I believe I started my subscription to Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, Letters from an American (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe), around the time of President Trump’s second inauguration. I was so disappointed in my fellow American citizens. I knew the polls were tight, but I just couldn’t believe that the majority of Americans would vote for the man who initiated the attack on OUR US Capitol on January 6. But I was wrong. I had to do a lot of spiritual work to get in a good place about the next four years.

President Trump immediately began demonstrating that for those of us who suffered through his first presidency, this one would be so much worse. He was a bull in a Constitutional china shop, trashing norms, breaking laws, sharing private information with his fellow millionaires, putting horribly incompetent people in charge of our major federal agencies, and so much more.

I knew he was deliberately trying to overwhelm us with shocking offenses against the Constitution, our governmental systems, and just normal expectations of decent behavior. Even for me, who has a higher-than-most tolerance for political activity, it was hard to keep up with all the news and still keep hope for the future.

And then I discovered Heather Cox Richardson. THANK GOODNESS!

Richardson is a college professor of history. Her daily newsletters are honest and backed up with citations for sources or more information, as is the tradition of academic writing. Soon I trusted her to be shining her light on what were really the critical issues of that day. Her writing is sparse, based on facts rather than rumors or judgements, and no nonsense without getting pedantic. And she supplements the newsletters with free live sessions on YouTube where she shows more of her humor, heart, and humanity.

But not only does she distill the the most significant political events of the time into a newsletter that only takes a few minutes a day to read, but she is uplifting. She believes in the power of the American people and the American political system. Even more, she reminds us that we’ve been here before. And the American people and the American system have always won. The Civil War was perhaps the first example of a small cadre of extremely rich people who wanted to overlook our fundamental American values because they made tremendous fortunes treating people as their property, not the free and independent beings they are promised to be in our Constitution. Later it was the Robber Barons who tried to maximize their wealth by opposing labor unions and business regulations that protected the workers from cruel, unhealthy, unfair, and dangerous treatment by their employers. In the 1920s it was the rich elite who fought the kinds of laws meant to prevent the financial collapse that resulted in the Great Depression. For each of these challenges, eventually the rights of the people prevailed over the greed, corruption, and power mongering of the 1%.

So I love her because she puts our problems into the larger context. I say all the time that I have the right to vote, not because the white men in charge of things back then suddenly decided it wasn’t fair that half of all Americans couldn’t vote. I have that right because my foremothers marched and held hunger strikes and wrote and harangued legislators and got thrown in jail and disrupted societal norms until it became obvious that things could not continue until women were also given the right to vote.

Thus, when I get discouraged or exhausted or fed up, I think of them. They stood up and fought for my right to vote. So how can I not do the same for the generations of my son and if not grandchildren, for my grand nieces and nephews?

But, back to Heather Cox Richardson. A week ago Sunday (it’s early voting days here, so I’ve been spending more time getting out the vote than writing blog posts), Red Wine and Blue hosted a TAKE BACK NORTH CAROLINA WITH HEATHER COX RICHARDSON session…and not just in North Carolina but in my home town of Cary! I couldn’t believe it! I had recently celebrated a birthday and thought this was my final birthday present! She was also doing a fundraiser that evening for the NC Legislature Democrats, so it was a busy day for her. But because this was a rally the volunteers to get out the vote, our event was free.

Of course I signed up immediately. A couple of days before the event, I got an email that said because of the level of activity I had been doing to share their Voters Guide with my friends and neighbors and coworkers, I was eligible to sit in the VIP section! I ended sitting at a table next to the stage itself, from which I took the picture above. I was sitting only about 10 feet away from this icon! She was introduced and interviewed a bit by Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue (the one wearing the RWB tee shirt).

So there I was, just thrilled I was in a front row seat to see this brilliant and funny woman who has meant so much to me during these past two years. Then someone was walking through the crowds calling out my name. I identified myself to her. She said that because I was one of the top 5 people in North Carolina in terms of using the RWB app for voter education, I was invited to go backstage and hang out with THE Heather Cox Richardson for 20 minutes before the event began.

I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t think I had done THAT much. But of course I said, Wonderful!

I spent the next 20 minutes with like 10 other people talking to HCR. She is so down to earth and funny and brilliant and inspiring and just all-around-GREAT. People took photos of us together as a group, and then individually, with her. She answered some of our questions and we answered some of hers. We got some spoilers about her upcoming book. I not only got a photo, but I asked if she would be OK if we hugged. She laughed and said of course, and we had a lovely hug. I was the only one of the group who asked for that, so I was the only she hugged. A great reminder that you have to ask for what you want.

So that was fantastic…kind of a dream come true. And then we got into the real session. There was lots going on, but all very inspirational. But here is what I remember most.

She said this was going to be known as the gray-haired women’s rebellion. She confirmed that the official numbers back up what had been my experience…that the majority of the people attending rallies and running these turn out the votes and leading marches to the polls were middle-aged to elder females. She said that due to policies like Title 9 and equal rights legislation and broken glass ceilings and access to health care and birth control and abortions and such, ours is the first generation of women who can pretty much count on 20 or more years after raising our families. She also said all that experience of raising children in these days–all the scheduling and transporting around soccer practice and dance classes, the zone defense of one mom taking the middle schools from several families to their events while another take the high schoolers to theirs and yet another handling the elementary crowd, the organizing and pulling off PTA fundraisers and trunk and treats, the spreadsheets of which child needs what doctor’s appointment at what time, the multiple pot luck dinners, and such–those hone the basic skills needed for political organizing. And so really it is women who are driving the rallies to save democracy these days. (Note: All that is paraphrased, and includes some things I’ve heard her say other times. But women have been taking the lead in this effort to oppose the current push towards autocracy.)

She also said that the fight doesn’t end November 4. If we can win back the US House and/or Senate, we have much more power to conduct investigations and oppose illegal actions and get Congress back into actually doing something again. But we can’t really change things significantly until we get a progressive, presumable Democractic…but who knows? President elected in 2028. Historically, it is the President elected after a terrible President who has the power and the good will of the American people to do something major like FDR and the New Deal. So we need to be prepared to keep up the fight until that happens.

Many of my friends love her like I do, so I wanted to share my experience. It was great being in her energy. And it was also great to be in a roomful of mostly women, but a few men as well, who are absolutely committed to doing whatever they can to reclaim our democracy and to restore the power of the people over the billionaires and the politicians who have been complicit in allowing this administration to break our laws, our values, and the Constitution itself.

In North Carolina, we have 5 more days of early voting, then Election Day itself on Tuesday, November 3. Whatever your politics are, please go vote. Democracy works best when we all participate. I don’t care if you disagree with me. I still want you to vote with me.