We’ll have to save ourselves.

BTW I have heard not heard back from the BLM Austin chapter, nor from Our Revolution. But I’ve been flexing my calling, emailing, letter writing, and blogging muscles — and I hope you have been, too. Because no one is coming to save us. And there is a lot of work to do.

I’m thinking back to my Tuesday driver last week, and his insistence on a long-winded narrative that had no factual basis. His ability to accept what he’d heard, without any proof, and repeat it back verbatim. A question that’s been on my mind for a long time now, that needs to be answered, is: How can facts win over a false narrative? Is that even possible, if facts and fantasies don’t exist in the same plane?

Early this year, I’d read about Derek Black (here’s a good article) , the hope / future / heir apparent of the white nationalist movement, until he went to college and learned that people who were different from him weren’t necessarily bad — in fact, those he got to know were decent, honest, kind, and trustworthy people. He risked being ostracized from his family to live in honor of a new, inclusive set of values, incompatible with white nationalism.

I don’t know that any of Black’s college friends tried “fact”-ing him. They helped him experience for himself, rather than allow him to accept what he’s been told.

Not everyone who voted for the president-elect is as blatantly racist as Derek Black. But how can we can help people we care about, who voted for the president-elect, experience different slices of life (aka expand their experiences), so that they allow experience to challenge their fantasy?