I am angry. SO angry. Let's get angry together.

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?

Those of us who took Psych 101 (and beyond) learned that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of death and grief start with denial, move onto anger, then bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance — although the order is not generally linear.

The current administration would like us to skip right to acceptance. However what we are experiencing in our country is not a death, however death-like and ghoulish it feels, and so, we cannot treat it like one.

There will be no acceptance.

If you too have hit the anger phase, pull up a stool and sit here with me for a while. We never close, and while the place could be cleaner, you’ll be in excellent company.

Here are just some of the things I am angry about right now.*

• The Musk-Trump administration’s further attempts to take down a free and fair American press by hand-picking their own (sympathetic) journalists for the White House press pool. (BBC)

• The Musk-Trump administration takeover of the Kennedy Center, in which Trump will now solely determine what he deems to be “appropriate” American art and culture. If this doesn’t terrify you, feel free to read this article in the Holocaust Encyclopedia, or just google “Degenerate Art.” (Guardian)

• The dismantling of USAID, the firing of thousands of dedicated public health experts, and the freezing of strategic funds that will have devastating effects on our own safety, security, and health in addition to 1 billion people around the world. (Friends of USAID on Substack)

• More illegal firings. So many illegal firings. (GovExec)

• The disturbing video of the harassment and assault of Theresa Borrenpohl at a public Town Hall meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. (New Republic; Video: AP)

• NIH medical research grant freezes, because why would the US possibly want to be a leader in medical research? Who needs to cure cancer anyway, help kids with disabilities, or head off the next pandemic? (NPR)

• The firing of our top public health experts, with grave consequences. (Pro Publica)

• The Republican spending bill that passed yesterday, and will literally kill millions of Americans, whether or not it bankrupts them first. (CAP)

• The voter disenfranchisement of the SAVE act, which disproportionately impacts anyone who has changed their name since being born. That includes John Legend, Cher, and 80% of married women. (Wonkette)

• The weakening and politicization of our military (Just Security)

• The first unvaccinated school-aged child dying of measles in the Texas outbreak, a disease which is entirely preventable by the effective, safe MMR vaccine. (AP)

• DOGE (a misnomer because it’s not an actual department) gaining access to our personal and private information, and is already a lot worse than we imagined. (Pro Publica)

• The word DOGE.

• DOE and Pell Grant cuts (Inside Higher Ed)

• Gutting of the US National Park Service (Sierra Club)

• Ukraine. (Guardian)

• “Riviera of the Middle East” (CAP)

• Guantanamo. (NPR)

• Every photo of a torn and defaced “Missing” poster around the country that featured the faces of Kfir and Ariel Bibas (Bess Kalb)

• Jocelynn Rojo Carranza and those who loved her (Dallas News)

• Whatever nonsense this is from the (somehow still?) Mayor of NYC (Jemele Hill)

If you are finding yourself more angry than sad these days, good. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Credit: Alev Adil - Les Miserables Set, CC BY-SA 2.0

Listen: No judgment about whatever it is that finally sets you off, and gets you pissed off enough to do something — or do something more. It could be something big, it could be something small. It could be something that hurts your own family and the people you love, like the proposed Medicaid and Social Security cuts could terribly hurt mine.

(Please don’t forget that a cut to social security could really harm families who receive monthly survivor benefits from the death of a parent or a spouse.)

Of course, it could be some action that has impacted people you don’t know at all. Like immigrants. VA workers. Farmers. A brilliant grad student who can no longer afford their dream school. A kindergartener in Louisiana who relies on free lunch as ther one guaranteed meal of the day. An 11 year-old girl in Maine who is afraid she won’t be allowed to play soccer after school anymore.

These things make you angry too, because you are human and you have empathy. Which is how things are supposed to be.

(h/t/

Ahmed Baba

)

Let yourself feel the anger. I finally am. And I take comfort knowing that we are really really not alone.

What Next?

I spent way too much time linking to each of these ire-inducing topics, to make it a little easier for you to pick one of these issues — or any other — and get to know a little more about them from reliable sources.

Don’t just read and feel, though. Put those feelings to good use.

• Show up at your representative’s office, or their own Town Hall meetings.

• Speak out on social media, tell your story, and put a personal face to the actions that are hurting you.

• There’s an economic boycott this Friday, calling for no spending on fast food, gas or at major retailers. Consider participating.

• Continue supporting independent, non-corporatized publishing. Speaking of which, I am an independent publisher! So is Wired, Pro Publica, and The Guardian, all of which now have my annual subscription fee.

• Talk to people in your family and your community, wherever you are. I shared some actions yesterday with some women I overheard at PT who are still in the good fight. All while we fight our frozen shoulders. We are engaged on all fronts!)

• If you hear someone in pain, saying they regret their vote for Trump, please — don’t shame them. Don’t say “have the day you voted for,” which I’m hearing a lot lately. Hear them out and welcome them in. We need to work together.
  (Even if you do think about the Leopards Eating Faces meme, which of course I do. All the time.)

Finally, please download and use the 5 Calls App, which makes it super easy (even if you have phone phobia!) to call your elected reps WHATEVER THEIR PARTY, and tell what you want from them. Because it may not seem like it, especially depending where you live right now, but your Members of Congress work for you. For us.

For the people.

With gratitude to the U.S. Army Chorus (I see you) and to Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

*No need to say “you forgot…” because whatever you are angry about, I am probably angry about too. I deliberately pare down my lists, but I don’t forget. I won’t forget.

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