Tonight, unable to watch the news, I re-watched the PBS’ 3-Part series (as part of The American Experience), The Abolitionists. The struggle to abolish slavery in this country was one of nearly four decades!! Even that was a partial victory as Reconstruction was short-circuited by the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, the removal of federal troops from the former Confederate states, and institution of segregation, begun by custom in the North but spread by a series of laws and court decisions into the South in a pattern called “Jim Crow,” and a 2nd class citizenship which rendered the lives of most black Americans little different from legal slavery. It took another 50 years to strike that down.
I was born in 1962, into a family of white Southern liberals who were part of the nonviolent movement for Black Freedom (the so-called “Civil Rights Movement”). My birth was in the middle of that Second Reconstruction Era and movement that stretched from the aftermath of WWII until the the middle 1970s when Nixon’s “Law and Order” racism left that Reconstruction also half-finished and subject to reversals. The struggle for racial justice and equality goes on, recently suffering many setbacks.
And that is just one of the struggles for a nation and world of love, justice, equality, peace, and solidarity. To it must be added the movements for women’s equality (however many “waves” of feminism have come, gone, and transmuted), for LGBTQ rights, for economic justice and sustainability, for the transformation from militarism to peacemaking. The struggles connect, intertwine, break apart, gain partial victories, partial setbacks, pick up pieces—and continue.
We must learn to celebrate partial victories even as we gird ourselves for new struggles. We sing and dance in jail cells and on picket lines and in voting booths. Joy comes in the midst of the pain and tears and not removed from them.
It may be that these mid-term elections will give us a great victory or a small one or even give us a surprising setback. But no matter how big or small the Blue Wave, the struggle will and must continue. Even the most sweeping Blue Tsunami is a beginning, not a completion. Even falling short of our minimal dream of re-taking the House of Representatives is not a total victory for Trumpist Fascism. We may or may not live to see the society we strive to build.
We do our best, celebrate whatever good results come. Mourn our losses. Then we pick up ourselves, plan for the next campaigns, and continue on. We are in this for the long haul. Some of us have been at this work in one way or another for decades. Others are taking up the struggle only now. Some of us are nearing our twilight and beginning to pass on the leadership torches to younger hands, even as we hope to serve as elder guiding lights. The work is righteous—but sometimes it is hard and thankless. That’s why the Community sections of this forum and the Good News Round-up and similar efforts are necessary. It is why there is a necessity for spiritual resources (or some equivalent for the atheists and agnostics among us) to sustain us—so that we do not lose heart when we face set-backs—even serious ones such as the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Roberts’ Court or the election of Donald J. Trump with Russian help. Resistance is not for the faint of heart.
I say these things to myself as much as to others.
VOTE, help others vote, await results. Celebrate and/or mourn (even if we get a tsunami, we shall not win every thing for which we hope). Before the week is out, we must begin planning anew for the campaigns in 2019 and 2020—and beyond.
Sisters and Brothers, it is my great honor to serve among you in the Resistance to Trumpist Fascism and the longer, larger, struggle for Liberty, Equality, Justice, Peace, and Ecological Integrity.