I am a VONA (Voices of Our Nations) Fellow, as of 1/15/17

2017 promises to be a rough year, the first of the next four, for progressive people. Like many others who may not have been Hillary Clinton fans, I still woke up with a sense of history on November 8, 2016, and went to the polls excited about voting for the first time in DC and seeing the dawn of a new era with the first American Woman President. I did not even really track the results throughout the day, confident the American people could not really choose to elect a man who campaigned on a platform of xenophobia, sexism, bullying, and so on. I had heard people around me, some of my family included, talk about how much they just did not like Hillary Clinton (which was really surprising to me, I was not a fan, but I actually don't dislike her, more just not super excited by her) and how they actually liked Trump for his economic message. The best clue would have come when my male senior colleague said two weeks before the elections, he talked to many people in power in DC, and don't be surprised if Clinton doesn't win, there is too much feeling that she screwed up too much (after the last set of email investigations, which indeed probably nailed the coffin to her presidential aspirations). Around 9 pm, I finally glanced at the results, and was shocked to see she was not leading. I started sending comforting messages on my FB, already getting a bad feeling the worst was going to happen. I went to sleep relatively early, by 11 pm, already crushed by a sense of doom. I got texts after midnight from women in my family, crying about Trump's win. We all knew how bad it would be for the next four years and mostly, what a slap to all our faces, by all the people who voted for him and said, we did not matter, at least no more than their pocket books. I lay in bed unable to sleep the rest of the night. I could not sleep for the next two weeks and frantically read more news articles about the transition, painfully aware, indeed, I was too lax before, too trusting that other people would take good care of things, and I could rest. No more. The activist artist in me had a rude awakening and is back in operations. Around Thanksgiving, I was writing like crazy, editing for my family project, blogging on the transition, and getting deeper in my poetry. Among other things, I really badly wanted to be a VONA/Loft Fellow, joining Voices of Our Nations, a platform for artist-activists from communities of color, and returning to my literary roots, MN/The Loft. I applied in the midst of Thanksgiving chaos and was accepted. So happy and relieved, others thought I had something worthwhile to write for the world. MLK weekend of 2017: we met, we became family, and I am happy to move forward with a good network of kindred spirits and hearts.