🎱 If Your Rights Didn't Matter, They Wouldn't Be Trying to Take Them Away 🎱
“I saw this huge protest today!” I pulled out my phone to flip through the photos. “Look, there were dozens of women dancing in the street—and some of them were naked! They said they were protesting a governor imprisoning some women unfairly.”
I was at a hostel in Mexico City, talking to a guy named Omar who I’d just met. I didn’t know him much at all, but since I was traveling alone, I was excited to share what I’d seen that day with someone, anyone. I’d run into Omar because he was brushing his teeth and the only sink in the hostel was installed right in the middle of the main hallway, which seems like a funny place to put a sink. He looked through my photos and then spit out toothpaste.
“Do you believe in protest?” he asked, wiping off his mouth.
“Sure I do.”
“Protests never work,” Omar replied. His voice was flat—he wasn’t being mean or egging me on, just sharing an opinion. The statement took me aback and I squinted at him. How old was he? Probably 18, I guess, or 19. I would have been confident enough to make a sweeping statement like that when I was 19. These days, I speak in all asterisks and caveats and cited sources.
“I disagree,” I said. “Will this one protest lead to those women getting out of jail? Probably not. But it forces people to at least talk about the problem. Protests aren’t about creating one specific, immediate change. They build community and get the media to cover issues that they otherwise wouldn’t be.”
“Okay,” Omar said. But then we didn’t have anything else to say to eachother, so I climbed up a precarious metal staircase to the roof and sat up there, looking out at Mexico City’s buildings and trying to decide what I actually thought. I get cynical all the time, too. Does protest actually change anything? It seems like the world is getting worse, not better. We protest, but children are torn away from refugee parents at the border. We protest, but the wealth gap in the United States is bigger than ever. We protest, but half the species on Earth will likely go extinct by the time I reach old age. On bad days, I think we’re just deluding ourselves into thinking that anything we do matters. Capitalism is a bulldozer and it will just keep rolling right along. I should just take a nap and eat some ice cream and call it a life.
But that’s just a piece of the picture. Being able to roll your eyes at protests is an immense privilege—one people usually do only because their own personal rights aren’t in danger. On the roof, I kept thinking about this thing Brittany Packnett wrote, about the news that Ohio has the right to kick thousands of people off its voting rolls: “If voting didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be trying to take away your right to do it.” Same thing with protests—if they were useless, they would be as uncontroversial as Cheerios. Sure, one protest doesn’t lead to one result, but thanks to movements of which protests were an essential part, I can vote. I can decide whether or not I want to have kids. I can get a credit card without needing a husband to sign off on it, which gives me the ability to travel by myself to a foreign country without having to lug along a suitcase full of cash.
Not everyone has the guts to get naked and shake their booty in the middle of a busy Mexico City intersection. But not every protest needs to look that way—sometimes it means just writing an email or asking a question. But whether you “believe” in protest or not kind of doesn't matter. There will always be people out there protesting, people who do believe there can be a better world.
THIS WEEK'S COMIC
Shoutout to the new season of The Handmaid's Tale and especially director Kari Skogland's much-improved Wikipedia page.
STUFF I MADE
An Animated Video About Impeachment - I wrote the final segment in this week’s episode of The Nib Animated! It’s about how it’s basically impossible to impeach the president… but don’t worry, the system is working!
A History Comic About Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash's album "Live at Folsom Prison" came out 50 years ago! The story of the prison is super interesting. I got to write about it for a comic illustrated by artist Joyce Rice.
A Sexy Comic - Last year, I wrote a romantic graphic novel about future Californians growing up on a space station after the terra firma went all Mad Max. The book, Open Earth, comes out in September and just got its first review!
STUFF I LOVE
These Five Female Mexican Illustrators - I got to meet up with some A+ cartoonists in Mexico City last week, plus I stopped by the Mexican illustrators biennial show at the country’s center for digital culture. Here are five women artists whose work I think everyone should know: Alejandra Gámez, Maria Conejo, Camila De La Fuente, Fer Lozada, Rachel Levit Ruiz (whose poster is seen above!).
Isabel Allende - The one book I brought with me to Mexico was a $1 copy of Isabel Allende’s epic 1982 novel The House of Spirits. While it’s a classic, I’d never read it. It’s the best travel book you could want—gripping, emotional, funny, and hard to put down. Honestly, I didn’t meet as many people as I maybe *should* have in Mexico City because all I wanted to do was drink micheladas and read this book by myself. Also, I just read that Hulu is adapting the book into a TV series so read it now to get ahead of the trend.
A California Native Plants Zine - Artist Mariah-Rose Marie M. illustrated this great comic about the Native American occupation of Alcatraz this week for The Nib, which is how I found out about her rad zine detailing California plants species! I bought a digital copy for $5 and have read it cover to cover. Pacific Ponderosa Pines foreverrrrr.
Rough Translation - One of my favorite podcasts is back! Rough Translation is an NPR show about how common things in the U.S. play out in other countries. For example, what are apologies like in Japan?
Argentina’s Pro-Choice Vote!! Speaking of the power of protest... after months of campaigning by reproductive rights advocates, Argentina’s Congress passed a bill that will finally, finally make abortion legal in the country up to 14 weeks. Check out the moving photos of protesters and just try not to shed a tear, I dare you. (Photo below by Martin Acosta)
SOMEONE TO KNOW
Alice Driver - In Mexico City, I was lucky enough to pass some time in a mariachi bar with journalist Alice Driver. In addition to her impressive knowledge of mariachi standards, Alice does really important and excellent reporting on issues of gender and migration in Latin America. Read her most recent story about the mind-boggling level of election-related violence in Mexico (leading up to July’s election, 113 candidates and eight journalists have been killed!) and this illuminating piece about what it’s like being a female reporter often traveling alone across Mexico. Alice also writes beautifully about her home state of Arkansas—I loved this essay about the deadly snakes and clean rivers in the rural area where she grew up.
SOMETHING TO DO
Get Informed on the Muslim Ban
A Supreme Court decision on the infamous Muslim Ban is expected by June 25 at the latest. Now is the time to get in the know on the impact of the law and what people are doing to fight it. I stay up-to-date through the email lists of the Arab American Association of New York and CAIR (and, BTW, I donate to both those groups, too, they do super necessary work around fighting domestic spying and Islamophobia!). Also, my stylish shirt above is sold by Jewish Voices for Peace. Whenever I wear it, it's certainly a conversation starter.
P.S. This summer I'm teaching a writing class for veterans at UPenn. Do you have any writing by veterans you think would be good to share with a group? Please send it my way!
I’ll write to you in two weeks! In the meantime, keep in touch on Instagram and Twitter, okay? If this is your first time seeing this newsletter, you can subscribe here.