I just discovered this post. I had forgotten I had written it. Either I am becoming senile, or I simply have written more than I can remember. My brain has always functioned sort of like a sieve. Stuff just leaks out. I’m updating this post as I don’t have the proper mindset to write a new one, at the moment. But it resonates with me as the coming election is The Referendum on Democracy.
I wrote this five years ago in 2017. At that time I titled the post, “Intersectional Democracy.” It is October 2022. It has been a rocky five years, but aren’t they all, really?
I still feel the topic to be of critical importance. Maybe I can influence one woman to write a bit more, or distribute her writings a bit further than usual. That sort of distribution can branch out beyond the initial contact and have tremendous reach. I cannot predict when this will happen. Perhaps this will reach even more than my five usual readers.
Note: As a writer/blogger who mainly reaches other writers and bloggers, when and if I reach someone, I have to add a note that I have corrected many spelling and grammatical errors, converted the post to block format, added some missing meta tags, changed the categories, and just reworded here and there for clarity. I recommend that if you control you go back reread, reuse, and revise. Often thoughts remain valid over time.
Write, Just Write
I implore every blogger and online writer, every woman who knows how to write an email, a letter, or a message, to step up their writing pace to repair what is left of democracy in our country, world, and in our minds. I am talking not just about posting on Facebook or snippet-based social media, I am talking about writing letters, pamphlets, and broadsheets for the re-democratization of America. I am asking for you to stand and write. We would have had no American Democracy without the widespread distribution of politically important personally passionate information.
Revolutionary Writing
According to David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, in establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.
The revolution of the 18th Century built a structure that could support democratic principles, but the interstitial elements allowed, and in fact encouraged undemocratic processes to continue and flourish, outside of the constitutional structure. Change must be interstitial as well as structural. We cannot know all the elements of democracy. It is theoretical, a concept, but it is a glorious one. We know what some of the un- and anti-democratic processes that were allowed to live, grow, and entwine around democratic structures were: slavery, inequality, disenfranchisement, government collusion with corporations, and erosion of journalistic integrity.
Through writing, we can change the nature of the interstitial spaces.
Reformative Writing
Martin Luther posted his theses that spurred the Protestant Reformation just over 500 years ago. How was this radical document spread? Of course, broadsheets and pamphlets. While much Luther believed is today viewed with horror (his anti-semitism is a most offensive example), his influence cannot be denied.
We are responsible as writers, as women, to respond to a call we can all hear if we listen. Far more important than going viral or creating memes, we have a responsibility to our world and those who will live in the world once we are gone. We must share accurate information to our circles through our own words, in words that will mean something to those we know, those with whom we interact regularly, and those who respect us.
Write a letter, put your thoughts into an email and send it as you would a letter. Make it about something that is important to you and politicize it through personalization and sincerity.
Write about baby food or stolen cuneiform tablets. Write about how you have to make your own baby food because corporations are allowed to keep secret what they are doing to the food in the jars on the baby food shelves in groceries. If a craft store has promoted the looting of ancient archaeological sites through its purchase of thousands of stolen cuneiform tablets, write about it on your blog. You do not have to bring up other despicable actions the company supports if you do not want to.
If it is important to you, you are the best advocate.
Communicate personally and routinely.
It is what women do. We coordinate communication for families and communities. Our power is boundless. Women will rewrite democracy in our lives this year in the U.S., let women again be credited with a revolutionary reformation in ethical and responsible structures, as well as in all the things that exist between those structures.
Share this post or these thoughts. Stand and write. Stand and vote.