This is an extremely weird time. Two days after the inauguration of Trump I moved almost as far south as I could get, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to start a masters degree at LSU in Renewable Natural Resources. It's currently halfway through my first week. Longing for my partner, missing my friends, not sure how to find community here, not sure how being myself will be taken by my new colleagues. I feel constantly exhausted by the deluge of horror that's spilling from the white house every day, but I also feel really excited to be in this beautiful place following my dreams. My dreams to research and conserve our beautiful world and the creatures in it who are being harmed by human nonsense. Like the two ridiculous pipelines Trump just okayed and the extraction and use of fossil fuels which I'm sure will increase since the EPA is basically on lockdown right now and everyone employed by the DOI is supposed to stop communicating with the public and if it were possible Trump would order that use of the phrase "climate change" be made a felony. The CDC even had to cancel a summit on the health effects of climate change which should NOT be a political issue! Not allowing the sharing of that information is murder.
Meanwhile I'm down here overjoyed because I FINALLY have access to every science database that has ever thwarted me by asking exorbitant amounts of money for anything more than an abstract (you mean I can search Wiley AND Science Direct????? Ravenclaw HEAVEN). My project is to look at the effect on nesting waterbirds of a restoration project on a barrier island to mitigate sea-level rise due to climate change. This project is basically perfect and I've been wanting to go to graduate school for six years and I'm HERE, studying wetlands in one of the most unique and well-preserved areas for wetlands in the world (but also incredibly fragile and susceptible to things like oil spills and climate change). I'm also feeling more comfortable being openly queer than I ever have before (or was, before I moved South), something I've worked hard at for a really long time.
So I'm so excited and I'm terrified all of this is going to get ripped away. I'm pretty sure all my funding is through the state of Louisiana but I work in the USGS Cooperative Unit here at LSU which is who pays my advisor and is a part of the Department of the Interior. I am actually not positive whether any of my grant money comes from them or not. So far they are not affected by the same shutdowns the EPA and Forest Service and National Parks are, to my knowledge but...is it only a matter of time? Will Wisconsin actually shut down their DNR and if they do will other states follow them? Will I be unobtrusive enough to be allowed to continue my research? Will there be renewable natural resources LEFT when I graduate, much less jobs to research and protect them?
Am I safe as a queer female scientist in this country? Should I even bother applying for healthcare down here since it seems to be rapidly disappearing? Is it selfish to worry about all of that when I know I still have a lot of privilege and am not in as much danger as immigrants, Muslims, black people, and many other groups? I read an article recently saying that in order to preserve the strength to stay angry and keep fighting back you have to pick and choose a couple of causes to rally behind because you will burn out if you try to do everything at once. That makes sense to me. But how can I choose? The ones that affect me most? The ones that do the most harm to people in general? How can I, as a feminist, as a queer woman, as an empathetic human, not also stand up for black lives and native lives and Muslim lives and immigrant lives and science and truth and art and justice and prison reform and the environment and living wages and healthcare for all and freedom of the press and against LITERALLY EVERYTHING TRUMP STANDS FOR. How can I not be there for all of it? I mean, I actually can't. It pulls me apart when I try, I go numb and catatonic and useless. And I try to tell myself that the research I'm doing is resistance, is helping, that taking care of myself is necessary to revolution, that caring for my friends and family is too, that just being me is an act of rebellion, etc. etc. etc. but I don't know if I believe any of that. What could possibly be enough against this much evil?
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