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Don’t Give Away Your Power Willingly
What you are reading almost didn’t get written.
About a month and a half ago, I noted on my to-do list, “Download and scrub stories from pub[lication]s if we lose.”
Heeding the threats to free speech, particularly the media, a second Trump administration posed, I wanted to leave little trace of my writing for potential malefactors to use as a pretext to arrest and possibly disappear me.
I woke up Wednesday morning astonished and sickened the country that had had a front-row seat to the twice-impeached felon’s perfidy willingly, effortlessly, even, chose to put him back into office.
I deactivated my Twitter (I still dead-name it) account, but I was conflicted over carrying out the task of erasing years of writing. Besides the headache of doing it, what might it imply? Fear? Intimidation?
I started writing political op-ed pieces in 2015, inspired by author and progressive radio show host Thom Hartmann, whom I got a chance to meet in 2019 at a book signing for his first in the Hidden History book series, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment. I had his email address from when he gave it out on the air once, so, before I effaced nearly a decade and countless hours of time and research, I decided to ask Thom, not entirely expecting a response.
