The truth is there are people who are quite informed who still vote against their interests. I would argue that, as a Green Party supporter, I would argue that middle-class black people are voting against their interests oftentimes.

If you look at literacy tests in the South, for example, they were absurdly difficult and didn't measure literacy. They were simply measuring whether or not you were black. So at every moment when we've said, hey, we don't want certain people to vote because they are not educated enough, it is often simply become a way of excluding black and brown people.

We must talk about how sexism and patriarchy operate in conjunction with state violence. Until we're honest about that, and do something to resist, we're complicit in the persistence of oppression.

Part of what we have to do is not just keep ignorant people away from the polls. We have to actually change the structural realities that make people make bad choices beyond their ignorance or what have you.

The Trump voter isn't just an ignorant white guy in the South that if he were more educated would vote differently. The Trump voter is also someone who is dealing with an entirely new economy that his father, grandfather or grandmother didn't have to face 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago.

Part of why I wrote my book was so that we could focus on the structural and systemic reasons behind social misery. Changed hearts and minds are important. But they do little against the backdrop of a system that needs to exploit people and labor to survive. I'm more interested in changed systems than changed hearts.

For me, self-care is a lesson I'm still learning. But it begins with space away from the heaviness of life. I now take time to play, laugh, and, every once in awhile, sleep.