Feels Blind Literary, Issue #11
Winter 2024

Winter 2025 Contributors

Note from the Editor in Chief

Dear Readers,

Over the past month I’ve found myself at a loss for words many times, an unusual feeling for me. I founded and launched Feels Blind Literary in large part as a response to the 2016 election, wanting to carve out space for individuals to be heard who would be and were marginalized by Trump’s administration. I also saw an opportunity to monetarily support people and services that would be and were under direct attack, raising funds through submissions fees, zine sales, and fundraiser events for organizations providing gender affirming care, safe houses for abused women, bail for #BlackLivesMatter protestors, access to reproductive care in states with Trump abortion bans, and more. It’s hard to believe we’re back here all over again.

While 2016 was difficult, this feels significantly worse. Since 2016, we’ve seen Trump lock children in cages, botch the COVID-19 response, overthrow Roe v Wade through his Supreme Court nominees, be found guilty of 34 felony counts, be found liable for sexual assault, try to overthrow a free and fair election, be impeached twice by the House, steal classified documents to hoard in his tacky golf course bathroom, and hold a racist and misogynist campaign, yet millions of people still voted for him. Millions of people looked at all this data and thought to themselves, yes, this is good.

I won’t say we weathered those four years under Trump, so we’ll do it again, a refrain I’ve heard quite a bit since November 5th. This statement screams of privilege, as who exactly is the “we” who survived the first time? The babies and children who were locked in cages and separated from their families forever? The thousands who unnecessarily died of COVID-19 while Trump pedaled conspiracy theories and urged people to drink bleach? The families of the Capitol Hill police officers brutally murdered by insurrectionists on January 6th? The families of the children slaughtered in a mass school shooting who Trump told to “get over it?” The women who died in states with Trump abortion bans in effect because pregnant women who have miscarriages or other complications and need life-saving care are now treated as untouchables? Not everyone will survive these next four years either.

One of the saddest parts of the outcome of this election is that the side who thinks they won still doesn’t understand that we all lost except for millionaires and billionaires. It’s incongruous that some in this country who are celebrating the murder of a CEO who profited from denying people necessary care, greed that led to individuals being saddled with insurmountable medical debt or dying, also voted for someone whose platform blatantly centers tax cuts and cutting regulations for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else. 

There are big things I wish Kamala and the Democrats did differently, sure. She should have vehemently condemned the genocide in Gaza and had a concrete plan to respond to it. It’s far past time we stop moving further to the right in response to Republicans doing so, too. We don’t need to be a party of moderates or Republican lite because the other side is controlled by extremists. What I reject, however, is the narrative that Kamala lost because she abandoned working class voters and didn’t have a strong economic message like Trump, a sentiment I’ve heard echoed throughout conservative and liberal circles alike. This would only make sense in a world where Trump communicated even a baseline understanding of policy, economic or otherwise, and offered real solutions. His proposed tax breaks will only benefit households earning $360K and up. Tariffs on foreign goods are absorbed by consumers, not foreign countries. His promise to deport 20 million undocumented immigrants will cost an estimated $88 billion to $315 billion a year, costs that largely will be absorbed by the working- and middle-class. The Project 2025 agenda calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights across the country, not just in red states. This strips women of their greatest economic freedom of all- the ability to decide if and when they want to have children.

One thing that has changed this time around is that many of the people I saw as activists on the front line in 2016 are exhausted and/or numb. It’s been much quieter in the days and weeks following this election, many isolating or tuning out. I took a break to digest all of this, too, but I’m back. Launching this issue full of necessary stories from established and emerging writers is proof of that. We often drop issues on the Winter Solstice because it aligns with Feels Blind Literary’s underlying message. We’re thrilled this year is no different despite it sometimes feeling like the world is crumbling around us. While the shortest day of the year, it’s also the point at which daylight hours begin to lengthen, a symbol of renewal and a return to light. We also need to return to light by being strong, organizing, and making our voices heard through activism and art. I don’t see this as a choice. I see it as an obligation. We live in a country where a signifiant portion of the population relishes in cruelty and this breaks my heart, but I am committed to modeling and fighting for something different and I hope all of you are, too. We need each other now more than ever.

XO, Lindsay

PS In keeping with my tradition of recommending bands or musicians, this time around I’m shouting out Black Belt Eagle Scout. Though by no means new— Katherine Paul released her first EP under the Black Belt Eagle Scout moniker in 2014 and has since released 3 subsequent albums— I have been listening to her music nonstop since seeing Black Belt Eagle Scout open for Sleater-Kinney last March at the TLA in Philadelphia. A self-described “radical indigenous queer feminist” who grew up in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, her music is infused with Native American and post-punk influences. “At the Party” is a favorite, a song Paul says is about “trying to find the strength within yourself to be able to support somebody else."