Good Riddance: Letting Go of my Give Up

On political engagement burnout, getting those fires rekindled, and our chat Good Riddance

Consider this lib owned! I bought a copy of the 2025 Project so you don’t have to, and we’re breaking it down in a new political series across social media platforms. You can watch the first episode here.

Hello and happy Good Riddance Day to all those who celebrate! Every Saturday we meet up in the Substack chat for my favorite series where we let something go from the week before, and this week, my let go was so long, I decided it needed to be a post, taking-July-off be damned. So this week’s Good Riddance will take place right here in the comments section of this post.

Like many of you, I’ve been sitting for months with my terror about the upcoming election, and feeling frozen about how to deal with it. I’ve also felt a kind of care-exhaustion, a sense that nothing I’ve done or said to affect change over the last twenty years has ultimately mattered.

My love for civil engagement started young when I worked at my local voting location in Santa Monica California as a volunteer checking people in when I was still just a teenager, before I could even legally vote. I absolutely was giving brunette Tracy Flick vibes (if you don’t know the iconic Reese Witherspoon film, “Election,” it’s a must see) and always felt proud to serve my community and get politically engaged, however I could. From there I went on to work for Rock the Vote, both of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 Presidential campaigns, and advised and fundraised for many political candidates and originations along the way, including Emily’s List. I co-founded the Time’s Up Organization during 2017’s powerful #MeToo movement (originally started by the brilliant Tarana Burke many years earlier) and so much more. I all this to say: I have LOVED civil service, politics, and nerdy policy talk my entire life, and everything that comes with it. Then Donald Trump entered the chat.

After the incredibly hard-to-watch debate last month between our current past-his-prime President, and the former President, a narcissistic serial liar and convicted felon, I texted a close friend who was, for many years, a partner with me in political activism. We used to do everything together, political engagement-wise: we’d go canvassing together all over the country, GOTV together, participate in rallies together, voter registration, surrogate for candidates and causes we care about— you name it.

On the text to my friend, I reminisced about how thrilling a debate night used to feel, how scary, and nerve wracking, but always thrilling with the sense that strong opinions and ideas would take center stage and could win, with some tough jabs in between, like an excellent boxing match. I used to love a debate night. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Nothing about any of the last eight years has felt good or right. Trump has changed everything, for the worse, and I’ve felt that part of me who used to care so much begin to change, leave. I’ve felt that part of myself giving up on this country, and my love for the fight.

But the recent rulings by the Supreme Court that reversed the decades long checks and balances law known as Chevron which will now sharply curtail the power and protections of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer, as well as another ruling giving Presidential immunity which paves the way for our country to become Russia 2.0 has given me a new kind of anger, and sense of purpose. (If you or someone you know is on the fence about Trump’s ties to Project 2025, I beg you to do some quick googling, and you will find he is EXTREMELY tied to the “conservative promise” which plans to gut the federal government as we know it, and was authored by more than 30 of his former administration staffers, including some of his closest confidants and advisors including former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and former Justice Department senior counsel Gene Hamilton. To say he doesn’t know anything about it is one of the boldest lies he’s told yet.)

So this week for our Good Riddance series, I am letting go of the give-up, and leaning back in to my rage and engagement, because literally everything is on the line this time around— democracy, yes, but also our rights to vote, protest, safety— and also the planet itself. The literal Earth cannot afford to have a dictator in power who will gut the EPA and destroy any remaining hopes we had for climate solutions, and so very much more.

My first stop in Giving-A-Shit-Again this week was the launch of a new political series on all social media platforms in collaboration with an organization I helped found, The Meteor. Every couple of days we’ll share an episode breaking down a different chapter or section of Project 2025 and its connections to Trump and the Supreme Court rulings in the form of short, easily digestible videos, with extra razor sharp satire on top.

I don’t know if this effort will change any hearts or minds, but I do hope it informs people with real facts about what’s at stake in this election, while also making them laugh a little at the insanity of it all.

In the end, no matter what happens in November, I want to be able to say that I did absolutely everything I could to stop Trump and fascism from fully taking over our country. Don’t you?

What are you ridding yourself of this week? Please share in the comments below!