Who Protests a Bar?!

I went to a Planned Parenthood fundraiser on Monday. It was the 45th anniversary of Roe v Wade. As usual, it was an excellent time! Allegheny Wine Mixer is a great location with lovely wine.

My friend and I took a Lyft over because I was being lazy and didn't want to walk. In my defense, it is 3.5 miles from my house to AWM if you walk it. Driving goes a different route because it's faster for a car. (Also, when did I decide that 3.5 miles was a totally walkable distance? I used to complain about walking the 0.8 miles to Market District!). The Lyft was faster than we thought, so we were standing outside for a bit.

There was this white SUV across the street, and a girl a bit younger than me stepped out of it. She was carrying a folding card table, a bag, and a few signs. The signs were hot pink which Planned Parenthood uses. My friend goes "oh, I think we are going the same place. We're going to the Planned Parenthood event." She says, "Oh, I'm actually against it." Whatever.

As she is setting up her table, she looks at the house. Her bag is sitting next to it - maybe like 15 feet from us. I'm horrible at judging distance. She looks at the SUV still across the street and then starts running down the block away from her stuff. Like, super booking it. I stared after her for a few seconds and then immediately thought I had to go inside. A PPWP protestor just put some shit down and ran away. Holy shit. Oh no. I've seen this episode of Law & Order. I went in the entryway to tell someone about it, but my friend said that she was on the way back. My friend said it didn't even occur to him that she was going to start something, but I'm kinda paranoid and always on the lookout. Especially at a Planned Parenthood event.

The girl sets up her table and some older guy joins her. They had signs about the uterus being a weapon free zone (with badly drawn pictures of medical equipment). I think they had one of those bowls of candy where they try to trick you into a Toostie Roll and then show you a picture of a fetus. There were also pamphlets which my friend took and I ignored her presence. It was a damn stack! It wasn't one flyer - there were four!!! As someone who has extensive tabling experience to the point where it basically one of majors in college, they need to edit.

We told the PPWP volunteers and employees that there were protestors outside and what they looked like. They knew who they were. There are always repeat customers.

The pamphlets were a lot. Not entirely well done either. Mostly about how atheists can be pro-choice, how birth control is racist, and something about babies. Side note: I saw the atheists for life at Pride in 2017, and I'm over it.

When we went to leave, my friend talked to the girl. She looked kinda terrified. He thinks he might have been the first person to actually speak to her all night. He told her what points were strong and which points were super weak. I stayed away. I'm sometimes not great at holding back.

Who protests a bar though?! There weren't live streams of abortions inside. There was wine and nice toasties and fun people. Tables were stocked with condoms and pins (those items were separate, please don't mix). Who were they trying to convert? If you knew about the event, you were a Planned Parenthood supporter. I wasn't going to show up, see some people with a stack of homework, and decide to change my fundamental beliefs.

Unless something actually happened in the bar, it isn't a great place to protest. There isn't anyone new to reach. They were outside AWM. They could have had a perimeter space or something. It was lazy and boring.

Seriously, who protests a bar?

Talking About Tough Issues

To my immense despair, Teen Vogue no longer exists in print. To make up for this periodical loss, they are going to send me Glamour until my subscription runs out. I was going to blog about Aziz Ansari, but thankfully an article in Glamour gave me something to write about until I get my thoughts together!

There was an article called "How to Discuss the Tough Stuff" which was about how to talk with people you love about things you disagree on. There were four different topics: immigration, voting for Trump, gender identity, and gun ownership.

The gender identity and gun ownership parts were really enlightening.

With gender identity it was about how people can be uncomfortable with what they don't understand. It was a mother and daughter. For some older people, the idea of different gender identities and sexualities can be confusing. Sometimes it's confusing to me, and I've spent a lot of time learning about people. I really felt like this mother and daughter connected and figured out how they would be able to relate to each other. It wasn't a case of either of them trying to hurt or ignore the other, it was just no idea on how to talk about anything.

I thought the gun ownership piece would be more upsetting. This was a father and daughter, and she  was expressing how her thoughts on gun ownership changed after she had children. Her father said that he thought about it after her children were born as well. They both seemed like people who wanted to promote responsible gun ownership and laws.

These were people I could talk to in real life.

The other two? Hell no.

When you talk about how immigrants need to assimilate because they're in America? This dude was an immigrant but says that he supports the stupid imaginary Wall because it isn't just keeping out Mexicans; it's also keeping out other people from Central America. His mother came and assimilated so they're not like other immigrants. Awful. I'm checking the hell out of the conversation

You talk about how the Cheetoh in Chief's Access Hollywood tapes made you not like him as a person, but you still voted for him because you like the Second Amendment? You are a bad person. The non-Trumper said "I've had people come up and ask me, 'Why are you friends with Bailey when she's Republican?' And I'm like 'She's a nice person and she's been there for me through a lot of stuff.'" I hate to tell her this, but her friend isn't a nice person. It's not that she's a Republican; it's that she voted for Trump. She heard that Access Hollywood tape and still thought this was someone she could vote because gun rights. That's bad, and she should feel bad.

If you believe in things that hurt people because of things they can't change, you're a deeply terrible person. It doesn't matter what you think about yourself, what you tell yourself when you look in the mirror or sit at church - when you hate people for what they are, you're not a good person. (I'm not talking about hating people for being jerks or being rude to service people - that is totally valid).

At that point, it isn't "talking about tough stuff," it's realizing that you might know some shitty people.

2018 Resolutions

Time to figure out what I want to do in 2018! Spoiler alert: some of them will be the same as 2017.

1. Do more yoga. Yoga keeps me calm. I need to do this more. Also, I need to stop giving myself weird injuries so I don't get off track!

2. Read 125 books again. I signed myself up for Kindle Unlimited, so I hope it won't be me cramming like 20 zombie books between Christmas and New Year's (as much fun as that is).

3. Start using my skateboard again (technically longboard I guess). I really like it when I do it, but I need to be consistent. Even if I just roll around the garage a few times a week, I will be exponentially better.

4. Figure out if I can bike commute to work. I haven't tried to bike over to the Island, but it seems really possible. Once the weather gets nicer, I'll give it a try on a weekend to see how long it takes.

5. Go to two cities I haven't been. There is so much of America/rest of the world I haven't seen. Instead of a generic "travel more," I'm giving myself a specific goal.

6. Try to stop being so anxious. Maybe it isn't necessary to constantly worry about whether or not people like me. Really don't need to go over conversations in my head after the fact to go over everything I said wrong. Probably don't need to talk so much in order to cover any kind of silence because quiet makes me think everyone hates me.

Nothing too crazy, but I don't think they have to be.