7 Next Steps to Keep the Women's March Momentum Going

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When I marched January 21, it was clear to me that this was a day of strength. Strength from grief, strength from exhaustion, strength from ignorance. We'd poured all our pain into that day, and we'd marched for women, immigrants and minorities. But it was also clear that the energy I witnessed must be sustained lest it become a memory, an example of our power at its best. We need now, more than ever, longevity. We can't afford to get tired and normalize Trump's regime and his cabinet's racist, sexist and xenophobic ideologies. January 21 has to be a beginning. 

Gloria Steinem told Cosmo, "I have never, in my long life, seen so many people marching and demonstrating and saying, this is our government, we’re going to take it back." That says something.

We have work ahead. But today was a great start!

See this Instagram photo by @lisamariebasile * 76 likes

But there were some problems, as we spoke of. And those problems do need to be addressed. And that's all part of the next steps. Because the Women's Marches were just the beginning. A glimpse of the power President Trump thinks he's "given" to the people. Well, We are the people. And we will have the power. 

The next four years will require serious energy and activism. As Audre Lorde said, "Your silence will not protect you." Remember that.

It shouldn't need to be said, but you should always be practicing self-care (and encouraging others to do so) at times like this, as it will enable you to stay active and alert. That means...if you are burnt out, angered by social media, done dealing with energy vampires who do not understand the basic principles of human decency or sick of watching the fake news battle the real news battle Trump's media silencing...take a break. Come back when you can. But come back. 

Here are 7 next steps to take: 

1. Recognize that inclusivity and understanding is a necessity — and put energy into educating yourself and others. 

Because I benefit from white privilege and am able-bodied, I have to realize and work on knowing when to shut up and when to speak out. Because many other people, people of color, people who have disabilities, trans people, are marginalized and silenced. It is imperative now to listen to make space for those voices so that we can all unite in solidarity, as friends and allies, to fight against oppression. I would suggest reading as much as you can. I recommend reading this piece — How to survive in intersectional feminist spaces 101— and sharing. And I'd suggest examining how race intersects with the Women's March. 

Instagram photo by Lisa Marie Basile * Jan 21, 2017 at 7:39pm UTC

See this Instagram photo by @lisamariebasile * 45 likes

2. Call congress — every single day.

Call 202-224-3121. This line can connect you to senators and representatives. Having names handy will help. Also: here's how to find your local representatives and here's more on contacting elected officials. Here is the Senate phone list and the House phone list. Know what you want to say, and have details handy about the issues you're calling about. Know that you will likely speak to someone in the office, not the person themselves.  

3. Make art. Keep making art. Host political poetry readings. Collaborate. 

Now is the time to use your words and your art and your vision. Whatever that means to you, do it. Do it because it is an expression. Do it because it forges community. Host a poetry night that explores politics, invite friends to make art. Seriously, get together. 

4. Learn to spot fake news. 

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's 2017 and "fake news" is a legitimate term. Even worse, there's a difference between what normal, smart humans know as "fake news" and the real news that President Trump is calling "fake news." So, thank you, post-apocalyptic Twilight zone. 

Incredible.

See this Instagram video by @lisamariebasile * 69 likes

5. Join Next Steps Salon

.This organization allows people to create meet-ups that will plan and organize for the road ahead. Sign up here. According to their site, you can make outreach plans and actions plans: "Our gatherings will focus on how we can start this process so that ultimately, we can increase the number of people willing to go to bat for social justice issues....We'll support each other in outlining concrete action plans to push forward the issues we care about as individuals." 

6. Run for office, seriously. 

Through She Should Run, women learn how to run for office. The organization demystifies the process and provide resources so women can run. From their site: "She Should Run’s robust Ask a Woman to Run program provides a community that encourages women to run and then connects women with resources, people and organizations who can help start their path towards public service. The She Should Run Incubator is our online program to help more women envision themselves in public leadership, and our way of providing thoughtful guidance and support for women considering a future run."

7. Join March's March 10 Actions 100 Days

Everything you need to do is clearly and easily listed out — so there's no reason not to. We'll see you over there. Let's do this.

Today, millions of people gathered in cities and towns across the world, to stand together for human rights. pic.twitter.com/aXKht13N9I

— Women's March (@womensmarch) January 22, 2017

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and moderator of its digital community. Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, Greatest, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, and The Huffington Post, among other sites. 

Incantation Poetry to Conquer the Darkness — The Luminous Project

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

The below poems are samples of what's to come from our Luminous e-book, which will be available in the coming days. It will available for a $1 and 100% the proceeds will go toward Planned Parenthood. When donations are made, receipts will be available publicly on this website. 

I solicited for The Luminous project this past fall as a way to combat darkness. It, in all honesty, felt like the right thing to do — to give voice, to make a space for beauty. But I will be honest: part of it felt futile. I was in such pain (as we all were) and everything felt pointless, misdirected, weak. How could poetry enact change or fight against immorality? How could we find magic? I struggled with the idea that, in the face of such absolute disarray, the arts even had a place. But this is the United States and art, poetry, song has always had a renaissance in times of fear and oppression and hatred. It always will, and in many ways, that is what's remembered long after the battles and the wars and the infighting and the opposing sides. 

Things have always been painful. But there is so much at stake, for so many people here and around the world. Which is why power is in the small things — saying hello to a stranger, listening up when we need to, sharing a poem, doing a kindness. And in the more specific: marching, protesting, organizing, signing up to learn more about conflict resolution. Nothing is too big or too small, I realized, especially when reading these poems. That we were flooded with statements — spell-poems — that called to inner power and resolution (although all different in nature) said something to me. It said that we unite when we need to. And just knowing that makes a vast difference. You're not alone. We're not alone.

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Dianca London

Anthony Michael Morena

Emily Rose Cole

Paakhi Bhatnagar

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Yi Wu

Kailey Tedesco

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Lisa Marie Basile is the author of APOCRYPHAL and the chapbooks Andalucia and war/lock. She is the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine, and her work has appeared in PANK,  The Atlas Review, Tin House, Coldfront, The Rumpus Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, Dusie, The Ampersand Review, and many other publications. She’s an essayist and journalist as well. She holds an MFA from The New School.

Favorites of 2016: Poetry, Lit Journals, Magazines & More

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

There is no real way to round up all the amazing work that has been birthed in 2016. There is too much good, too much power, too much beauty. Instead, here are the books and publications I have come back to time and again this year.

Favorite poetry collections:

Night — Etel Adnan  

Chelate — Jay Besemer

The Performance of Becoming Human — Daniel Borzutzky

Flowers Among the Carrion — James Pate

My country, tonight — Josué Guébo

Take This Stallion by Anaïs Duplan

When the Ghosts Come Ashore — Jacqui Germain

Andes — by Tomaž Šalamun, trans. Jeffrey Young & Katarina Vladimirov Young

Six — Julie Marie Wade

Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

The Hermit — Lucy Ives

Sad Girl Poems — Christopher Soto

Favorite literary presses, journals and publishers:

The Atlas Review

Tarpaulin Sky

Sibling Rivalry

Timeless, Infinite Light

Black Ocean

Lit Hub

Volume 1 Brooklyn

Witch Craft Magazine

Electric Lit

Switchback Books

Favorite reads:

The Establishment

Slutist

Ultra Culture

Broadly

Autostraddle

A Woman’s Thing

WEIRD SISTER

The Offing

Witch Craft Magazine

Queen Mob’s Teahouse

Quail Bell Magazine

Sabat Magazine

Bloodmilk Jewelry

Feminine Inquiry

For Harriet

St. Sucia

The Numinous

Dirge Magazine

Lumen Magazine

Blavity

Berfrois

Favorite magical reading twitter accounts:

@AstroPoets

@guerrillafem 

@cultofweird

@DeathSalon

@deadmaidens

@mask_mag

@TheSilentMother

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and moderator of its digital community. Her work has appeared in The Establishment, Bustle, Bust, Hello Giggles, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, and The Huffington Post, among other sites.  She is also the author of three poetry collections, including Apocryphal from Noctuary Press. She holds an MFA from The New School. @lisamariebasile

The Love Witch is the Kitschy, Hedonistic, Feminist Film You Need to See

BY KAILEY TEDESCO

*Please note that there are some scene descriptions here, which may constitute a spoiler for some. 

I found out about The Love Witch nearly a year ago. It all started with a still of Elaine Parks’ heavily shadowed eyelids and a tea dress with ruffles too glorious for words. The still became a fascination which led me to interviews with the film’s feminist auteur, Anna Biller, which eventually led me to a trailer, then back to some interviews, and so on for about nine months. It took until just yesterday for the movie to come to one of my city’s indie theaters. Usually, and in my personal experiences, a build-up of anticipation that long often results in disappointment. I remember thinking several times that this 1960’s B-Horror pastiche could not possibly live up to the hype which I, myself, have ascribed to it. 

Well, dear readers, let me tell you it was worth every moment of the wait. 

The film follows Elaine Parks (Samantha Robinson), a newly inducted yet gifted, member of a Wiccan coven who is quixotically obsessed (or, in her own words, “addicted) to love. After suffering years of gaslighting and emotional abuse in a previous marriage, Elaine is quickly scouted by a coven while dancing in a burlesque nightclub. From there, she quickly learns to transmogrify “sex magic” into “love magic,” but ultimately leaves each of her dalliances for dead.

Starring: Elle Evans, Samantha Robinson, Jeffrey Vincent Parise The Love Witch Official Trailer 1 (2016) - Horror Comedy A modern-day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, in a tribute to 1960s pulp novels and Technicolor melodramas.

The Love Witch is an open allegory with a feminist agenda. While the film’s aesthetic and score set the viewer up for the typical supernatural tropes of 1960’s technicolor horror, we are instead greeted with a more realistic sense of witches which somehow opposes and aligns with our own world’s cultural conceptions. This is because the “witch” is ostensibly equated to a sexually liberated woman, and the townspeople treat Elaine and her coven members as such. In a scene where Elaine meets up with her friend and coven member Barbara at a Burlesque show, men can be heard having discussions about how witches used to hide, but now they seem ubiquitous in society. The attitude towards witches and Wicca is mostly one of bigoted tolerance — as though witches have been publicly granted rights that the anti-intellectualist bar-dwellers can’t override, despite their disdain (sounds familiar, right?)

And the allegory grows stronger. 

Elaine herself, after losing weight and gaining empowerment after her husband “leaves,” willingly codifies herself according to the male-fantasy. In the beginning of the film, she sits down to tea with Trish, a self-proclaimed feminist who has been married for ten years. After hearing that Trish will often refuse her husband of some of his fantasies, Elaine scolds that women should always give men what they want. And this is exactly what she does… or so it would seem. 

Throughout the film, Elaine creates a world for herself that is heavily influenced by male-perpetuated ideas of femininity, ultimately masking herself in layers of Bardot-esque eyeliner and Audrey Hepburn LBDs. She is often cooking decadent cakes or donning renaissance gowns while riding horseback. She speaks politely and is never seen without make-up. When it comes time for intimacy, she seduces her lovers with elaborate dances in intricate lingerie. She makes herself, essentially, the embodiment of male fantasy. However, she is not quite the Stepford Wife that one might think. 

She uses her beauty and sexuality as a bait for men who describe themselves as libertines or unhappily married, aka sexists. From the start of the film, she can be seen batting her eyes in what one initially assumes might be a call-back to the Bewitched nose-wrinkle. Yet, these two are largely dissimilar as Elaine is not using magic at all, simply her own sexual prowess. The men she baits are already ignobly piqued by her as they often catcall and grope. She invites herself into their lives, feeds them a philter, and suddenly they become madly (in every sense of the word) in love. What begins as a dalliance quickly turns into a literal sickness that causes these men to become hysterical with love to the point of death.

The hysterics are played for laughs and ultimately reminiscent of the ways in which women have been misogynistically portrayed in film for the past century. Elaine has none of it, immediately becoming disinterested in her own subjects and proclaiming “what a pussy.” She buries the body of one lover ritualistically, yet ultimately remains un-phased. To top it off, she places a witch bottle containing her own urine and a used tampon over the shallow grave. Her Kardashian dead-pan narration asks viewers to consider that most men have never even seen a used tampon. What she calls an addiction to love is evidently an addiction to power. Elaine exemplifies the culturally normative ideas of masculine aloofness while patronizing her dying lovers in her ruffled mini-dresses.

Anna Biller flips the typified romantic narrative while also giving the protagonist her cake and letting her eat it, too (quite literally). Elaine hedonistically enjoys all of the pleasures associated with sexist romanticism without letting the male stick around long enough for her to suffer the consequences. She flits from man to man like this in perfectly polished composure while her own paintings of liberated goddesses cutting the heart out of a man line the walls of her bedroom a la Dorian Gray. She has polarity and unity of her being, and all of her empowerment lies in her willingness to appear submissive. 

Biller constructs this narrative through a carefully cultivated 60’s lens that sometimes alludes to even older Hollywood, yet the inclusion of a smart-phone at the end grounds the viewer in a phantasmagorical contemporary. The film is a world that already exists. Kubrick and Ashby and Argento are all carefully woven into it. Yet, it is not their world. Nor is it Tate’s or Hepburn’s. It is all Biller’s – a world which re-writes over a century of misogyny with one unapologetically empowered witch. 

And it is fantastic. Please see it for yourself. 

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Kailey Tedesco is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee and the editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical. She received her MFA in creative writing from Arcadia University. She’s a dreamer who believes in ghosts and mermaids. You can find her work in FLAPPERHOUSE, Menacing Hedge, Crack the Spine, and more. For more information, visit kaileytedesco.com.