fabrisse

When I lived in Belgium in my late teens, we were thirty years removed from WWII. Belgium had surrendered before any shots were fired on them, something many older Belgians hated, so they were never the battleground as they had been during WWI. In some ways, WWI had a greater impact on the Brussels that I knew.

Having said that, I met one of Dad's Dutch colleagues who had run errands for the Dutch resistance when he was approximately 11-16. He lived through the famine the Germans helped create by eating tulip bulbs as so many of them did. As many of them did, he died in his early 60s of stomach cancer. There's no proof that the bulbs led to the cancer, but it is a specific cluster.

The Baroness who lived downstairs from us was a full grown woman when the war hit. Her husband (he had some form of senile dementia which made him difficult to talk to, mostly because he spoke nine languages and would drift from one to the other.) was the Belgian ambassador to Germany when the war hit. Previously, he'd been the ambassador to Greece and Spain. Greece wasn't accessible. Spain was. She walked with nine children from Belgium to Spain, helped by people she met on the way. One of the children didn't survive it. But that indomitable woman walked with 8 children across the Pyrenees so that her family couldn't be used to make her husband participate in anti-allied propaganda.

The concierge's husband said, in passing, that working with the resistance in Belgium, was much more fun than school for him, shrugging off the contributions he'd made before he turned 18.

The janitor who went to our school was put into hiding by his parents because they were Jewish. Toward the end of the war he helped get food to people being held in the transit camp near him. There was some cutting wires and getting people out, not many, not often. But he found a way to do something with his local resistance. He lost both parents to the camps.

I'm saying this because people are despairing about what's going on in the U.S., worried that there's no grand general organizing us against our current government. Honestly, if you're not part of the military, there is rarely one leader to get behind to walk us, like Moses, to our promised land.

If you want the equivalent to the DeGaulles and the Queen of the Netherlands -- both in exile, both under threat, both putting backbone into their people from that exile -- then listen to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Beto O'Rourke or applaud what Gavin Newsom is doing while recognizing that his stance on our trans friends is terrible.

But most of all remember that Jules, the Baroness, Guillaume, and the school janitor all found small ways to resist, to help prevent worse, to give hope to others during a long war.

Organization is great. Be part of your local Indivisible chapter if there is one (and you have the spoons for it).

But remember that the small things are helpful, too:
A) If you think you see an injustice, record and post it with as much context as you can provide.
B) Write to your Senators and Representatives at both state and federal levels and explain why what they're doing is wrong (or great, if they've done something good. Positive reinforcement won't hurt.).
C) Find out what laws they're trying to pass and be part of the public comments, especially if you think the law is wrong or overreaches governmental rights.
D) Talk to your friends and neighbors about the mid-terms and see if you can strategize to turn out the vote, keep people on the rolls, or protest any laws that might limit voting.
E) Give blood.

There was an article in a local blog yesterday by Gary Imhoff which talks about the DC statehood movement and says we should be like Hawaii and Alaska rather than taking our cue from the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

There's a difference.

Hawaii has huge strategic importance, and Pearl Harbor was engrained in the memories of those old enough to vote when it was up for ratification.

Alaska has vast tracts of natural resources, and, during the Cold War, was of even greater strategic importance than Hawaii. After all, you could see Russia from there.

DC had to wait another fourteen years after these two territories became states for Home Rule which allowed us to vote in Presidential elections and gave us a vague and whimsical permission to govern ourselves -- when Congress thought it was acceptable and with Congress controlling even our local purse strings.

The military was allowed to vote before we were. (Hands up everyone who didn't realize the military wasn't allowed to vote for President until after World War II and that military bases weren't allowed to vote for local offices until 1986.) Eighteen year olds were allowed to vote before we were, and I happily exercised my franchise on an absentee ballot as soon as I could.

The fight for Home Rule was part of the Civil Rights movement. The patronizing attitudes of much of Congress and many people in other parts of the country -- on both ends of the social and political spectra -- make this a Civil Rights movement.