Yakety Sax

To those who stay

Since childhood, I have been a little obsessed with the other side of the Atlantic. England. Ireland. Scotland.

I am sure you can guess by my lack of melanin that I am descended from Scots-Irish ancestors, though I was always told my great-grandpa was 1/2 Cherokee — a story so many other white people in America were told.

My great-great-grandpa’s name was Little Berry, so I kind of see where the family rumor started, but my DNA says that I have more African heritage than Indigenous. My aunt claimed it was a mistake, but her own DNA confirmed it.

As it turns out, we are just your standard-issue white folks.

My obsession with everything British started when I was a kid…my dad let me stay up occasionally, and sometimes I was privy to Benny Hill or Monty Python. These shows were confusing to me, but I wanted to laugh along with my dad.

Benny Hill was pretty inappropriate, but I didn’t know it at the time. I couldn’t help but slink quietly into the front room when Yakety Sax started up. And I don’t know how many times my dad quoted Monty Python lines like, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.”

I should have put the phrase on his headstone — he would laugh at that.

I still watch British shows on repeat, and you can often hear Monty Don or Dame Penelope Keith or Paul and Prue as background noise in my living room. I’ve fallen asleep to The Crown and Downton Abbey more times than I can tell you. I think I have watched every single episode of Escape to the Country.

I once even tried the British fashion trend of wearing a floral dress with tennis shoes. It didn’t look as fashionable at a rural Walmart…people stared.

I have never traveled overseas, but it’s on my bucket list.

But I do travel. I am rural, and I stand up for those who live in red states and rural communities and fight the good fight against authoritarians. I travel to speak to them. I travel to listen to them. I am one of them.

But I would be lying if I said I don’t dream about getting out. Getting away. Traveling far away. Leaving.

Not for good, but maybe for a while. Maybe just for three short years.

Sometimes I just get tired. The place I love the most hurts me every day. I can’t believe what we have become.

Why do I stay?

This is my home too. This is my state and my country. And I am bull-headed. Stubborn as a mule. Strong-willed.

But sometimes I wish I weren’t. Sometimes I wish I weren’t foolish and went somewhere where my legislators didn’t try to harm my kids and grandkids.

I could get out. I could go overseas. I could run. But I don’t.

This is where generations of my family have held on in rural spaces…even when times were very tough. None of my people went West during the Dust Bowl or the Depression or bad farming times.

They just hunkered down and got through it.

How dare I even dream of leaving when I don’t have to go to work every day in a mine or sharecrop to feed my family? How privileged am I to run from a country most can’t leave?

I would embarrass my ancestors. And I can’t take everyone. So I stay.

And so do you.

I know you are tired of what you see coming down the pike—or is it pipe? You know what I mean.

Tired of the shit you see rolling your way. Tired of knowing you are going to have to stand in front of it again with the same people who always stand with you. The same people fighting the same battles.

Rinse. Repeat.

I know you are tired of the people you are protecting hurling insults while you take the beating. Stabbing you in the back.

They pray for your failure when all you want is a decent life for them. For everyone.

Here is something I want to impress on you: I am tired, and you are tired, but things are changing. I’ve been telling you for a while that I am sensing a big movement in the red states and the rural communities I spend so much time in.

I have talked about the momentum we have seen in NYC and New Jersey and Tennessee and Miami and Georgia and Iowa and now in Indiana. I work in spaces with so many folks who don’t want to say these things too loudly. I don’t know if they worry that activists and organizers on the ground will take their foot off the gas, but I know these small wins are snowballing.

The Republicans know it too. They can’t escape the reality of grocery prices or layoffs or rising energy costs or a mad king. In fact, it seems the only plan Republicans have concocted to work on the economy and Trump’s fitness for office is to lie about both.

They lie about everything…people are noticing. Even the Trump voters.

A speaking event in rural Missouri with another rural organizer.

I don’t really want to leave home or this country. I do want to go off-duty for a little bit, though. I want a restful sleep. I want to close all of the tabs in my brain.

I want a break from our current reality. I want to feel safe. Stable.

I want to watch Monty Python and not analyze it for the absurdities we see every day under the Trump regime. I want to watch Escape to the Country and not immediately Google whether I can afford the Cotswolds (I can’t.)

I want to think about travel for its own sake, not to escape the country of my birth.

So I stay, and you stay. We are holding up the world in our own small way.

This is for those who will never give up, even if you dream of running. For those of you who stay when it would be easier to go.

I may dream of the Cotswolds, but I’ll write my Congressman instead.

Solidarity.

~Jess