Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We went downtown for the Boston part of today's nationwide "hands off" protests. We arrived as people were walking from the Common toward Government Center, so we joined them there.

There were a lot of different signs, most of which looked home-made, a mix of general things like "Nobody elected Elon" and signs talking about a specific thing. Adrian made three signs: a simple "NO," "Peace, Love Freedom and a Hard-boiled egg"and one that said "Which Side Are They On?" [2] Some people were carrying or waving flags, mostly Pride (I saw both rainbow flags and Progress Pride flags) and American and Ukrainian flags.

There was enough organizing energy to do things like arrange for speakers and to use the big plaza near City Hall, and a somewhat chaotic mixture of chants and singing as we marched, including one verse of "We Shall Overcome." We left fairly early, while Sen. Markey was speaking; we were too far back to make out a lot of what he was saying."

I started running low on energy while Markey was speaking, so we left while other people were still arriving, but we were there long enough to be seen and help make the crowd larger. I timed it right, meaning I didn't run out of energy before we got home.

Yesterday I was guessing I wouldn't be able to go, because of either joint or GI issues, but I took pills before we left and crossed my fingers, and it worked.

I did most of this masked. I took my mask off when we got out of the T at Park Street, then put it back on because it ws dense crowd and not much breeze. I was pleasantly surprised to see some other people masking at the rally.

When I said I was tired of almost all my outings being medical, I was thinking about museums or seeing friends, but this is what needs doing.

[1] "Reasonably priced love" wouldn't work in this context.
[2] The union song that's based on asks "Which Side Are You On?"

I just posted to thisfinecrew about Republican efforts to take away funding for gender-affirming care, and the emails I sent senators and congresswoman:

https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/277983.html

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that the state's six-week abortion ban is unconstitutional, because the state constitution explicitly protects the right to privacy.

The CBC website has an article, from the Associated Press, on a Georgia investigation of Trump's attempts to steal the election.

The Fulton County District Attorney has written to the state's governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general to preserve all records relation to the election. (The Secretary of State is the person who was recorded telling Trump that no, he wasn't going to "find" him votes or otherwise change the election results.)

The DA's spokesperson doesn't explicitly name Trump, but did say "the matters reported on over the last several weeks are the matters being investigated." Also, the DA's letters say they "have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation."

Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, perennial losing candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is suing our secretary of state in federal court, demanding that he order Twitter to reinstate his account. No, that makes no more sense in context. In context, the state's lawyers have asked the judge to throw out that lawsuit, both because he's in the wrong court (the Eleventh Amendment* means he'd have to take this to a state court), and because he isn't suing Twitter and therefore the court couldn't order Twitter to do anything, even if his claims weren't nonsense.

*It's one of the obscure amendments, which sorted out some jurisdictional stuff early in US history. You didn't sleep through something important in history or civics class. The Eleventh Amendment sharply limits lawsuits against state governments (which is why the University of California, can get away with violating people's copyrights), and specifies that if one state sues another, over something like who owns Ellis Island, the case goes directly to the Supreme Court

This wasn't on my 2021 Bingo card: posting on File 770 that "I agree with Dann655. Dann showed up during the Sad Puppies/Hugo slate/etc. events, supporting the puppies, with the kind of politics that would imply. He stayed around and even talks about books once in a while, and today we are in agreement that insurrection is wrong, whether right- or left-wing.

The person in question has clarified that he's doing a both-sides-ism, as if Black Lives Matter protests were even a little like the fascist attempted coup last week.

So, the governor of Massachusetts has announced new limits on gathering sizes and how many people can be inside a place of business, which I think will accomplish little except unite everyone in thinking he got it wrong.

Maybe the lower occupancy limits will help a little, but: anything that was allowed to be open under the current restrictions is still allowed, including casinos and indoor dining in restaurants. Alao employees explicitly don't count toward the limits on occupancy for restaurants, hairdressers, and retail businesses (they do count toward the total if it's a library, driving school, or fitness center).

Oh, and hospitals have to halt "non-essential in-patient visits," but this does not include outpatient procedures, pediatric appointments, preventive screenings for cancer and other maladies, or ambulatory services.

So I'm sitting here thinking this isn't going to do any real good, in terms of saving lives or easing the pressure on hospitals and health care workers, but it is going to be hard on a lot of businesses.

I am honestly not sure whether Charlie Baker thinks this will make a difference, or whether he is trying and failing to find a compromise between public health and capitalism, knowing that a significant number of people will be angry no matter what he does.

The text of the order is here.

I am simultaneously pleased and relieved that Biden and Harris won, sad because my aunt just died, and just plain drained, like so many of us.

The last two days, chez redbird:

I've been keeping an eye on the Resistance Labs text-banking Slack, even after the election. This led to me sending a couple of thousand texts at lunchtime Friday inviting people to "Count All the Votes" rallies the next day. I also signed up to go to the one in Boston.

I was already planning to spend the weekend with adrian_turtle; when I told her I was going to be at Copley Square Saturday morning, she said "I'll come with you. So that part was all right.

Shortly after I got to Adrian's on Friday, I saw email from my cousin Anne that her mother, my aunt Lea, had died. This wasn't exactly a surprise, but as one of my other relatives said, she had been hoping for a miracle. [I posted briefly about this on Friday, by email, which means it was access-only until I got a chance to edit it this afternoon.]

Saturday morning we took the T to Copley Square; this was the second time I'd been on a subway train since March, and the first time Adrian had.

There were only a few hundred people at the rally, which made it feel more important that Adrian, cattitude, and I were there. We were sort-of listening to a speech when someone came over to us and told us that Biden had won Pennsylvania. A bit after that, another stranger said that Fox had called the election for Biden. Then the church bells started ringing, and the three of us decided we didn't need to stay in Copley Square but could go look for lunch.

A bit after lunch, I was sitting on Adrian's couch, reading, when I started feeling cold, and then realized that I was shaking. I went over to where Adrian was sitting, asked her to hug me, and then started to weep, while still shaking.

A bit of time, letting the tears out, and good dark chocolate helped settle my mood. I'm still waiting for word on whether there's going to be a Zoom funeral, or what, and if so when. The people who'd want to attend span at least eight time zones, from London to Las Vegas.

Oh, and my birthday is in a couple of days. I had no major plans, but still.

If you're an American citizen and haven't voted yet this year, please do.

If you aren't already registered to vote, you may still have time. I've been doing a lot of get-out-the-vote texting, and if you have questions, I probably either already know the answer or can find it quickly: please ask.

I'm supporting Biden/Harris, and the rest of the Democratic ticket in most places. (I know some states run their primaries differently, and if there's a candidate you're dubious about, follow your own judgment.)

For Massachusetts, YES on ballot question 2, ranked choice voting.

[This may be redundant, but after urging lots of strangers to remind their friends, it would feel remiss not to do the same.]

This round of phone banking went better in the sense that I spent less time on Zoom being trained, and that the zooming was less stressy, I think because there were only three other people, so easier both to follow and to ask a question when I needed to.

I'm less sure about the results. We were calling Maine again, and mostly I got a lot of voicemails (and didn't leave messages). One call I think was successful, in that the person said yes, she was going to vote for Sarah Gideon, Joe Biden, and the rest of the Democratic ticket--but after so many unsuccessful calls, I forgot we were supposed to encourage people to vote by mail. Also one Trump supporter, a couple of people who cut me off quickly, and some wrong numbers and people who told me to take them off our list, which I said I would, and marked the appropriate box.

During the debriefing, I told the organizer I don't much like zoom, and would try to make calls on my own/at other times. I asked her to send me email if the script changes significantly. (These calls were for Maine.)

Then I had a bowl of ice cream, to reward myself for having done the thing. (I don't need a specific reason to have ice cream, but sometimes there is one.)

I know a lot of people just don't answer calls from unknown numbers.

I answer calls from unknown numbers in area codes 617 and 781, because they are reliably calls I want. [This works in part because my cell phone has a New York number.]

A lot of them are from doctors' offices--even in normal times, the number that they're calling me from is often not the one I have stored on my phone. And now, with telemedicine, my doctor is calling me on either her personal cell phone, or maybe a home landline.

The most recent call was from a staffer at my state senator's office, returning my call from Saturday. She wanted to assure me that he is a co-sponsor of the police reform bill, and definitely wants to keep the clause about qualified immunity. I'd not realized he was a co-sponsor, but what I told her was that I know they're getting calls asking them to water it down, so I want him to know that his constituents support it as is.

Another such call, in the Before Times, was from the Belmont Senior Center, to let me know that they'd heard from my doctor and I was cleared to use the fitness room. (I used it twice, then stayed home once out of an abundance of caution, and then they closed it for the duration.)

If I'd written this six months ago, I'd have been noting that I now have a phone contact list full of legislators' offices, which wasn't the case until 2017.