a finely tuned response

“Alert all sections.”

“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

we can’t always be our most productive, but there’s a terrible trend of fandom folks feeling bad if they don’t have something new to post every few weeks

you’re still a creative person even if you aren’t creating something at a given time, for whatever reason

Michigan has a Republican legislature. It’s damn near impossible to get anything close to a progressive bill passed, because all the democratic voters are concentrated in like 4 cities.

But! Because we show up to vote, we still have a Democratic Governor, attorney general, Secretary of State, and several county prosecutors.

This means that when Roe fell, the democrat governor had already started the process of appealing to the state Supreme Court to get an injunction on our states abortion ban. The democrat attorney general already promised not to enforce the ban in court, and the democrat prosecutors promised not to bring charges against patients or abortion providers. (Meanwhile, the democrat Secretary of State spent 2020 working to get like, EVERYONE an absentee ballot during Covid as well as applications for ALL future ballots to be sent out, so you ALWAYS know an election is coming months in advance.)

And then, if we can get enough petition signatures, abortion rights will be on the ballot come November.

Even in a state of a few democratic cities in a sea of Republican land, voting all those Democrats into office has been enormously important.

#in light of some disgusting news

A lot of people are REALLY WORRIED about the leaked Alito draft, and for good reason. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, many states will enact trigger laws that revoke the right to safe abortion access. But that doesn’t mean that safe abortions won’t be possible. They’ll just be harder to access.

Fortunately, we aren’t powerless. There are things we can do to help preserve the right to abortion and, if Roe falls, help people get the abortions they need.

Here are some actionable things you can do to help!

Donate to your local abortion fund.

This is a financial commitment, obviously, but these funds are vital to helping people access abortions. There are different types of funds. Practical funds help with transportation, housing, and other practical needs. Clinical funds help with paying for the procedure. Both types of funds are necessary and helpful!

If you’re in a state with protected abortion access, see if there’s a practical fund in your state that you can donate to. These funds make it possible for people for other states to afford travel and lodging in your state. You might also want to consider donating to funds in states or regions that have trigger laws, like the Yellowhammer Abortion Fund, which helps people in Mississippi, Alabama, and the Deep South.

To find an abortion fund in your state, you can google “abortion fund + your state” or open up this google doc that’s a maintained list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-aDTsZXnKhMcrDmtcD35aWs00gw5piocDhaFy5LKDY/preview?pru=AAABgKwRCFs*fZxkvUyYtHx7T4KXmRnOLA

There’s also https://abortionfunds.org/, but as of right now (2 May 2022, right after the SCOTUS leak happened), their website is down. Too much traffic!

Volunteer with a hotline.

As of writing this, a lot of abortion fund websites are completely overwhelmed. Lots of people are rightfully upset and looking for some way to help. Many of these funds have hotlines that you can help out directly from your own phone! Google “abortion fund + your state (or your region) + hotline” and see what comes up. These hotlines are going to be SWAMPED soon and many orgs are going to be onboarding volunteers very quickly to help deal with the onslaught.

Donate to grassroots causes. 

I love Planned Parenthood as much as the next gal, but donating to them isn’t actually going to help as much right now as donating to an abortion fund. Smaller, grassroots networks are going to be more effective at allocating resources to the people who need it most. Independent clinics are also going to need substantial help. Independent clinics provide the majority of abortion care in the US, and many are the only clinics operating in hostile states. Check out https://keepourclinics.org/ if you’re interested in donating.

Make a list of resources.

There are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to have the time or energy or emotional bandwidth to deal with this dumpster fire. If you have the capacity to do so, then maintain a file somewhere with the following information:

- any abortion funds that serve your area with their contact info- email and phone and links

- any abortion hotlines in your area

- national care hotlines, ESPECIALLY RAINN because this is going to be really, really hard on survivors

-a list of crisis pregnancy centers in your area, clearly marked with their names, contact info, and primary links. Make sure that these are highlighted in a way that separates them from the actual abortion providers because these centers are highly predatory and manipulate people who are distressed and confused. If somebody has access to that list and know who’s operating in an area, it might help them avoid these places!

Have this file ready to go so that you can share it with people who are overwhelmed!

Help the safe havens.

Losing Roe feels inevitable at this point. It might not be, but the world is terrifying. However, some states are safe havens and will maintain abortion access, regardless of what SCOTUS eventually decides. Practical access funds in these states will need help because they will help people traveling from unsafe states to safe states. Refer to this map: https://reproductiverights.org/maps/what-if-roe-fell/

Look for funds in states that are blue or yellow. This means they have expanded access or protection if Roe falls. But be sure to hover over and look at the summary of the protection– for example, Florida has abortion protection, but they just passed a 15-week ban. That’s basically protection in name only!

If you’re not sure which practical fund you’d like to support, I highly suggest the Midwest Access Coalition. MAC is based in Chicago and helps people from all over the Midwest come to the city for reproductive healthcare. A lot of the Midwest is really hostile to abortion, so MAC can help a lot of people. But there are many, many others!

Attempting impeachment at this juncture would be effectively a pointless gesture because the process of impeachment would very likely take longer than the two weeks Trump has left in office. Look how long it took to get that nonsense ironed out last time. And even then, it’s not a guarantee.

However. In two weeks, when Trump is no longer president, he is no longer protected by virtue of his office. At which point, there are lawyers in at least three states champing at the bit to nail him on tax evasion, collusion with foreign powers, attempted election fraud, and sedition. And that’s just the shit we can objectively prove from public record. It’s very likely that there will be more. Trump is facing federal charges and probably federal prison, and he knows it.

Speaker Pelosi has just spoken to the press and asked VP Pence and the Senate majority to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office for sedition, and she explicitly expressed plans to move forward with an expedited impeachment. Several of Trump’s cabinet members, including Betsy DeVos, have resigned over yesterday’s events. Insurrectionists are beginning to be identified and losing their jobs over their participation.

Also, they’re not limited by the inauguration date. They can do this afterwards if they have to—and they should, to ensure that he can never hold office again.

The 25th doesn’t prevent him holding office again—and it’s also never going to happen, because Pence is a lily-livered chicken-shit and has been refusing to do it, just like he has for the last four years. The 25th is harder than you think, especially now that half the cabinet seems to be resigning rather than vote to do it.

by C. Hawk Croft, guest contributor

“Yalda Night” (photo: S.Ali.Al Mosawi/Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons)

“"[W]hile we can’t stop the earth from turning, we can choose to experience each revolution so deeply and completely that even the dark becomes luminous…” —Starhawk, in The Spiral Dance

At first glance, it might seem odd to spend the longest night of the year celebrating the return of the sun. It’s dark. The days are short and cold. The warmth of the summer sun seems hidden in the fuzziness of your memory as you sit huddled around the wood stove, wrapped in a blanket and wearing two pairs of old, faithful socks.

For many of our Pagan ancestors, this was the essence of the winter solstice mystery.