Opinions are divided in the agrarian town of Chinchero, where the airport is slated to open in 2025
It’s basically as bad as it sounds
They started breaking ground in 2019 but the government has been trying to build this airport since 2011. More and more of the locals don’t want it because of how it’ll destroy the area even though they’ve been offered a lot of money for their land and promised jobs. None of the scientists who work in the area want it. South America like Chile/Bolivia/Peru/Ecuador/etc etc etc are such unique and old places. The ecology in South America is so special and has species that are nowhere else in the world. The landscape is unusual and special. The people there have been able to maintain traditions despite colonization in a lot of cases. The artifacts there are priceless, we’ve lost so so so much to colonization, knowledge, architecture, culture, artifacts. These areas are delicate and need protection. A lot of the governments in South America have corruption, like anywhere else. The people and land are constantly sacrificed. The Atacama desert in Chile has so so much to protect and they’re mining nonstop for copper, polluting water, evicting eighty year olds and disabled people to make way for construction, piping away their water and plowing through a delicate desert ecosystem. There’s a clothes dump so big there you can see it from space
There’s so so much to lose in South America. If you visit the altiplano in Bolivia, there are native farmers living out there essentially off grid. Chile has many indigenous groups still despite being so industrialized. We still have Quechua, Aymara and Mapuche being spoken every day. The landscape MATTERS to us. It breaks my heart to see the land so disrespected and ruined. The people are connected to the land. You can talk to almost any indigenous group and they’ll tell you the same thing. It’s a cultural thing that was passed down for thousands of years. The shapes the mountains make against the sky, the way a lake sits between the hills, flocks of guanaco and vicuña grazing. The landscape is sacred and old
I know there are ecological battles everywhere right now with the rich and powerful crushing anyone in their way. I just had to say something because this hits so close to home and I ache thinking about my homelands being destroyed beyond recognition. I’m haunted by the sculpture in the middle of Inca ruins that’s an exact tiny replica of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. The very shape of the rocks is special to us
"We're living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow" sure is the mood right now, huh.
Okay, had some thoughts, slept on it, had more thoughts. Woke up this morning and there are some (understandably) very worried folks in my notes/DMs, asking if this is the End end. As ever, I am but an old gay academic on the internet. My opinion is not more special or more insightful than anyone else's. But if you want my thoughts, here they are.
First: the U.S. isn't in the "imminent" or "approaching" stages of fascism. At least as far as the president and the ruling junta are concerned, and in regard to what they're trying to do, this is full-out, blood-and-soil, grab-people-off-the-streets-to-send-to-concentration-camps-without-trial fascism. The reason they have not been able to do everything they planned is due to a) considerable and vigorous resistance from multiple levels of American society, and b) federal judges. Everyone say Thank You, Federal Judges. They are the only thing keeping the Turd Reich in check right now, because the GOP-controlled Congress is waving handkerchiefs and cheering all the way. If Trump and the withered skinsuit of white supremacist evil known as Stephen Miller were able to do what they wanted with genuinely no interference from the courts, this would be unspeakably bad. And y'know. It's already bad.
I am not here to tell anyone to Pollyanna it out or just think happy thoughts or whatever else. This is very bad. We have to acknowledge the badness of it and to understand that this is what happens when you voluntarily give power back to a miserable reactionary fascist regime that repeatedly announced its intentions to do exactly this. Except too many Americans went "lol that's funny he's such a joker" and voted for him anyway. I'm very curious how the Both Parties Are The Same crowd would like to explain the fact that literally none of this was happening at the same time last year, when Democrats still held the House and Senate, but that's another post and I'm tired of arguing with their anti-reality doomster Horseshoe Theory vortex of stupidity. So. Moving along. It's done now, it happened. What next?
Here's the important thing which you have to understand: this hysterical overreaction -- National Guard, trampling on state sovereignty, Marines in the streets, declaring open war on LA and wherever else the ICE Gestapo is being sent -- is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of a weak, failing, and flailing psychopathic old dementia patient who has realized that destroying American democracy on behalf of his Kremlin paymasters and alt-right tech bros (though too bad, so sad, #Trumpsk ended in Pride Month!) is going to be a hell of a lot harder than he thought. Trump just spent the week getting mocked, ridiculed, emasculated, and made to look weak and stupid. Musk turned on him and blew up the Big Beautiful Bill, which was already having a hard time in the Senate. Judges are almost automatically ruling against him at this point. He was even forced to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the US from the Salvadoran gulag and get Fascist Barbie Bondi to concoct some other BS charges to try him on. The point is, TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. He is weak, he's failing, people keep fighting him and winning, he just got major-league embarrassed by his Ex Bestie, and his stupid budget bill just got a lot harder to pass. So what do you do, if you're Donald Trump? You lash out at your favorite target, That Dadgum Gay Liberal Commie Immigrant Refuge, California.
This is what fascists do when cornered, thwarted, and made to look stupid: they try to do the only thing they can do, which is an overwhelming show of brute force. Please remember that this is also happening because said withered skinsuit of white supremacist evil, Stephen Miller, is upset that they haven't managed to "cleanse" the country of every single immigrant yet. It is also openly admitted by Orange Hitler's Favorite Special Little Boy that a big part of their plan is to cause enough terror to force immigrants to self-deport, or just voluntarily pack up and leave because they think this well-oiled terror machine will come for them next. Now. Listen. I have zero, ZERO right to tell any non-citizen living in the US right now what to do or how to feel. If you just want to get out before you do have to risk going through that, it is completely and utterly valid.
However.
This is your home too. You belong here. If you decide that if they want you out, they'll have to fight you the whole way, then you could and should do that. Those of us who are U.S. citizens have a right to stand up with you, not least since the Turd Reich is already musing about finding ways to do the same things to us. Nobody is safe. This is way past the "first they came for" lines of the poem; they want to get everyone if they can, for the tiniest and most minute infractions against Donald of House Putin, First Of His Name. See above: we're in the full-blown fascism stage. I am not minimizing or ignoring that.
But still.
If you do the usual Doomer Leftist Edgelord Internet Thing and go "lol well guess Trump is a dictator for life now and there will be no more elections and we live in Gilead forever," often with barely-disguised glee that at least those stupid liberals are getting punished, you're, well, also a fascist. You're accepting and glorifying fascist narratives, you're exalting fascist power, you are once more making the fascists look cool and inevitable and like there's no point at all in fighting. Nota Bene: This does not refer to the people who are genuinely terrified and despairing and thinking that this is in fact the end and there's no more point in fighting. You're scared. I'm scared too. I see that and I feel it and I know, I know, I know. But you can still control what you say and how you react and the messages that you spread in response. If you're just reblogging a lot of unsourced screenshots and panic-mongering posts: maybe don't do that. Think about what you're putting out there and how you're reacting. If you don't feel like you can do that, get off the internet, stop looking at the news (which also has a vested interest in making everything look apocalyptic) and take a breath. It will still be there tomorrow.
At times like these, all we can do is hold onto each other and take some comfort in the fact that time still creeps in a petty pace from day to day. The Terrible Future still will not happen all at once and in a giant blob of awful and with no chance to change it. Nothing is predetermined and nothing is inevitable. Everything will still happen one day at a time, and that means we have to use the time as best we can. If you feel like this is in fact the End for you and you need to get out, well, go ahead and make those preparations if you can. But also recognize that everyone is in fight-or-flight mode right now, that is a screaming panic response, and while you shouldn't downplay the danger, you also shouldn't up and run because your scared animal brain thinks that is the only thing left to do. We are still here. You are still here. I am still here. We can still do something as we choose.
I hate the fact that we have to quote Gandalf like, all the goddamn time right now, but it's still true. All you have to do is choose what to do with the time that is given to you, etc. You still have a life. You still have a choice. You still have time. It is not done, it is not the end, and goodness knows the world isn't over now because Donald Trump got mad again and threw a hissy fit because he had a really sucky week and got publicly dumped by Elon Fucking Musk (again, lololololol). Things are very bad, but the point of my original post above was that even when you're living through an awful historical event (yet again, I hate this timeline), ordinary life still goes on. You have to focus on what you control and do what you can with it. It's not about hope so much as confounded stubbornness. If those idiot weaksauce fascist losers want to get you, make it as hard as fucking possible for them, and part of that IS just refusing to accept that they have that power, or any power. You can think whatever you want, but if you just say out loud, "Fuck you. This is stupid. You are going to fail because you're failures and you can't make me afraid," weirdly, it really does help.
Great post from an always smart and thoughtful blogger and I only want to add: we WILL see the end of this. He WILL leave office again. He WILL die one day. Democrats WILL take back Congress (I'm repeating myself, but remember Mike Johnson saying Trump's presidency is basically over if the House flips). Democrats WILL win the White House again. We WILL be there to celebrate every single one of these events. Anyone saying these things won't happen is obeying in advance, even if it comes from a place of genuine distress. We will be here when that pig is in the ground.
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old running for Congress in Illinois, is spending her campaign dollars in a whole new way.
"Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old running for Congress in Illinois’ 9th congressional district, isn’t shy about her belief that politicians need to do things differently.
“We have a representation problem,” the first line of the “About” page on her website reads.
“As in, about half of Congress are millionaires and people born before the Moon landing. And that's part of the reason we're in this mess: Our leaders are out of touch.”
A journalist, social media influencer, and political commentator that GQ called “a lefty,” with a mission to revitalize the Democratic party, Abughazaleh built a following online before she launched her campaign in March of 2025.
But now, she’s leveraging her platform — and campaign dollars — to help people in her community before ballots are even filled in.
“My congressional campaign is feeding people right now,” she starts in a recent TikTok video.
“Part of the reason I decided to run was because I saw how much money gets wasted in politics, and I thought, ‘What if we spent it differently?’”
She adds that the campaign is focused on “direct action and mutual aid,” emphasizing that she wanted her run for office to be “dual-purpose,” in which she can get her message out and help people in the process.
It’s a stark pivot from the traditional way of campaigning in the United States, which often includes pricey fundraising galas, attack ads, big billboards, and perhaps the most criticized and unpopular feature: massive donations from private businesses and interest groups.
Abughazaleh has publicly congratulated the former incumbent of this seat — 80-year-old Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has held the title since 1999, the year Abughazaleh was born — for her “decades of service.”
Rep. Schakowsky will not seek reelection, but Abughazaleh called for others to run, hoping to participate in the “first competitive Democratic primary in the District since 1998.”
Abughazaleh has also shared that the average donation her campaign receives is $31. And according to GQ, 1,000 people signed up to volunteer for her campaign within a week of her initial announcement.
And while that volunteering does include marketing, canvassing, and getting the word out, it mostly adds up to actual on-the-ground volunteer work to help people in the local community.
“Our kick-off event, for instance, didn’t charge $500 a plate,” Abughazaleh shared in her TikTok. “People just had to bring a box of pads or tampons, which were donated to Chicago’s period collective. By the end of the night, we had gathered over 5,600 period products, which went to people who can’t afford them.”
Most recently, the campaign hosted a food drive for a local community fridge program.
“We asked folks to come out and donate food in exchange for a campaign yard or window sign,” Abughazaleh said. “And by the end of the day, we were able to fully stock the empty pantry and fill the fridge with frozen meals, produce, and eggs. That’s feeding people right now.”
“Don’t worry, we checked to make sure this is legal," she added. "And it is."
The campaign has also launched a High School Public Serve Grant program that encourages local youth to submit ideas for how to make the community better, and Abughazaleh’s campaign will support it with money, materials, volunteers, and her online platform...
“Something you’ll rarely see is concrete help in their communities during the campaign,” she said. “And frankly, to me, that just seems stupid. Not only do you get to help people — supposedly what you’re running to do — but it also shows what you’re about, instead of just providing lip service.” ...
“If every campaign adopted this model, then we wouldn’t be wasting money every single cycle. Every city, town, and village across America would be improved by their election process, and I think it would also get people more involved,” she said.
“We have local folks who have never voted in an election, but they joined our volunteer Discord server because they want to help, they feel like they have something to vote for.”
For those who might be inspired enough to run for office with this model, she says: Full steam ahead.
“Frankly, I would love it if other campaigns took our model. Use it, pretend it’s yours, I don’t care!” she wrapped up her TikTok.
“Pair with organizations in your community that have been doing the work, talk with local experts, and try to spearhead any initiatives you can to show your values and help your constituents. It’s really that easy.”
The Crips for eSims for Gaza Bundle will soon be live!
https://itch.io/b/2965/crips-for-esims-for-gaza-bundle
Game devs and artists around the world have contributed over 200 video games, TTRPGs, zines, comics, & more in support of this fundraiser for Crips for eSims for Gaza.
Every $16 purchase covers the cost of an eSim activation to help connect Palestinians in the occupied territories and beyond.
On sale April 28-May 20!
Y’all I want to throw massive kudos out to the Roger Williams Park Zoo for a choice they made today: rather than joining in on a GenAI trend all the zoos are doing right now, they chose to support and spotlight an artist on their staff!
The big thing right now is these GenAI “figurine toys” of zookeepers or zoo management. And instead they shared a version drawn by one of their staff!
Go give them some love, if you’re on FB. Too many zoos are really getting into GenAI and just whitewashing the climate change / copyright issues that come with it, so I want this zoo to get as much positive feedback as we can muster for making a better choice.
I’d like to shout out the Museum of Life and Science, who did the same thing! They’re an AZA facility in Durham, NC
In their caption they wrote:
“Your favorite action figures' favorite action figures. We love a trend, but we love our visual designer Erynn even more. Shout out to her for helping us join the fun!”
Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.
It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.
This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.
Join me below, if you would.
2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.
Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.
It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.
But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.
The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.
“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”
“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”
We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.
"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?
The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.
We had slightly miscalculated.
Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.
“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”
“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”
“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”
“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”
And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.
00000
We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.
It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.
At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.
Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.
So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.
“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.
“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.
Monday is the last day to do this, after all.
00000
So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.
The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.
“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”
So.
Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?
Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.
It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).
Then it starts to rain.
We had not dressed for rain.
00000
Here is how the next six hours go.
We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.
Everyone is so happy.
Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.
People online start making delivery orders.
Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.
A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.
The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.
A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.
Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.
00000
We have Line Neighbors.
Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.
The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.
Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”
“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”
“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”
My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.
“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.
“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”
We stay in line.
It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.
The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.
We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.
It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.
They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.
We still have a -long- way to go.
00000
They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.
It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”
We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.
We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.
I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.
The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.
Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.
The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.
A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“
The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”
We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.
If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.
That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.
There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.
We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)
I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.
There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.
Then we're married.
Then we get in line to get our license.
It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.
Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.
We make it to the marriage records office.
I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.
It's almost 3PM.
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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.
We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.
I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”
He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.
Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.
We get back to our car and climb in.
It’s 4:30 and we are starving.
There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.
We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.
We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.
The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.
My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”
00000
It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”
But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.
It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.
I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.
We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.
Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.
It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.
Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"
And that was that.
00000
When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.
I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.
I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.
I never thought I’d live in this world.
And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.
I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.
The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.
And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.
oh hell yeah salamander time
I love salamanders and how they can't hunt :) i mean they can, but they mostly try :) this is Barro and Charco after their first rain of the spring, in Chiapas, Volcán tacaná! the bug right there is a Nucú, they are more of summer, but I wanted to add the nucú cause its very iconic!
Thank you Lilith Vázquez for your help with Charco's cleanup!
The Far-Fetched animated pilot Kickstarter PRE-LAUNCH needs YOUR SUPPORT! The future of indie animation is in your hands. Sign-up, spread the word, and let's get this motor going!
An animated horror comedy about a rock band of misfits filming a music video that’s so lame, monsters try to kill them.
Here’s the opposite story, though. With apologies because I don’t have the book in front of me, so I may get some details wrong, but I read this “Irena’s Children“ by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.
It’s about a bus driver.
It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.
And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.
And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.
and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,
“Where do you need to go?”
And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.
So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.
I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.
We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.
And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.
as in you'll never achieve the perfect daily routine, sleep schedule, coping mechanisms, mannerisms, fashion sense etc. even after years and years of healing and improvement and self-discovery. you will never be so good at life that you manage to utilize every waking moment. its great to be productive and all but sometimes you'll suck ass. sometimes you'll take eight hours to be done with a twenty minute job. you'll prioritize the wrong thing. you'll sleep for 12 hrs just to avoid being awake. you'll relapse. and you'll relapse again. you'll forget to turn in the assignment. you'll order too little food. life is far too large and complex for you to even experience it completely, much less try to make sense of and control it. you can't. please give up on that and be at peace with the hours you lose. they are not separate from your life.
