Flint Huddle’s first meeting at Woodside Church. “Nasty man” Thomas is in the top row, sixth from left, in billed cap. (Photo by Emily Lobbestael)
By Robert R. Thomas
Fittingly, revelation occurred in the sanctuary of Woodside Church, where I was photographed grinning like a Michigan loon in the company of 60 or so “nasty women” and men of all ages, persuasions and races. But it was “nasty women” who had convened it. I had seen the light, and it was “nasty women.”
The gathering was a Flint Huddle. Organized as an outgrowth of the Women’s March movement, huddles are designed to further organized resistance against Trumplandia.
“Such a nasty woman,” is how Trump described Hilary Clinton during one of their campaign “debates.” Then he wanted her locked up. The international response from “nasty women” everywhere continues to be a growing resistance to such misogynistic authoritarianism.
The Flint Huddle represented “nasty women’s” resistance here at the village level while connected by technology to the international movement.
I was immediately aware of the technological and organizational acumen of the participants, but my abiding impression of the event was drawn to the cooperation the huddle exuded. There was no acrid smoke of competitive, testosterone-flavored, Ayn Randian-survival-of-the-fittest predatory Darwinianism.
As one of the men in attendance, I felt extremely welcome—definitely not the enemy. I also felt the power of these women manifest by their stalwart solidarity to resist being turned into nobodies. They have had enough of the white supremacist male bully boys.
In the interests of transparency—something the culture of alt-reality fears, I grew up in a family of strong-minded women. I also attended a male boarding school where I learned about testosterone and competition. But cooperation I have always learned from women. The huddle reaffirmed this recurring lesson over my 73 years. Who got the job done? Women did while men kept bumping heads to assert their authority, to be in charge.
Although neither a joiner nor an organizer by inclination, I hooked up with a sub-huddle focusing on voting and civil rights.
My sub-huddle met two weeks later in the basement of Woodside Church to focus on an action plan, which we did. Everything about the action plan was based on speaking truth LOUDLY to authority. And RESISTANCE to alt reality.
The result of my second encounter with “nasty women” further convinced me that the only hope against the white male totalitarianism running this former democracy is “nasty women.” Their gender has been up against this bunch of men for too long; they are genetically seasoned for dealing with their antagonists. I tend to bet on seasoned experience. I see no reason to believe differently.
If it does not happen here at the village level, it won’t happen from the top down. The Flint Huddle offered me hope.
EVM Writer at large Robert R. Thomas can be reached at captzero@sbcglobal.net.
“Solidarity to resist being turned into nobodies” (Photo by Emily Lobbestael)
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