Get In The Streets All You OTHER People

Jesus H, unless you are literally tweeting from the American streets, stop telling other people to get in the streets.

Look, I am as outraged about Trump as anyone, and I’ve actually been in the streets multiple times in the past year, but I get irritated at revolutionaries who want to yell about how apathetic everybody ELSE is, like, charter a bus and sign people up, then. Stop being disgusted with the rest of us and set a damn example. And once you’ve done that, shut the fuck up about how everybody else is bad at this.

It’s like the endless declarations of despair over gun violence, or feminism’s failings, or anything else. All it does is make everybody feel like shit, suppress actual action (because if we’re awful losers who can’t do anything, why bother, especially when there’s TV) and make people who are doing the hard work of fighting this shit invisible.

People ARE in the streets. I live in a major metro area in the near-bluest state in the union and goddamn, people are in the streets every fucking day. Don’t disappear them because the protests aren’t as big as you think they should be or as big as your parents told you the 1960s protests were or as big as the March on Washington photos or whatever the fuck else. The perfect crowd doesn’t exist. Join the crowd that does.

Or don’t, but quit shitting on the crowd because it’s not the one you think should exist.

A.