I’m sorry.

I know I’ve fallen out of communication for several weeks now. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in touch. Part of it was that I’ve just been really busy. I teach at a year-round school, so I taught the last day of school for 2024 (Wednesday July 2) and the first day of school 2025 (Monday July 7). Other than that, I’ve been working on a couple of projects I hope to be able to announce soon.

So, yes, I’ve been busy. But I’ve also been conflicted. Of all of our democratic values, I think the right to choose our representatives to decide our laws is the most fundamental. So while so many of President Trump’s policies have…let’s just call it “bothered me,” …his directive to Texas Governor Abbot to redistict the state to eliminate 5 minority-oriented districts that tend to vote Democratic and to redesign them to create more Republican respresentatives in the US Congress pushed me over the edge.

Like most good Democrats, exemplified by Al Gore, I accept that when we lose, we lose. The other team gets to play their game/enact their policies, and we’ll see the public’s agreement with or opposition to their results in the next election. This has been my approach to this Adminstration’s governance, as much as I disagree with most of it most of the time.

But what I’m not OK with is for the ruling party trying to rig the rules to ensure they get the results they want. So for President Trump to call up Texas Governor Abbott to redistrict the state to create more Republican representatives is ABSOLUTELY NOT OK with me.

Then Democrats started saying we should fight fire with fire and redistrict Democratic-leaning states. And that has really pushed me into a space of contemplation and, honestly, inaction.

I’m a Broadway show lover, especially of Steven Sondheim’s. This year I got to watch a production of Merrily We Roll Along by Burning Coal Theatre Company. It is one of the few Sondheim shows I’ve never seen, and I LOVED how Burning Coal presented it

In that show, one of the top songs starts with these lines

Not a day goes by
Not a single day

I will say as a teacher, just about every day one student hits or insults or scribbles on another’s paper or does something else unkind to another student. I ask them why they did that, and they claim the other student did it to them first. And I always, ALWAYS respond that just because someone else did something wrong does not give them permission to do something wrong. Wrong is wrong, period.

So I’ve been kind of paralyzed the past few weeks. Democrats I respect have been saying that blue states should redistrict as well. But I’ve had this feeling that if we do the same thing, we are descending to their level of cheating, which I don’t like. I’ve kind of been stuck in that space for a while now.

But this week, this man threaded the needle I couldn’t thread…..

California Governor Gavin Newsom

So Gov. Newsom was the first (at least that I heard about) to push back against the Texas project. He basically said, You want to create 5 more Republican districts? I can eliminate all 9 of the Republican districts in California.

Which part of me loved. And another part of me felt was wrong.

In California, the Governor/government can’t just redistrict willy-nilly, which apparently is the case in Texas. The new districts have to be approved by a referendum of the people. But in his presentation of the new districts this week, Governor Newsom included these conditions:

1. That the redistriction would be temporary (not sure what that is supposed to mean, but great)
2. That the redistriction would only happen if Texas redistricted their state

For me, that was brilliant. It allows us to fight back without embracing what to me is the clearly wrong practice of drawing the district to disinfranchise some voters over others.

I tend to think of myself as an “and” person–I like to have X and Y instead of having to choose between them. Governor Newsom has given an “and” approach that I had never considered. I acknowledge him for that, as well as being one of the leaders against the terrible situation happening in Texas.

And so I’m back. And not just on the blog. I was at my beloved Farmers Market this morning and saw a friend who told me about an impromptu pop-up protest in our town about the Texas redistricting issue. I had some casual plans for the afternoon, but I immediately decided this was more important. So I went, albeit with a reused sign instead of creating a new one, as I’ve been doing for my previous protests. And so I stood in 85+ degrees sun for an hour holding up my protest sign and smiling and waving at the people driving by.

And you know what? I had a fabulous time and wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else or doing anything else.

So I am truly back.

On top of everything else, this is a reminder that one person can change your life. For me today, it was one national person and one local person. But tomorrow, that one person could be you. Maybe not for me, but for whoever comes into your sphere of influence. Please, be that person who helps someone else to find the light when they are in dark times.

PS. If you aren’t familiar with Merrily We Roll Along, or the song “As the Days Go By,” here is a version with one of Sondheim’s favorite actresses, Bernadette Peters. It is a song that is much more dramatic than I’ve been feeling lately, but also captures my recent attitude about current politics. At least I hope mine will only last until 2028…not until the day I die.