A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance

A Feminist Handbook on Fighting for Good

Emma Gray, Eva Hill

An illustrated big-sister's guide to activism—the perfect gift for young feminists and long-time observers looking to enter the fray.

Have recent events given you pause? Does Trump's America make you fearful for the future of women? Do you want to become more involved in helping to preserve women's rights but aren't sure how? In A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance, Emma Rose Gray, Executive Editor at The Huffington Post, outlines all that young women need to know on pivotal women's rights issues and offers a blueprint for those who want to take a stand and participate in the cause.

This groundbreaking book includes:
• Background information on key issues so you can choose where you most want to take a stand.
• A guide for learning about the first Amendment and how to choose good news sources and make sure you're getting quality information.
• Practical instructions on how to get involved and stay involved, with examples from the author's own experience organizing the successful "Watch Us Run" conference.
• Instructions for how to talk to your friend who says she's "just not that political" and your relatives whose beliefs conflict with your own.
• Advice for self-care and how to stay involved without exhausting yourself.
• Extensive back-matter including numbers to call, organizations to email and donate to, and scripts for reaching out to representatives and organizations.
• Interviews with experienced activists including senator Elizabeth Warren, actress Amber Tamblyn, actress Marlo Thomas, Women's March Co-Chair Carmen Perez, Mother of the Movement Lucy McBath, Black Lives Matter creator Alicia Garza, People for Bernie Founder Winnie Wong, and former assistant to President Obama Tina Tchen.
Featuring original 2-color illustrations throughout by New York Magazine's Eva Hill, A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance illuminates why the time has never been more important than now to get involved in helping to ensure women's rights are protected for the current and future generations of women.

Part One

WELCOME TO THE

RESISTANCE

CHAPTER 1

THERE’S NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT TO

GIVE ALL THE F**KS

“If not now, when?”

—HILLEL THE ELDER

When I asked Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza what would happen if Americans didn’t wake up and get active, she didn’t mince words.

“If we don’t collectively get active in defense of safety and justice for all of us, a lot of us will reap the consequences—including death,” she said. “No one is coming to save us except for us, so we might as well get to work.”

That’s a sentiment I heard echoed by many of the activists I spoke to for this book. The time for action is now—yesterday, really—and if you are a person who cares about your own future, the future of the people around you, and the future of your nation, it’s your responsibility to roll up your metaphorical sleeves and jump into the fray.

Of course, this can be easier said than done. It’s scary and overwhelming to think about how much is at stake: access to health care, abortion rights, voting rights, the physical safety of trans people when they walk down the street, the physical safety of black Americans when they interact with police, and, ya know, the survival of the entire freaking earth.

The first months of Donald Trump’s presidency provided a litany of examples of what can happen when a white supremacist agenda makes its way into the White House. The following are just a handful:

• Travel bans targeting Muslim-majority countries were issued.

• The GOP attempted to do some combination of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, which left up to 32 million people vulnerable to losing health insurance¹ over less than ten years.

• The president pulled back protections for women workers.²

• The president touted what he labeled³ a “military operation” to identify, arrest, and deport undocumented immigrants.

• A guidance protecting transgender students in public schools was rescinded.

• A budget was proposed that cut funding for PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Meals on Wheels.

• The president pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

• The global gag rule⁴ was drastically expanded, prohibiting any global health funding for organizations that provide or even mention abortion as an option to women.

• An Obama-era rule⁵ that prohibited mentally ill individuals from purchasing guns was rolled back.

• The president signed a measure that allows states to withhold Title X funding for family planning from clinics that provide abortions.

• The president issued a memo directing the Pentagon to ban transgender people from openly serving in the U.S. military.

Let’s play a fun terrifying game and try to name a few of the groups that stood to be impacted by those decisions: trans kids, undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, Muslim Americans, public school students, children who watch Sesame Street, poor senior citizens, artists, women who need birth control, women who need maternity care, anyone who needs health care at some point in their lives and can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars every time they access it, all Americans who would prefer the United States protect its national security interests, people who are looking to spend some quality time on planet Earth. That covers a hell of a lot of people.

“This is a time to define the values our country stands for, and to fight for those values,” Tina Tchen, former chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama and executive director of the Obama White House Council on Women and Girls, told me, “like caring for those in need, expanding social justice for all, and protecting our planet for future generations. The beauty of our democratic system is that these choices are in the hands of the people, citizens who can make their voices, and their votes, heard.”

And during those first months of Trump’s presidency, we witnessed what a difference it makes when people are paying attention and taking a stand. The Women’s March(es) across the country became the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history.⁶ People showed up en masse to protest at airports within hours of Trump’s initial sweeping travel ban. Citizens came to town halls and flooded their elected officials’ offices with calls, creating political roadblocks for a GOP-controlled Congress that wanted to swiftly repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Thousands of women expressed interest in running for office.⁷

Collective action makes a difference—we’ve seen it happen.

When you are a member of a group whose basic rights and safety are generally protected, it can be easy to ignore that the rights and safety of your fellow citizens are not. This cushion of security can make it seem to some of us like politics is something that can be separated from ourselves and our lives.

For some Americans, the election was a clarifying moment. For some, specifically middle- and upper-class progressive white people, a long-treasured vision of this country as unified and fundamentally open-minded was dashed.

It’s not that our nation actually transformed overnight, though in some circles it certainly felt like it had. It’s more that the fury and resentment and tribalism that had long existed within communities that felt ignored and threatened—helped along by healthy doses of xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and sexism—had come bubbling up to the surface and into our country’s voting booths. It’s far harder to ignore all the underlying inequalities that make up American society when a walking, talking, pussy-grabbing orange caricature of incompetent toxic masculinity is its face.

“I think a lot of silver spoons were pulled out of mouths, and now people are understanding that they can’t take their happiness or their health care or the political process for granted,” organizer and writer Raquel Willis told me.

Of course, those silver spoons were only in the mouths of people born white and straight and cisgender and financially secure—people like me.

“The truth is that there were always people fighting,” Raquel continued. “Thinking about the most marginalized—people of color, black folks, poor folks, disabled folks, trans folks, queer folks, and women. We’ve been fighting. It’s only now that I think people are starting to understand that [the reason] we haven’t been more successful is because we weren’t invested in the liberation of those other marginalized folks as much as we should have been.”

Guilty as charged. I certainly have had moments where I preferred to dissociate a little bit, to push aside the knowledge that people are hurting every day in this country, because it feels hard and confusing and scary to really sit with that understanding. Maybe you’ve also had those moments . . . or days . . . or weeks . . . or years.

Set whatever you haven’t done in the past aside, and get looking toward the future. Remember that guilt is a useless emotion—one that often sinks us deeper into a hole of inaction rather than pulling us out of it and lighting a fire under our asses. Deciding that you are powerless is also useless. The important thing is that you’re ready to show up now.

Maybe that future includes raising money for organizations that you believe in. Maybe it includes going door to door campaigning for someone you believe will do good if elected to office. Maybe it means making sure you’re informed about local elections, and that you become a more active participant in democracy. Maybe it includes showing up to protests in solidarity with communities you’re not currently connected to. Maybe it includes pushing your local school district to broaden its sex education. Maybe it includes putting pressure on the education secretary to keep and enforce protections for victims of college sexual assault. Maybe it includes setting five minutes aside each day to call your congressperson. Maybe it includes running for office yourself.

“When people sit on the sidelines in our democracy and let others set the terms of political debates, then they surrender the policy decisions to the biggest corporations and billionaires who can hire armies of lawyers and lobbyists,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren when I asked her why acting now is so important. “In that case, our country will keep working better and better for a smaller and smaller number of people. It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

That “us” is you, dear reader. No matter who you are, there’s not a moment to waste. Use your time, brilliance, money—and fire tweets—for good.

CHAPTER 2

HEY GIRL(S) HEY: WHY YOUNG WOMEN’S VOICES ARE SO DAMN

ESSENTIAL

Being a woman means growing up in a world that tells you to be quiet in a million small ways every day.

The messages are subtle, of course, but omnipresent. Don’t be too big. Don’t be too small. Don’t be too young. Don’t be too old. Don’t try too hard. Don’t be too loud. Don’t take up too much space. Be successful but not threatening. Be beautiful but naturally so. Buy all the things that corporations tell you will help you conform to these impossible standards, but don’t make it obvious that you needed any products to achieve “perfection.” And while you’re spinning out trying to be the thing that you think you must be to be worthwhile, the men around you are free to learn, to speak, to explore, to lead.

It’s easy to say that we should all just say “screw that” and take up space anyway. And . . . we should! But the reality is that it’s way easier said than done.

Motivation and engagement take work. They take constant reaffirmation and reminding of why these fights are so damn important. When my own faith is failing me or weakening, I turn to the greatest teachers I know: other women.

I asked the women I spoke to for this book why we need young women’s voices in this fight. Every answer was beautiful, and I want them all printed on motivational posters to hang on my wall (maybe an Etsy store is in my future?). But instead of doing that, I decided to put them all in one place for you, dear reader.

CARMEN PEREZ, Women’s March National Cochair

“Women are the ones who are the driving forces in many of the issues that we care about. Women are at the forefront. They’ve always been at the forefront. It’s important for us to nurture young people because young people have always led movements. When we look at SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], when we look at the Chicano movement or the American Indian movement, it was young people. And so the way in which I see change is by cultivating the leadership of youth, and specifically young women, so that they can be the agents [of change] in their own families and in their own communities. I see myself in a lot of the young girls that I work with, but the difference between th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Welcome to the Resistance
• Part Two: How to Resist Like a Girl
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Copyright
• About the Publisher