Literary Pixie

On Thursday, November 12, I attended Aloud on Ideas: Where Does Democracy Go From Here in the Mark Taper Forum at the Central Library. Thoughts and ideas and feelings rushed to me in a jubilant grief that I just need to share with you.

I haven’t written an event review in a while. It used to be my thang! In college and after college, I was the Literary Pixie going about experiencing and writing about my experiences on my blog. For the last couple of years, I have gone very quiet. I became stifled by the stress of being a teacher.

Recently, the voice in my chest had become so frantic and despairing that I had to let her out. It was like having a wolf locked in my rip cage desperate to rejoin her pack.

And so while the world processes the fact that Donald Trump is president-elect AGAIN, I am celebrating my freedom. I apologize therefore if I say things that are not quite accurate or aware of the social climate right now.

As my welcome party back to being mentally able to care about what’s going on in the world other than trying to resolve my own suffering, I decided to go to the Where Does Democracy Go From Here event. I thought it sounded optimistic and would be philosophical and utopian. I hoped to meet like-minded people who care about making Los Angeles (and therefore the world) a better place.

My friend who is a DC bro living in LA was gonna come with me, but he was too sad from the election results to come with. I went sola.

It was a panel of journalists moderated by Todd Purdum. The journalists were both seasoned vets and the next generation of leaders – Elaine Plott Calabro, Adam Nagourney, and Brianna Tucker.

All of them covered the elections and wrote for mainstream publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico.

While they said they did not want the talk to be a post-mortem of the election results, it was. This made sense because they are all full-time journalists covering the election. This is what they know. They are not academics or philosophers or organizers. Their job is to objectively document the election campaigns.

This is what they shared with us, how they were not as surprised as us Angelenos that Trump won the election. How people of color voting for Trump was not that surprising either, and that this revealed how much the Democrats had taken for granted those votes, and how they couldn’t do that again. Elaine shared how this gave her hope that things were indeed moving in an improved direction.

Brianna shared that someone she spoke to who voted for Trump despite being a person of color and thus attacked by Trump’s comments said, “Just because someone looks like you, doesn’t mean they are for you.”

That statement I believe is moving the world forward, albeit confusing in this context. We can’t just trust people at how they look or even what they say – these things are both out of our control and easy to control. We have to look at their behavior, at their values and beliefs, and who they have been over a long period of time to truly build trust.

Oddly – this statement was said about Donald Trump who in my opinion has not earned the trust of the American people by this metric, but alas – when you only have two choices in a country of 334.9 million people, it’s not really a fair competition.

They also shared, which my parents echoed, that the reason Donald Trump won was about priorities. They didn’t care that he is a racist, asshole, they care that he prioritizes the economy and the US’s financial plans because that is their deepest fear and deepest need – financial stability.

I resonate with this. It takes money to have empathy. You can’t be in survival mode to be compassionate and help others. I know this deeply, this is why I have burnt out of teaching and am on sick leave for the next two months. I kept asking for help and compassion and support, but the people around me couldn’t help me because they were also in survival mode.

Growing up in Calabasas, I noticed that the most generous people were also the most wealthy who were born into money. They didn’t have to work hard and make sacrifices to get where they were. They were born with a silver spoon and so they too thought everyone was entitled to a silver spoon. However, if you ever tried to take their silver spoon from them! Oh, temper tantrums and threats of lawyers and do you know who I am that would make you want to move 5,000 miles away to a remote fishing village.

I do have some empathy for them, I too grew up with a spoon in my mouth – a bronze spoon (upper-middle class) – and because of this privilege and seeing the difference between my experience and others – and knowing that it was the privilege I was born into that has rescued me from homelessness, unemployment, and health problems – I too believe that all people deserve these resources and support in order to be able to successfully navigate life’s challenges.

To me, this is the point of living in a society all together and this is the role of people with power and privilege, to use it to improve the quality of lives of others and bring people up with them.

After the talk, we were able to ask a few questions. I was relieved that some of my questions were brought up.

One person asked about why we had to have the two party system given that in other countries, they don’t have that. This question was evaded and not answered, although one of the speakers said, “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s not a sport at all.”

I found this funny and thought that actually in the USA, we had turned democracy into a sport with winners and losers, one team vs another, and that this was indeed the problem. When in reality, when the government fails – we all lose – and that we are actually all on the same team.

I too wonder why we only have two parties, and started to imagine what I would have to do to start another political party. What would we call it? What would our policies be?

A question I didn’t ask, but I have also been pondering is why we have to remain in the Union? Can we choose to leave it or modify our system to be more like the EU? If so many people feel disenfranchised and not represented by the government, then maybe we need to change the system. Maybe we need to make it smaller?

This is a thought that I have been having a lot. Especially in Los Angeles – I mean we have more people in LA county than many countries in the World and many states in America – and yet we have the same amount of control. To me, that’s the first problem we need to solve and no amount of improving the democratic parties or changing presidents will fix that.

Overall, it was a really thought-provoking event with some really high-caliber journalists who care and take their jobs very seriously. While it wasn’t the event I thought it would be, I’m very glad I went and it was a very valuable experience.

There was a Young Literati reception after (I’m a member!) and I had some great conversations with other people. Us sola ladies found each other and validated our ideas – that we thought it would be more philosophical than it was, and why two parties, and why not a different type of Union.

It felt spiritual to be here, as one of the people I spoke to had the same name as me and the other was also a teacher who was having a hard time.

The other teacher and I took the metro home together and the universe was with us in this hard time and my body dazzled with hope feeling like maybe LA could love me, I just had to let it.

My intention in blogging again is to have interesting discussions and learn and grow from each other, so here are some questions. Comment below!

• What do you think of the US elections?
• Where do you think democracy will go?
• How do you think democracy got here?
• If you were to start a new political party, what would you call it? What would your big policies be?

If you want to come with me next time to an event, contact me!