Start Where You Are.
Use what you have.
No Kings Day was a lot of fun. I was in a small city and we filled both sides of a busy road for almost a mile. It was a festive event filled with constant honking, music, dancing, chanting, clever signs, and costumes. Being in that big group was exciting especially knowing that, at the same time, there were huge crowds of everyday people doing the same thing across the nation. I hope you had fun where you went. The protests were all peaceful!
The standard estimate was seven million people. That’s one out of every fifty Americans counting all ages. Our numbers are growing. But we need to keep working.
in the meantime, I have become even more active with my community’s Indivisible local Chapter. I’ve become the default organizer for our weekly protests. After getting feedback from the events committee, I schedule them and list the event on Mobilize. Other people list them on the Facebook group and send out the chapter’s email. And we’ve gotten a good turnout — enough to put five to seven people on four corners of a busy intersection. Most importantly, we see our neighbors. People walking by talk to us. Sometimes they join us and turn up the next week. We are making a difference here because people realize they are not alone and they, too, can take action. Just just getting folks to wave and honk creates a connection. I realize how important very localized activity is. That’s how democracy actually works — it’s person to person. We need to embrace that.
We have an election next week and now is a great time to become an active constituent. We need to become the democracy we want. We can be an informed voter and help others by working to elect the local officials we want — people who will work for us. That means working for them — canvassing, phone banking, or even just attending community meetings and making your voice known. I found out my small town mayor has a community coffee once a month. I think I’ll go. I found out that we can help by donating to the food bank. We can ask the school board what their plan is to protect students and families from ICE. We can read and respond to the newsletter from our county council person. We can simply show up.
We can spend our dollars locally and continue to not buy things from Amazon, Target and Home Depot. Without consumers buying products, big corporations are nothing. Disney alienated viewers and has lost 7 million subscribers. We can make a difference.
In the meantime, I’ve moved from, “I can’t believe it’s October!” to it feeling like it’s winter. The Pacific Northwest rain has started.
And that means — time to get into the studio for holiday trees and ornaments.
I needed quilting thread and instead of ordering it online I found there is a store nearby that specializes in embroidery supplies, and I was delighted in what I found there: beautiful pearl cotton quilting thread in a wide variety of colors — some hand dyed! And I figured that as long as I used light and dark colors I could move beyond black and white to emphasize the motif. After all the colors change in the quilt by value and chroma , so why can’t the thread change as well?
This current regime can make me sad, angry, and discouraged, but they can’t own or stop my creativity; and they can’t stop me from getting excited over small and lovely things like colored thread.
I had a wise friend, and when I’d complain about things that bugged me, he’d say, “Let’s try and have a little fun with that.” I’d never really appreciated it at the time, but I know he was right.
It’s going to be harder than we think, and it will take longer than we want, but let’s do this and have some fun.
Yours,
Ann
October 27, 2025
P.S. I can’t believe it’s nearly winter.
And yeah, he fucking tore down the East Wing of our White House. Who knows where all the stuff went.
Yes, I am enraged.
Yes, I can still love the colored thread. I cant make it make it all make sense at the same time.
Very nice report. I was working the merch table at the Seattle March. So amazing to see happy energized people. Both bus rides down and home I sat with Madison Park women who lived on the water so that was hopeful. The buses were full!