Maybe Courage Grows with Each Simple Act
Preview of Sunday’s Letters to Bette from activist Julie DeLaurier
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I reached out to Bette members last week, requesting your letters for publication on Sunday so we have a document of this moment in time. I am receiving amazing notes from many of you, and I am sending you this preview letter from activist Julie DeLaurier, who is among the Bette All-Stars who will be returning for Tuesday’s Happy Hour with the Winner’s Circle.
With Truth Tuesdays (@ TruthOverFox) and Rise and Resist New York (@ RiseandResistNY), Julie has been protesting on the streets in front of Fox News at noon to 1 ET for four years. She also made her voice heard in front of the New York Times at a recent protest and last week, she posted up in front of Madison Square Garden. She has cautioned us not to wait to hit the streets if necessary. Peaceful protests are patriotic. Julie is a patriot.
Here is her Letter to Bette…
Julie DeLaurier, right, protesting in front of Madison Square Garden, Oct. 27, 2024
LETTERS TO BETTE
"Simple acts done by simple people." An examination of courage.
By Julie DeLaurier, November 1, 2024
I've been a nervous wreck. We all have. Word has it, it's tough to get a shrink appointment in this town. The shrinks need shrinks. Xanax is flying off pharmacy shelves.
We're on the brink of fascism. What do you expect? Contingency plans are being made. Irish grandmother? Italian father? Rifle through old papers for their birth certificates, just in case.
A few activist friends came over after we protested Trump's rally last Sunday, as my place is a short walk from Madison Square Garden. We needed to detox and process. We've been pushing back against Trump as a group (Rise and Resist) since November 2016. But never have we encountered this scale of MAGA ugliness — and in our blue, blue, progressive town, no less. (Of course, the MAGA crowd nearly all bussed and trained in from New Jersey and Long Island — some hardcore cultists flew in from even redder places.) As our coffee klatch was breaking up, I stopped my friends with one last question: If "it" happens, we'll keep going, yes? As exhausted as we are, as badly as I want to leave this behind like soldiers demobilized after WWII, we'll meet this moment?
We stood silent. And then, resolve. Yes. We will. We'll take a breath, we'll regroup and move forward. Of this much, now I am sure.
So, back to contingency plans. I have none. Whatever happens after November 5th, I'm not leaving. Should the worst happen, I may finally find out what stripe of courage I have.
I'm in awe of Russian dissidents, Iranian women who burned their hijabs, the '60s Freedom Riders, poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The kind of courage my father had, who signed up to fight Nazis fully expecting to be killed.
Read this book: "A Woman of No Importance." It's a serious page turner -- the story of Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who spied behind enemy lines in France, of whom the Gestapo wrote: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." I can't fathom her courage, and would be thrilled to have even a microscopic drop of it.
Which brings me to the play I saw last night. "Vladimir," about a Russian journalist in the early days of Putin as he tightened his grip on power. The journalist calls Putin a “little man” whose only “talent is finding ugliness and knowing how to use it.”
Sound familiar? Her courage, too, is unfathomable. She says to a New York bookstore audience that “simple acts done by simple people” are a weapon against fascists like Putin. “And it’s not deadly, this weapon,” she says. “But I think it’s very dangerous. Little men are very frightened of it.” Tomorrow, she tells the audience, she will fly back to Russia. She's already been poisoned once, and fully understands Putin will have her killed. She's going back because it's her home. Because there, "I can be useful."
So, that's my lesson from last week and last night. We are all "simple people" and we can do "simple acts" against fascists. Just take a breath, and do the next thing.
Maybe courage grows with each simple act.
Or perhaps the best will happen. Perhaps President Harris will prevail and we can spend our days shoring up our democracy so future malignant narcissists can't ever bring us to this brink again.
I pray I can stay in distant awe of courage. But let's be willing to find out.—Julie DeLaurier, Truth Tuesdays and Rise and Resist New York
Author’s note: Reminder, the deadline for your letter to be included in Bette’s Sunday Letters is today at 5 pm Pacific.
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