Becoming Propane Jane

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Erika Dixon ?@edixon1213 4h4 hours ago
How'd I miss this?! I can related to ALL of it! Gore woke me up too! THIS is the story of fiery @docrocktex26 READ👇

by Propane Jane

The story of Propane Jane begins deep in the heart of Texas. It's a story about a black woman who was raised in a predominantly white suburb of Houston, and grew accustomed to being the only one of her kind in the room. It's a story about having an opinion that’s controversial simply because it's different. It's a story about fearless self-expression that started not too long after I learned to speak.

My family would be the first to tell you that I've been an unrepentant motor mouth for pretty much the entirety of my almost 35 years on this earth. I was the kind of kid who wouldn't just talk to my dolls, but would hold an Oprah-esque town hall with them to get down to the root of all their "problems." Looking back now it only seems fitting that I find myself chatting up a storm online, but I assure you this wasn't always in the cards. I never aspired to be a writer, blogger, or Twitter influencer; I wanted to be a healer. Ironically enough, it was my journey to become a physician that turned me into all of the above.

As the daughter of two college-educated, East Texas-born Jim Crow survivors, I didn't have the choice to not be politically engaged. My parents took us to the polls on Election Day and taught us the Democratic Party platform as a lesson in self-preservation, because they were taught the same. I saw them roll their eyes at Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, then applaud every word of Bill Clinton's biography at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

By the time I got to *THE* University of Texas at Austin in 1999 (with the assistance of Justice Scalia's worst nightmare “top 10 percent” rule), I was a card-carrying College Democrat even though I hadn't yet cast my first vote. I quickly fell in love with the hippies and bra burners who never ran out of things to protest on the main mall. I was officially radicalized, as the deplorables would say. In fact, I was so hyped up in liberal utopia that I didn't see the Mack truck of the 2000 election disaster heading my way as I waltzed naively into the booth to vote Gore. When I woke up to an inconclusive result and the ensuing weeks of soul crushing hanging chads, my world changed forever. I’d been so certain that the rest of America agreed with me and the hippie bra burners in Austin, and that they'd have sense enough to see through W’s carpetbagger cowboy routine. We all know how “well” that turned out.


I started a spirited but pitiful blog called “Real Talk Express,” a jab at John McCain, that literally no one but my best friend bothered to read. I sent Obama emails around to family and friends, but felt that the message didn't spread far enough, and I really wasn't reaching anyone outside of my corner of the world. I opened an account at Huffington Post that I eventually abandoned because the hateful trolls there were a biblical level plague. Then I found Twitter. I joined on October 3, 2008, for the sole purpose of telling TV talking heads they were ridiculous and wrong...

read more: http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/25/1572889/-Becoming-Propane-Jane

Be sure to check out Propane Jane's (@docrocktex26) storify from a few months ago:

2016: The Year the Southern Strategy Trumped the GOP
How 50 years of stoking White rage and resentment won Donald Trump the GOP nomination...

Then, follow Propane Jane for fearless campaign commentary and more!