Alison Oatman

The last week or so has thrust the family into a state of extended emergency. On Feb. 5, Ms. Vizguerra called a family meeting over dinner, banning electronics from the table to convey the seriousness of the matter. The family cats, Miranda and Zayra, meowed as she explained the plan.

If officials were to come to the home in the days before the meeting at the I.C.E. office, no one should answer the door, she said. If they gained entry, Luna, a reedy middle schooler with braces, should use her phone to film the events. Roberto should open the emergency contact list in his phone and begin to call family friends and advocates. And Zury, the youngest, should go straight to her parents’ bedroom, close the door and stay there. “I told them, ‘I know it’s going to be difficult for you,'” Ms. Vizguerra said. “‘I want you to be brave.'”

Three days later, the packing began, with the children stuffing their mother’s leggings, sweaters and shampoos into suitcases and boxes. Terrified by the prospect of familial separation, Ms. Vizguerra began to consider taking refuge at the First Unitarian Society church in Denver, whose congregants previously gave sanctuary to another immigrant.

She reminded Luna which drawers belonged to which child and told her it would be her job to make sure her siblings dressed properly. She showed her where the extra soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste were kept.

Then Ms. Vizguerra stocked the refrigerator with microwave dinners, something even a 6-year-old could make.

–“Immigrant Mother in Denver Takes Refuge as Risk of Deportation Looms” by Julie Turkewitz in today’s New York Times

As the Trump administration takes a wrecking ball to our democracy, it is hard to examine each individual crack.

Yet soon we will experience an unraveling of our immediate communities and the society at large if the deportations continue.

As the Trump administration bullies the press and treats news organizations as the opposition, stories like that of Jeanette Vizguerra–mother of three–serve as authentic news.

The image of twelve-year-old Luna preparing to take care of her younger siblings is a sobering dispatch from a cruel world. It looks like her youth is officially over.

For now,the factions of the left seem to have found an accord. But to regain any power in Washington, they will need to sway the center too–including some of those women who voted for Trump. The white women of the left, many of whom are just now finding their footing as activists, have been eager to dissociate from that group. Mention the 53 percent, and they’re quick to tell you that they’re of the 47. But of all the people who marched in Washington last month, they may be among the best positioned to reach across that aisle. “I know of no other time when it would be more important,” Barbara Smith, the black feminist and leftist, told me. “That’s not my work to do, but somebody ought to do it.”
–from the 2/12/17 NY Times Magazine article “How a Fractious Women’s Movement Came to Lead the Left” by Amanda Hess

Who are those 53 percent of women who voted for Trump?

I attended a town hall meeting yesterday sponsored by the Retake Our Democracy group here in Santa Fe. It was informative and quite frightening at times. A woman who teaches listening skills got up and said “Either we are all going to die, or we are going to learn how to live with one another.”

After about an hour, the room broke up into discussion groups. The choice was between a “Rattle the GOP” group (by far the most popular), a “Community Conversations” group, a “Youth Outreach” group, a “Cultural Outreach” group, and a “Soda Tax” group (this last one convened to discuss taxing sugary drinks in order to fund a universal pre-k program).

I chose the “Cultural Outreach” program because because my other choice–“Rattle the GOP”–just felt like tapping into more of the same perpetual outrage “we all” live and breathe now.

“Cultural Outreach” was a small group of about ten people–mostly white women over fifty. We went around the circle and introduced ourselves. The only skill I had to offer was a pitiful command of Spanish. (Earlier a politician had announced that there was a dearth of Spanish translators when it came to important legal documents.) Others spoke of the Native American and Muslim communities they were peripherally connected to. A Mexican-American woman emphasized how much fear immigrants are in.

Then a woman of color spoke up and said “outreach” was exactly the wrong word. Before you just enter our communities, you’ve got to undercover years of your own conditioning to the “invisible” tenets of white supremacy. There has to be trust, and it takes a long time to build that trust. She suggested getting people to come together over food or through art projects. There was absolutely no need for “white knights” to come in and save the day. This all made perfect sense and I was glad she had spoken her mind.

Then I read the NY Times article and it resonated–especially the words, “Mention the 53 percent, and they’re quick to tell you that they’re of the 47. But of all the people who marched on Washington last month, they may be among the best positioned to reach across that aisle.”

Is it my calling to hang out with conservative white women who voted for Trump?

Would that make an impact in the undercover spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickle and Dimed”?

I don’t know, but it’s a bizarre notion on the verge of an idea.

Dear Robert,

Every night I watch your “Resistance Report” and it is often the brightest fifteen minutes of my day.

You channel pure Charles de Gaulle in your book-lined bunker. Remember the 1940 Appeal of June 18th (“L’Appel du 18 juin”) in which the leader of the Free French Forces said this:

“But has the last word been said? Must hope disappear? Is defeat final? No!”

A resounding non, non, non!

Thanks to you, I now have my own copy of the constitution. I yearn for the weathered passport book-like edition you showed us on air, but I purchased a thicker annotated one.

You make what feels like a descent into the raging flames of hell seem like an afternoon at the beach.

Last night, you explained that you understood bullies like Trump since you had been shorter than the other kids in school and therefore subject to merciless teasing. I think this experience must have shaped your world and steeled your will for the good fight.

You say Putin will be Trump’s downfall. I hope you are right…and sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, would you be free to discuss the Emoluments Clause over martinis? I hear that the word emolere means to grind up in Latin–and was used to refer to payment for a miller for grinding corn.

Ah well, it’s all grist for the mill.

xoxo

Alison

He did not regard Jean Louise as a sister. In the years when he was away at the war and at the University, she had turned from an overalled, fractious, gun-slinging creature into a reasonable facsimile of a human being. He began dating her on her annual two-week visits home, and although she still moved like a thirteen-year-old boy and abjured most feminine adornment, he found something so intensely feminine about her that he fell in love. She was easy to look at and easy to be with most of the time, but she was in no sense of the word an easy person. She was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him. He would protect her; he would marry her.

–From “Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee

Say it ain’t so!! A twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise (a.k.a. Scout)–all grown up compared to where we leave off in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when she is in her eighth year–described in mushy terms as “intensely feminine”? Does she need a man to “protect her” when she was always the first to pull a punch in grade school?

This woodenly delivered novel is actually a rough draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird” set in the fifties instead of the thirties. Clearly Lee was a songbird without a tune when she penned “Go Set a Watchman” in 1957. Scout’s heavily inflected Southern drawl is what makes “To Kill a Mockingbird” sing. So why publish a lousy earlier version?

“Go Set a Watchman” was discovered in 2011 in a safe deposit box in Lee’s hometown of Monroeville. Lee said about it: “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman.’ It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told.”

However, there is a great deal of doubt as to whether Lee (described as “in a wheelchair in an assisted living center, nearly deaf and blind”) really understood what was going on. HarperCollins ended up having a field day with this manufactured “literary event.”

The only thing I take away from this is how well Lee fine-tuned her craft in the three years between the two novels. I think it is Anne Lamott who says every book needs a “shitty first draft.” It’s a miracle that Lee turned the sludge of “Go Set a Watchman” into the fragrant Southern blossom of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”