Category: Writing

It’s not that Hillary was colluding with Trump for an easy win. That every progressive who fought tooth and nail for her (Cory Booker, Michelle and Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Wendy Davis..etc) had somehow all collectively sold out on their beliefs and gone to the dark side.

The true scandal is something much older and time tested. Simply put:
It’s not easy to get people to show up to vote on public policy. Especially if that policy centers around cutting taxes for the wealthy, removing access to healthcare, and cutting services for the very poor. But it is easy to get people out to vote if you are unscrupulous enough to convince them that their neighbors are the cause of their suffering and that their champions are their enemies.

We are right to believe that there are hidden forces exerting influence in our democracy. There always will be because where there is power there will also be cronyism, rigging, and abuse. However, we have to not become so vigilant in searching for villains that we forget that history is also filled with decent but flawed public servants who are crucified by the very people they are trying to help.  

What people fail to realize about revolution is that it rarely occurs in the form of oppressed citizens rising unified behind one ideology but instead occurs as several groups rising up under different ideologies. As evidenced today, there is a white nationalist movement that is much more organized, single minded, and focused than an eclectic collection of diverse progressives.

He attended a city hall meeting and sat earnestly listening, thoughtfully engaging, and encouraging those around him to see that he and other gay youth are not all that bad.
He sat through hours of the kind of shockingly hateful ignorance that shakes a person’s belief in the capacity of people to see each other as human in spite of differences.
A week later his parents were planning his funeral.

I stayed awake the night before last trying to put into words what it’s like to grow up in a society that’s convinced you are evil and that has you almost convinced as well.
Words fail me.
But if we’re hoping that things will get so bad under a Trump presidency that we’ll bring the revolution we should first do an inventory of who we’re leaving on the front lines of that hate and ask them if they’re willing to make that sacrifice.

In 1968 there was a huge anti-war student movement coupled with a civil rights movement. These two movements backed 1 democratic candidate in the democratic primaries but that candidate didn’t win the majority of votes. As a result activists felt so fed up that they decided to protest the presidential election leaving the Republican candidate Nixon to win. 

Nixon had campaign as the “Law and Order” candidate who would be able to put an end to all the protests and civil unrest in the streets. 
Years later Nixon’s top aide, John Ehrlichman, would admit in an interview: (the following is a direct quote):

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. … You understand what I’m saying?

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. … We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Nixon’s rhetoric about black people and anti-war activists set him up to be able to jail, exile, and even kill activists with full approval from the general public. It also set the stage for Regan’s “war on drugs” and all the subsequent policies that appealed to outraged white voters and resulted in the mass incarceration of our communities of color.

Trumps rhetoric is far more hyperbolic, far more overtly racist, and far more erratic than Nixon’s was.
And it’s not “just words”. 
Because those words build the story we tell our society to justify the way our government treats its citizens. 

If we walk out on this election we set back any progress we’ve made on civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights…etc. 
If we sit out this election we don’t bring the revolution. We sink deeper into a denial of our collective history, misinformed outrage, and life-wrecking public policy. 
And we leave the most vulnerable and least represented among us to bear the fallout. 

Go Vote. 
#GetInvolvedStayInvolved #NeverTrump #Imwithher