My political awakening, like so many other Americans, came in the fall of 2016

Having grown up around politics in the suburbs of Washington D.C., I’d always been the “lil liberal” of my Southern family. As a writer, I realized early on that there was power in my pen and at this keyboard.

But it wasn’t until my early 30s with the election of #45 that I truly realized the power I (like you, dear reader) had to be part of the political process.

And over the last few years, I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery to better understand a) how did we get here as a society; and b) what can I actually do about it.

One of the writers who helped me on this adventure is Lauren Duca. Her article in Teen Vogue Donald Trump Is Gas Lighting America was published the month following the election. She was invited on Fox News afterwards where Tucker Carlson told her to “stick to writing about thigh-high boots.”

Duca’s book How to Start A Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics was published in 2019 and has served as almost a reference manual for this work we’re attempting to do to change the political industrial complex.

So I present to y’all my favorite excerpts, passages, and quotes from “How to Start a Revolution”

On November 19, 2016, across the country American citizens, and especially young people, woke up to the true nature of the world we’re living in—and we had no choice but to do something about it. Trump’s election made the country spark like an aurora borealis of lightbulb moments. Political awakenings involve a series of intellectual and emotional realizations that render inaction impossible… but rarely does such a huge portion of the population challenge the status quo.

These sorts of epiphanies can spring from all sorts of inciting incidents. But the day after Trump won the election marked what may well be the most widespread series of political awakenings in recent American history.

It forced us to ask who is in charge. Because if Donald Trump can become president, you really have to wonder, who the hell makes the rules

What follows is a diagnosis of how we got here and a prognosis for moving forward. In the aftermath of this widespread political awakening, young people hold the power to change everything for good.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must… undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” — Thomas Paine

The idea that we maintain our rights without upholding our responsibility is completely fucked.

As it stands, the United States is effectively an oligarchy: a small number of people control the levers of power that dictate the laws, norms, and values that govern American life. In order to overthrow that unjust hierarchy, we need to build individual action into collective power with the goal of regaining a voice for the American public as a collective. A huge part of the problem is that most of us don’t feel like it’s worth it to even bother.

There’s a sense of inefficacy, and then there’s a scope of oppression that ranges from a lack of constituent outreach to outright voter suppression. The fact is that many of our elected officials are not making it easy on purpose.

At the most basic level, it is a reality that a lot of Americans aren’t voting because they don’t know how (or when, or where, or for whom)… The fact is that people in power have deliberately made it difficult to participate in democracy even at the most basic level of voting.

The path to a truer, more equitable democracy doesn’t come with shortcuts. It will be laborious and mind-numbingly incremental. It will require overhauling fiscal policy and reformatting the voting process in a way that emphasizes electorate building… Along the way, our voices will still have “near-zero” influence on their own, but collective power requires all of us to work together, and goddamn, we at least have to try.

The revolution will require us to show up—to vote, and to practice a daily habit of democracy. The political-industrial complex depends upon our disenfranchisement. It is in each of us doing our part that we make change possible.
It is through statistically non-significant individual action that we build to the collective power required to overthrow the political-industrial complex. This is the part where we decide to save ourselves.

An awakening is only fully realized when it becomes impossible for things to go back to the way they were.

Being “woke” is about processing atrocities through the system that allows them to routinely occur. The questioning and movement responsible for it ignited many political awakenings long before #45 announced his campaign.

Strong political opinions become a social necessity. And when you are compelled to form a strong political opinion, political action tends to follow.

The process by which we form political beliefs is called political socialization. It is a dynamic process, although much of our ideology tends to be set in youth, between the ages of 14 and 24. Usually, beliefs formed during this period are shaped by major events on the national stage while we’re growing up.

We are coming of age in a definitive political movement, one that could forever re-democratize America. Now we just have to do the damn thing.

“Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government, because our parents don’t know how to use a fucking democracy.” — David Hogg.

On a broad national scale, we are finally questioning authority.

We’re not entitled, we’re workaholics in pursuit of constant self-betterment that often leads to burnout. We’re sure as hell not apathetic. Actually, we care so much it hurts sometimes. The difference now is that we have finally connected that passion to a sense of political agency.

Gone are the days of waiting our turn. We’ve been wildly underestimated, but we’re just now getting started.

The role of the journalist is to empower the public with the information required to participate as citizens. Part of that work involves making politics accessible and even entertaining. It is our job to make the significant interesting.

As the youngest generations rewrite the political order, it is crucial to use the things that bring us joy to bring us power.

The rules that govern our political conversation will be upheld until we call them out for what they are, which is to say total bullshit… the only requirement for acting on your political opinions is that you be informed.

It turns out we’ve been the heroes of this story all along.

Talking about politics invigorates the health of democracy

People get so swept up in what they think they’re supposed to think and feel that they operate from a place of fear rather than fact.

Political conversation requires a shared foundation of fact. That’s why Trump’s gaslighting is so dangerous. His campaign around disinformation erodes that shared reality that is required as the starting point of debate. But we have the power to restore it.

As we break the bizarre secret rules that codify the status quo, it is clear that you have to know your shit. The only thing that ought to be required for expressing a political opinion is that you be informed.

Establishing a foundation of fact will give you the confidence you need to enter the political conversation in spite of the obstacles of the white supremacist patriarchy.

We’re not always going to agree with everyone, nor are we supposed to… Productive conflict is the enterprise of democracy; the foundational activity of practical citizenship is building consensus through debate. That happens at the national scale around our most divisive issues, and it must begin at a granular level with the people we love the most. We can’t do any of that without a shared foundation of fact.

The purpose of journalism is to empower people with information. That is always my goal. I share my political opinion in my work, but I always make it clear whether what I am writing is analysis or a matter of fact verified through objective methods. I am always working to be as transparent as possible, to make sure readers have everything they need to think for themselves. I’m not cherry-picking information to convince you to support my argument. I am representing the world and then writing analysis by making logical, ethical arguments grounded in fact. It is never my goal to manipulate, and when you say ‘liberal bias’ that’s what that means. I’m always doing my best to tell you the truth, both as a journalist and as your daughter. I hope you know that.

The best we can do is learn.

How do you start a revolution? Person by person, step by step. The paradigm shift begins in our communities… A revolution is the overthrow of the established hierarchy, and isn’t that exactly what’s already happening?

We are all part of ‘the way things are’ and we all must contribute to the process of transformation.

After an awakening, it’s plain that we all must be part of the change we wish to see. The political industrial complex will flourish and prosper until we come together to call bullshit.

I don’t want to get into what a raging dumpster fire this country is at the moment, because I’d rather focus on rising out of the ashes like a goddamn phoenix.

The tribalism of partisanship increasingly divides us. We are languishing in the bubbles of our echo chambers, online and off. Trapped by fractured political conversation, we cling to validation in the things we think we know for sure. Accepting the lazy comfort of confirmation bias, we fall further into the tyranny of in-group / out-group dynamics, resolving to block those who disagree, as if they may as well not even exist.

We will find freedom and happiness when we strive for unity. We have to choose to participate in democracy out of duty to the collective. Truly, that’s all there is.

Journalism is a tool, a human invention building consensus around fact. Human beings have struggled with the concept of truth since we first messed around with free time…

“Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.” — Plato

In keeping with his gaslighting, Trump has framed the press as “the enemy of the people,” when the reality is that the fourth estate exists, first and foremost, to serve the public by providing the foundation of information required for the practice of citizenship. The post-truth state enabled by the scourge of fake news and constant disinformation disseminated makes us doubt what’s true and isn’t true. The goal is to make us question our own sanity by looking at all the conflicting narratives and give up entirely. Journalism uses objectivity of method to verify information so that we can discuss how we ought to live together from a place of truth.

The ways we perceive the world are different. The best we can do is develop the objectivity of methods to verify information and use it to communicate with one another with respect for the highest possible standard of truth.

The only way to achieve democracy is through policies of equity that build true equality. We will most certainly have disagreements regarding the best path to that goal, but it ought to be our North Star.

How can you turn the fight into a truer, more equitable democracy into part of your routine? We all need to develop our own acts of practical citizenship… we must commit to the habit of democracy.

I saw, with fresh eyes, how aggressively young people are dismissed, and how that is compounded by sexism for young women, and racism for people of color.

Revolution is a matter of regular people deciding that things can be different. Rallying for hope and change can seem like a lot of clapping for Tinker Bell, but it really is a matter of believing.

There is real magic in collective faith. It is in choosing to believe that we can finally come together to build the equitable society that we deserve. It is incumbent on each and every one of us to believe that we can and insist that we must.

If you commit to empowering yourself with information, forming a political opinion from that foundation of fact, and then routinely translating your passion into action, we can build a government truly by the people and for the people.

That may seem idealisting, but so did lots of things once upon a time.

There is every reason to trust that the political-industrial complex will be dismantled as we come together to insist on a voice in a country striving to build democracy for real. I mean, if Donald Trump can be president, why the hell not?

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Thank you to Lauren Duca for your courage and inspiration. Now let’s get on with our revolution.

MTV announced its new “reality” show for the summer: Buckhead Shore. As promoted on MTV’s website: “In Buckhead, Georgia (a.k.a. the Beverly Hills of the South), longtime friends enjoy a lakeside summer vacation filled with fun days, wild nights and high-drama hookups.”

My Southern heart broke a bit reading this B.S.

Yes, Atlanta’s zip code 30305 where the Buckhead neighborhood is located in one the most affluent areas of the South. But much to the chagrin of some alt-right GOP members, there is no Buckhead cityhood.

The real Buckhead, Georgia, is an hour away from the Atlanta neighborhood this show is supposedly set in.

 
The Buckhead this MTV production team created is as fake as the painted-on eyebrows of a Kardashian.

Over the last decade, there has been an onslaught of “reality” shows purportedly set near my Atlanta home that produced a new contingent of aspiring influencers desperate to be part of the scene.

If you were lucky enough to party in the old Buckhead before the rise of social media, you know that it’s too dark to take a proper photo inside Johnny’s Hideaway.

The ugly truth about these reality shows is that they are all shams at their core. Like a lot of people who say they’re from Atlanta, the Real Housewives lived way outside the perimeter — that’s “OTP” and if you’re from Atlanta then you know what it means.

“Southern Charm” is utterly lacking in social graces but the fact that it’s still on after eight (yes 8!) seasons shows how television producers are still eager to bank on the rest of the world’s fascination with the South’s party scene.

This is manufactured entertainment designed to capitalize on the boujie zeitgeist instead of showcasing the lives of the actual bourgeois.

So as us true Atlantans have to deal with yet another B.S. reality show, we took a moment to dig deeper through the neon casing of this latest packaged farce.

Here are 5 things that make “Buckhead Shore” totally fake.

1. There is no f*cking shore

This is the biggest problem of many issues found wanton with this machination. Take another look at the map of Atlanta and it’s clear we have neither body of water big enough to qualify as a shore. The closest thing Buckhead has to a legitimate shore is the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

Screenshot from Canoe’s website

If you’re from Atlanta, maybe you’ve been lucky enough to enjoy riverside dining at Canoe, Ray’s on the River, or grabbed some friends to “Shoot The Hooch” on a nice day when the Chattahoochee isn’t overrun with bacteria.

But there definitely is no place called the Buckhead Shore

The show’s lake scenes are filmed way OTP (again, if you know, you know). Getting to Lake Lanier requires driving 40 miles north from Buckhead.

Also, the main city in Lake Lanier is Cumming. Yes, Cumming. But MTV very well couldn’t call this “Cumming Shore.” Perhaps because there’s already a pornographic film with that title?

Speaking of pornographic…

2. The Buckhead Shore cast members look like wannabe porn stars.

The last thing we want to do is body shame anyone; however the purpose of this post is to call out the overtly fake things about this MTV so-called “reality” production and there are some fakety-fake titties on display.

Just scroll back through cast member Katie Canham’s Instagram. Her before and after pictures seem like she tried to evolve into Katie Kardashian — from her adorable teenage youth to Buckhead Barbie.

We live in a time when our society desperately needs more authenticity and to encourage young women to embrace their natural bodies instead of feeling insecure after spending time on social media.

And again, we’re not shaming Katie for her choices here. This was her choice to make herself over, to be part of this production, and she’ll probably get thousands of more followers on Instagram because of it, like the rest of the cast.

Because that’s what this is all about right? Doin’ it for the Gram.

This brings us to our next point…

3. The Buckhead Shore parties will be totally contrived

This is our assumption from watching the promo, but taking cues from “The Bachelor” and all the reality shows that have come before, the “parties” the cast attends are made up storylines to manufacture drama.

Those of us (including yours truly) who actually got to party on Lake Lanier know that if the party was that good, you don’t want those photos on social media because that could have been incriminating evidence.

Another screengrab from the promo.

This is tame by comparison for those of y’all who know what it truly means to party at Cocktail Cove. A real lady never tells, so I’m keeping my party stories from Lake Lanier a secret. And to quote “Steel Magnolias”…

“If you can’t say something nice, come sit by me.”

4. These are not Southern ladies

In one scene from the promo, we see female cast members flashing their chests from what I assume is a condo somewhere on Florida’s Coast.

First off, who the f*ck has actually flashed their boobs on a Florida beach? Maybe at Club La Vela in Panama City Beach back in like 1999 but it’s the 2020s.

Even at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, real Southern ladies don’t flash their boobs. To see some flashing, you have to be blackout drunk in The Quarter and those are typically tourists who don’t know better.

Also to point #1 above, MTV had to take the cast down to Florida to find an actual shore. The production team had to put so many stereotypes on display in order to come up with content.

Bringing us to our final point.

5. The cast isn’t actually rich

If you are one of the privileged few to own a private plane, then you’re not going to spray champagne all over it.

I could go on about how the cultured champagne drinkers know how to properly open a bottle, and this ain’t it. Someone was like “oh, they need to pop bottles in a G6 like the rap song.” Again, so contrived.

Surely the list could have been longer with all the fake things in “Buckhead Shore”, and the world will have to wait ’til June 23 to see the rest of the manufactured stories.

But just like the Housewives series, I won’t be able to bring myself to watch it because I’ll actually be living life here in the real Atlanta.

It feels like I need to explain myself.

Some of y’all who I love dearly were a bit perplexed at how outspoken I am regarding the decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Family and close friends know I’ve been the “little liberal” pretty much my whole life.

But here’s something you don’t know…

As I’ve gotten older and learned more about the world, especially our society here in the South, it’s become clear how social constructs, policies, and laws are designed to protect institutional racism.

Yup. I said it. It’s about race.

It’s time we all start speaking up for southern Women and our fellow Americans

America was built on the backs of our colored and Native fellow Americans.

Womxn and trans people of color are twice as likely to need access to reproductive healthcare than their white female peers.

And the states (especially the South) that are most likely to ban abortion have much greater proportions of people of color.

At the Bans Off Our Bodies rally yesterday, I heard from one woman who had to take out a loan, such as that loan on the same day, to drive from Macon to Atlanta to get her abortion. Georgia has 150 counties and only 20 clinics providing this care.

And there 17 counties in Georgia with no OBGYN, let alone a doctor.

The decisions coming from SCOTUS are strengthening the chokehold the patriarchy has on our fellow Americans, especially poor people in the rural South.

Reversing Roe to increase a “domestic supply of infants” might as well have said, “make more poor people to keep labor cheap.”

I am not here to cast judgment. No, I am not the Supreme Court, a talking head on a conservative media platform, or a preacher at a pulpit.

I am a writer, making an observation about how this patriarchal society we live in is completely screwed up.

These reckoning moments have been defining points in my adult life.

On Nov. 9, 2016, when the world awoke to Donald J. Trump becoming the next president, the emotions poured out.

In 2018, when Stacy Abrams lost her first contest to Brian Kemp.

In 2020, when three states were still too close to call because, despite years of recognizing his deplorability, half the country still voted for the impeached president.

On Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters, QAnon followers, and our radicalized fellow Americans stormed our Capitol with the intent to harm our democratically elected Congress.

And on May 3, 2022, our U.S. Supreme Court made it known they intended to reverse the ruling on an individual’s right to privacy, which is what Roe v. Wade’s judgment was truly about. The number of y’all who reached out directly is countless (even on work channels), and many of you posted on this very platform.

Because y’all know we can do better

That’s what this whole journey has been about, here at Pretty Southern and for my adult life. Although some sources want you to believe that being ‘woke’ is a bad thing, the thing about being wide awake, when you can see things as they truly are, you cannot go back to sleep.

For some of us ‘woke’ liberals, we have not only the ability to see the forest through the trees, but to also recognize what each tree is made of, to see the predators lurking in the forest, and the sunny skies above.

What’s in that metaphorical forest, and the great beyond, is what binds us all together because here we are trying to navigate a trail.

And for some of us, we are so lost.

So now we have to think about how we get better from here

How do we find a path to healing together?

Please know that I’m speaking up because I care about you, your neighbor, our home, and all our fellow Americans.

I’m proud to stand up for all womxn and our fellow humans in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Our home is the birthplace of the social justice movement. This beloved community recognizes the oppression we will continue to face if we stay silent.

Find your way to fight back. Vote because our rights depend on it.

Healthcare is a human right.

No justice. No peace.

It feels like my adult life started the week of 9/11

I was 16 years old and sitting in my high school math class when the intercom came on announcing the first World Trade Center building being hit. Our teacher turned on the tv and we watched in horror as another plane barreled into the second tower.

If you’re old enough to remember, you’ll never forget where you were when you first heard the news on September 11. It’s a collective trauma we share as adults.

Everyone knows what came next: 3,000 of our fellow Americans dead, thousands of troops heading to Afghanistan, tracking down Osama bin Laden, and the start of this endless war on terror. We praised and prayed for our military and first responders who answered the call that day and continue to do so.

In the spring of 2003, my senior year of high school, President George W. Bush held a rally in our gymnasium which was supposed to be a talk about the economy. As editor of the student newspaper, I got to attend.

Harrison High School is in Cobb County, one of the richest and reddest districts in Georgia. The president’s speech about being pro-business lasted all of two minutes before he said:

“And that’s why we need to go to war in Iraq.”

The gym erupted in applause. At the time, Governor Sonny Perdue sat on stage next to our school’s principal beaming, wearing nearly identical suits, their legs were crossed in the same manner until they stood clapping for W.

What I didn’t know is something we’re all coming to realize now – Cobb County is the center of poor decision-making in Georgia, from its COVID-19 response, to pilfering tax dollars for projects like the new Braves stadium.

Special interest, big business, and Big Oil are collectively what’s caused Iraq, Afghanistan, and the conflicts across the Middle East to become our modern Vietnam. These unwinnable wars resulted in countless tragedies due to mismanagement.

In the two decades that have passed since September 11, I’ve come to understand so much about the way the world works that I wish I could have told my teenage self. We live in a time of constant disruption. And society decided that my generation would be called ‘millennials’ for coming of age in this post-Y2K world.

But I think my age bracket, the 30-somethings who were nearly adults on 9/11, and the 20-somethings who were old enough to understand what was happening, we’re not millennials y’all because we know what life was like in a pre-September 11 world.

So this year, on Sept. 11, 2021, here’s what I believe my generation should be called.

We are the Generation of First Responders

We’re the generation that has spent 20 of our formative years remembering the tragedy of 9/11. Twenty years ago, we watched our fellow Americans fall from the towers, and last month we saw Afghanis clinging onto planes leaving their country.

We saw the first mass school shooting at Columbine in 1999, then years later we continued to cry, pray, and rage over the mass shootings in Newtown, Parkland, Pulse night club, and countless others, despite no changes in the laws to prevent deranged people from hurting our fellow citizens.

We are the ones who continue to march and protest for the same causes that our parents and grandparents did, hoping for peace in a violent world.

We recognize that our fellow Americans who are brown, black, Muslim, AAPI, and anyone who looks different than those in charge are still fighting for equality.

We want to create meaningful change for everyone, especially those whose voices are continuously ignored.

We’re the generation that grew up with Captain Planet and increasingly hotter years, where the first glaciers officially disappeared, polar bears starved, and the Great Barrier reef died off.

We’re the generation of Ferngully watching the world burn, scorching plants, animals, and our fellow humans.

We’re the generation that’s eating plastic because there’s so much of it in our oceans, rivers, and fisheries, thus in the food we put in our mouths.

We are still consuming fossil fuels at an insatiable rate with a mass shift to renewable energy still years away.

We are the first generation in 100 years having to deal with a global pandemic. Our friends are the parents of small children who grow up wearing masks, like the n95 mask, to school because the adults in charge mismanaged the spread of COVID.

We are begging our family, friends, and loved ones to do something as simple as go get a shot, but ideology and self-interest prevent them from doing it for public health. With voluntary contributions from doctors like walk-in gynecologist and so on, many walk-in clinics are being established in various areas of the country which will be very easily accessible to all nearby people. Click here to know more about them in detail.

We are the ones who will be responsible for stopping the spread of infectious diseases, disinformation, and working to prevent more disasters.

We’re the generation that has to act. We have to be the first ones to respond.

There’s so much to do, and it feels impossible to fix these massive problems. But it starts with courage. Are we as brave as the first responders on 9/11 to step up and answer the call?

We can start by speaking out. We can take time to understand the ways we can change the world.

We can put forth the good effort, our money, and resources, towards actions and missions that are helping heal our broken society.

We continue to pray for our troops, our first responders, and for our politicians in charge, but God gave us working bodies and minds that also need to do more.

Professor Conrad Fink told my class of journalism students at UGA that it was our parents, the adults, who made this world and it would be up to us to report on the state of it, then help to change it.

It is truly up to us now, this Generation of First Responders.

Nothing about this world is normal. We are constantly facing a new normal. Our anger and fear have been normalized because it’s the only way we can get through the day.

We were not the first responders. The first wave of responders were the heroes of September 11, those who wear a uniform with honor, and our healthcare workers.

We are the next wave of responders. We are the ones who are willing to do the hardest things. We don’t have to be collectively scared but can get through anything if we put our hearts and souls to it.

So in the next 20 years, I hope we can build a better future. I pray we can come together as Americans, the same way we did on 9/11, where it wasn’t about a red team or blue team but truly one nation under God. Indivisible. With liberty and justice for all.

Editor’s note — this editorial cartoon is by the incredible Mike Luckovich of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It’s stuck with me in my mind and heart over the last 20 years