There's this great painting in the Brooklyn MfA office that Joe Felice made sort of by accident. We were spray-paint stenceling a lot of binders to send out volunteer manuals, and a stencel covered in wet red and gold paint fell onto a piece of paper, leaving an outline of our logo in fiery blurred color with other bits of paint spattered about at random. Joe picked it up, recognizing the value of a nice found piece. In small red letters, he finger painted the words, "Today I Learned To Fight" in the bottom right quadrant of the paper.

I've been thinking about that piece of paper a lot lately.

I believe we can fight and I believe we can win. I'll be continuing in this for the near future as my professional occupation, and no matter where my life takes me, I don't think there's any going back to apathy or ignorance.

We will need to play hardball for a few years to keep things from getting fucked up. This means, for instance, we might need to go to the remaining 45 Democratic senators (41 of whom can block judicial nominations) and tell them if they compromise our future for the sake of their political career, we will burn them down; which we can now credibly claim to do.

We will need to stage some very media-savvy protest actions. Here's a hint: ANSWER isn't the answer, but there are smart ways to use political theater to shape the national discourse.

We will need some people to run for office; lay in some ground floor talent. We will need some people to help raise money through benefit parties and the like. We will need research, rhetoric, and most of all the paitence and committment to develop a clear set of principles which we can use to grow our numbers.

But we can do all these things. And we will. And it will be enjoyable work for the most part. The reality is we are coming from way behind in this fight. But we are learning and building and we have room to grow; they do not. And so if we want to, we can win.