Okay okay Billy - I'll Zen campaign

So I was REALLY looking forward to Billy Wimsatt coming out with his new book and I couldn't wait to go to his reading in Berkeley. I had been waiting. I have worked closely with Billy for years and he has taught me almost everything I know about politics and organizing, so I wouldn't miss an opportunity to support him.

But three days before his reading I found out my friend, Maggie, who is 29 years old, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Needless to say I was a total wreck. Between sobs and compulsive google searching for stage four survivor stories I made it to Berkeley. As I sat there and watched Billy try to pump the crowd up about the super movement that will save politics in America I was overcome with the sense that we all just needed to go home and take care of our friends and families, cozy up in our houses and just try to enjoy life while we have it. I didn't want to talk about spending long nights in a campaign office to fight against tea partiers, I mean why does it really matter if any one of us can wake up in the morning with stage 4 breast cancer? I felt so sad and discouraged but this intense feeling of fear and 'we are all screwed anyway, let's just enjoy life' fit perfectly into my plan to sit out the 2010 election cycle.

I had decided I wasn't really going to participate in the 2010 election cycle. I was pondering the idea that politics might be too oppositional for me and I may just bow out completely. In the mean time, I figured I just needed to give myself some time to do joy filled work and focus on the positive in people and not think about the people who act like bigots and put up road blocks on election day. My plan for the Fall was this: work with 350.org on a global day of action (10/10/10) with amazing people across Asia who want to make a positive difference in their communities, meditate everyday to learn more about myself and how to react to all the moving parts of my life with more grace and joy, party with my friends and just continue to love being young and to be a good friend and girlfriend and not being too busy to listen. I like that plan and I am committed to it.

But on my BART ride to work this morning, while reading Billy's book Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, something clicked, when I read the below excerpt, and I have had to add to my plan.

The Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling (saying corporations can spend with no limits in campaigns- ugh!) was a HORRIBLE decision. But it was a 5-4 decision split across partisan lines. The five Republicans justices voted for the decision. The four Democratic justices voted against it and wrote a blistering dissent. The real lesson of Citizen United is that we need to stop Republicans from taking over the U.S government and appointing right wing extremists to the Supreme Court.

There has rarely been a more clear-cut case of the need to stop Republicans at all costs. If a few hundred more of us had voted Democrat in Florida back in 2000, Bush wouldn't have become president in the first place. Alioto and Roberts wouldn't be in the Supreme Court. We would have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court against corporations buying elections.

Okay, so my core belief, what I guess I would call my religion, is that all people, if they are being their true selves, are good. So the whole Republicans are evil conversation doesn't sit well with me. I hate US vs THEM. Because truthfully I believe there is just us - people in the world who want to be happy, feel useful, free, loved and appreciated. But the above passage made me realize that holding that belief up as my ticket out of politics will not serve me or the vision I have for the world. I want to live in a world where people are more free, are happier, are more connected to their friends and neighbors, and where decisions that positively affect the people most in need are the ones prioritized by our government.

I can't think about it as Democrats vs Republicans, I think about it as people who support community building vs oppose it. I want to move towards a world where regular people, without a lot of money, have the same chance to organize for their vision of the world as a massive corporation or someone with a well stocked bank account. I believe a few basic things need to happen in order to make that possible: we need to be working together to create an accepting country where people have more or less equal access to good schools, good healthcare, good jobs, healthy environments, protection and acknowledgment under the law, fair elections and, by god, we must limit corporate control of our government and elections. I think we can all agree on that one. We are at a pretty uneasy moment in history where a lot of that is at stake this Fall. So no Billy, I guess won't sit out this 2010 cycle, because I refuse to watch candidates be elected who laugh at jokes like calling our President "Halfrican American", who support the tea party in denouncing Islam, and who campaign on doing away with medicare, privatizing vets healthcare and further privatizing everyone elses' healthcare. To me, those things aren't even Republican or Democrat, those are just bad ideas mixed with extreme ignorance and intolerance. I sat on the BART today and just realized these ideas aren't going to help me organize for the peaceful world I am determined to live in, they aren't going to help Maggie get the best healthcare she needs, they aren't going to help people with different religious views live side by side and they aren't going to help make our streets safer and our communities stronger. And at this moment in my life those things are the most important things to me.

So here is what I am going to do, when I finish this blog I am going to call Billy, ask him the closest races in the country where the extremists have the highest likelihood of winning and I will pool my resources, my time and both people connections and money, to help a better candidate win in that district.

Even writing this blog is hard for me because I don't like to get all worked up about how people can be so mean and say and do such wrong things. But deep breath Heather, they just need help getting in touch with the real them and tapping into that deep reservoir of love and unity every human is born with. Until they do that, I don't want them running our government. So I will do what I can this Fall to give them the opportunity to stay out of DC, so they can get to work finding their inner peace and return to the playing field as a candidate ready to support community and help build the beautiful, accepting country we all want to live in, where people thrive on and embrace our differences.

So this election cycle I will be zen campaigning - staying committed to my own inner peace, being a good friend, girlfriend and listener and having fun while I'm doing it!

Me and my friends can move mountains, fighting cancer shouldn’t be too big of deal

I sat on my bed today, notebook in hand. I was writing a note to my friend Maggie who was diagnosed last week with breast cancer. I stared down at the page: Get better Maggie, okay? That is all I had, and I had doodled it all over the page. Tears streaming down my face, I felt sick, I laid back and furiously refreshed her website, waiting for the next post that said the doctors were wrong and it was just cat scratch fever after all. I couldn’t wait to get together with everyone and talk about how stupid the doctors were for freaking us out so bad with their misdiagnosis. I pictured our friends sitting around with Maggie celebrating, laughing, hugging and all recommitting to live life to the fullest together.

And with something about that picture of all of our friends together, I felt something click in my head. ‘Hey Heather – stop hoping for something else and get to work at the problem at hand. Maggie has just jumped into the ring for a big fight–she needs us.’ I sat back up, that’s right. I mean, we happen to have one hell of a group of friends that specializes in GIANT undertakings that require immense amount of energy, focus, commitment, love and dedication. I mean, some have criticized us for being clicky, traveling in packs, being loud and yes, even some have called us obnoxious. I won’t spend any time defending ourselves against these allegations but I will just say, ‘Fine, to all of the above AND we are an amazing team of dynamic, creative friends with enough love and energy to move mountains.’

Okay, so we haven’t moved any mountains yet, but we know we can. Picture what we have done with the Christmas party - six years, total splendor, hours, days of our blood, sweat and tears just for one night of Christmas joy! Or close your eyes and feel the million mega watts of energy coming off the dance floor in Lake Tahoe at Maggie and Man Ryan’s wedding. Or think of all the times you have come home from a party limping or bruised from dancing your heart out (especially after the old man party with all those canes and walkers on the dance floor). Or imagine the insanity of renting a house boat and dressing and acting like pirates for days on end like some of our friends did for Jake’s bachelor party. What about going to a 9 hour wedding and then staying up all night at the after party (on a Sunday?!). We know how to go above and beyond, show up for each other and make the most out of the opportunities we have.

So here we go guys, task at hand a little more somber in nature, but the most important thing in the world we can do together. Mags, we got this with you. In the coming months and for as long as it takes to get rid of the cancer we are sending our love and energy for life, you and each other out into the universe to be collected in a reservoir that will be right above you at all times so you can draw from it whenever you need it.

We will all get through this, it will take some time and it’s okay if we can’t always do it with a smile. I have been to a many Christmas party decoration nights, 1:30am, three days before “Christmas”, exhausted, up to my knees in cardboard cut outs of unpainted trees, discouraged and staring at an undecorated hallway and kitchen, and had to stop and look at Julian and Dexter in their eyes and ask, ‘Is this really gonna happen this year?” Not turning away from their staple guns they both always murmur, “Yes, Heather.” And as the universe will have it, those are the moments Jake and Lauren walk in with 40 perfect, amazing life size, handmade penguins, or Crescent rolls up with a ten foot photo montage of all the Christmas pasts. So we can be sad, even discouraged at times but none of us will ever give up. Because we don’t give up until we get exactly what we want.

And we can ask for help. Like Bunny (Carmen), who was coordinating Maggie and Man Ryan’s wedding, did this summer. Twenty minutes to wedding time and Bunny, looking all cute and businessy with her notebook, wrangled us all together and looking between each one of us and her task list she put us to work right then and there to get the place looking PERFECT before the guests arrived.

And we can do it however we know how. Take Gabe on the dance floor for example. We have all seen him try to express himself on the dance floor and it just escalates. It goes something like this. Dancing around a bit feeling the music, to a major toe pointing session which looks like it requires like 100% of his energy, then just when we think he might collapse on the dance floor of exhaustion – he launches himself, sliding across the dance floor on his stomach – committed to being all he is out there and getting all that energy out. His break outs usually result is some escalation of somebody else’s dancing. Whether it is Maggie’s “her” version of toe pointing or Man Ryan’s military rolls in his wedding clothes, someone is always there to take it up a notch from what Gabe laid out on the floor.

So I think with all of us fighting this cancer it doesn’t stand a chance in hell. The cancer just doesn’t even have a clue about how badly it just messed with the wrong group of friends. Mess with Maggie, mess with the whole family.

So Maggie, don’t worry if you get tired, just close your eyes and pull some energy out of the amazingly decorated reservoir of energy and love above you where at all times either Journey or Michael Jackson are blasting. Take as much as you need Mags because we’ve got an endless supply. And if you need something specific you just ask us. We will be by your side in a sec, go to the doctors with you, scream from a mountain top with you – whatever you need girl. WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND HAVE GOT YOUR BACK HECKA HARD!