But it always was, wasn’t it? That basic morality hasn’t changed, but we have. We’ve changed for the better.

We see what we didn’t see before.

So, we’re all there, at the march. All these people in different places and stages, coming from different experiences and loyalties. And I realize a lot are like me. We’re not violent and we’re not comfortable with giant movements that speak for us. But we’re women. We’re together, not afraid or embarrassed by our own wants—our very anatomy. And the men who show up, they’ll pretty cool, too.

Our daughters made signs and marched around our house when we got home. “I march for peace and justice!” they shouted. The cynic is me sees this as ridiculous. What good does marching in your living room do? What good does any marching do? By 2100 climate change is going to make it rain frogs and we’ll all be exchanging sexual favors for Twinkies (yes, I realize I’m exaggerating). The dreamer in me knows that civil rights and human survival go hand-in-hand. What’s the latter worth, without the former?

I guess I wrote this as a perspective piece, from one Marcher: why I went , who I am, and why you should consider being a part of this movement, too. We’re so much better together.

Pen Parentis is an organization with monthly readings by parents, for parents.

I’ll be speaking and signing at the above this Saturday, October 3, 1-7:30pm, in North Andover, Mass. It’s at the ACT Theater Company in North Andover, Mass ( 1632 Osgood St). The event is free! More details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/985235271526859/

So many writers will be there! (Joe Hill*Kelly Link*Brian Keene*Christopher Golden*Paul Tremblay*Caitlin Kittredge*Thomas Sniegoski*John Langan*Dana Cameron*Rio Youers*Toni L.P. Kelner*Myke Cole*Mary SanGiovanni*Leigh Perry*Bracken MacLeod*Jack M. Haringa*Jason Ciaramella*Kat Howard *John M. McIlveen*Glenn Chadbourne*Mallory O’Meara*Holly*Newstein Hautala*Errick Danger Nunnally*Izzy Lee*Scott Goudsward*Gardner Goldsmith *Douglas Wynne *Kristin Dearborn*Jan Kozlowski*TT Zuma)

http://www.strandbooks.com/event/everything-is-terrifying

My newest story “Black Monday” dropped today in the anthology “The End Is Now” edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey. It’s a Kindle Exclusive for 90 days, and after that it’ll go wide. Audio book should be available in the next week. The story is the second of a trilogy, about cyborgs!

Thanks.
-Sarah Langan

Link soup to the books:

http://amzn.to/1qwgpcz
http://www.johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych/buy-the-books/

The link for purchase of e-book or trade paperback:

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych/buy-the-books/

This is the first time I’ve had my work published through Amazon. In two weeks, it’ll open up to other formats. If you’ve got comments about the interface or comments in general, let me know. I’m very interested.

Until next time, don’t get none on ya.

-sl

As I learn more about the public school system in New York, I’m increasingly troubled by it. My major issues are these:

1)      Gifted and Talented testing is set-up by the parents of individual children. What this means is that teachers can’t recommend children for entrance into the city’s top schools. The kinds of parents who schedule their children for testing are not necessarily the proud authors of geniuses; they’ve simply got more access to school information, and are more involved in their children’s education.

2)      Charter Schools drain children with dedicated parents from neighborhood schools.

My problems with these items:

The elite pay for private school at 35k a pop. The upper middle class pays for lower tier private schools at 10-20k a pop. The middle class pays for Catholic School, moves to the suburbs, or through test preparation and sending lots of thank-you notes, gets their kid into G&T or a top charter school, both of which are essentially private schools.

So, what about the kids whose parents don’t advocate for them, who don’t have any money? They go to the financially drained locally zoned schools. Some of these public schools are good. Some are very, very bad.

And what about those young geniuses with no money, who never took a G&T test? Their space got filled by the child of a parent like me, who has the time to read to my kids for hours, and treats their little darling like a Faberge egg. We’ve got the drive (it’s hard wired into our upwardly mobile instincts), the time to write thank-you notes, the knowledge of the unspoken code, in which, with every politely composed e-mail, I’m letting administrators know that I’m planning on helping with fundraisers, being a class mom, advocating for the school in the same way I’d advocate for my child.

More than half of the people I know have hired a public/private school admissions expert to help them navigate pre-k and kindergarten. I live in Crown Heights. Not one kid on my kid-heavy block attends their locally zoned school. Not one!

I keep thinking of that slogan: “No child left behind.” But they are left behind. And these stratifications (charter, G&T), initially used to placate the frightened middle class and lure them back to city life, is widening the gap. It’s wrong.

Would I send my kids to a good charter school or a G&T? Of course. But I’d rather send them to school with the kids in their neighborhood. ALL the kids.

I’m sure a lot of people have a lot to say in defense of Charter Schools and G&T. I may also not have all my facts. Please correct me, if so, and let me know your thoughts.

I’m reading with Clay McLeod Chapman (www.claymcleodchapman.com) at KGB Bar (http://kgbbar.com/) on Sunday, October 27, from 7-9pm. I have no idea what to read, so give me a hand and let me know– should it be from a published novel or short story? Name your favorite. Should it be from the novel-in–progress– The Clinic? Let me know. Whichever gets the most votes, I read.

Hope you’re all good!

Sincerely,
Sarah Langan

Anyway, I’ve been serving as a thesis evaluator and advisor over the last month to Columbia MFAs, and been pleasantly shocked. It’s now genre-tastic. Futuristic, dystopian, post-modern, form-bending; awesome. Letham is the debated currency, not Woolf. And I get to read this cool stuff! I get to know what the kids are worried about, in a very real way that has nothing to do with boring people and their dating struggles. These kids are AMBITIOUS.

Why the change? I have no idea. Perhaps its the teachers: Kirshenbaum, LaValle, Antrim. And the times are changing. The difference between now and when I attended is the same difference, gulp, as when Madman started (1960), and 1977. JFK to Jimmy Carter.

For whatever reason, these kids are writers I can get behind, at last. And so, I take back every slight against the Columbia MFA. My bad! I had no idea.