The Great Awakening

Pottery by Ben Maisel

That was then, this is now. After the shock and awe of the initial assault on our sanity that occurred on election  day, we are now facing the daunting task of defending ourselves and holding our territory for the next four years. I try to avoid military metaphors, but there is a sense that we all feel embattled. We are partisans who will be fighting on multiple fronts, employing a wide range of skills and training. We cannot all be commandos.

Let's begin by laying a foundation of love in our own families and communities. You may have noticed that this is already happening. The energy of isolated iron filings magnetizing towards one another has been palpable from the onset. Love is strong. It empowers people to feel courageous and creative in the face of looming danger. It is the most potent antidote to despair. Love is a perennial weed. It blooms in unexpected places and defies all attempts to be tamed. Reach out to it and it will spread across backyards and fields where you live until you can no longer control it. Transplant it when you can and admire its beauty as you ponder how to contribute to the great awakening that needs to happen.

Fortified with a sense of connection to one another, to the Earth, we can begin to think deeply about how we came to be teetering on the edge of this particular precipice. Part of this process is the exercise of historical memory. I don't mean how the Clintons were tainted or how the press demonstrated its venality. I mean reaching back as far as we can to taste the rapaciousness of the western powers in the Middle East that flourished in the aftermath of World War I; the acquisition of vast resources for the purpose of lining the silk pockets of the already rich; the dominion of French, British and later American white men over millions and millions of brown people. Follow this juggernaut through a series of tyrannical regimes, the sputtering promise of Arab Spring, perpetual bombardment, the starvation of native populations, and the rise of ISIS. Congratulations, you have arrived at the refugee crisis. You are confronting a condition where virtually the whole of the western world is recoiling in horror as the people of color they have been only too happy to exploit arrive en masse at their doorstep seeking sanctuary. Enter Brexit, Le Pen, Putin and Donald Trump.

If you looked closely, you could see it coming and you could feel how this historical matrix would create a perfect storm of racism and xenophobia, set against a background of globalization-induced economic dislocation and environmental degradation. In our country, where the domestic presence of Muslims has up to now been less of a factor than it is in Europe, it's an easy sleight of hand to use the available raw materials to generate anti-Mexican or anti-Black rhetoric and violence, always bubbling just under the surface in the melting pot. The post-colonial tune is a theme with infinite variations.

Sitting with the weight of all this and being hammered day in and day out with the proposed appointments of savage ideologues, the presumed Health and Human Services secretary who doesn't believe in health or human services, the Education secretary who's never set foot in a public school, I feel on some days like I'm being force fed a banquet of barbarism and choking on it. On other days, I imagine a car that has stalled on the tracks. I'm in danger of being hit by an oncoming train. I can't go backward, I can't go forward. The only sane option is to get out of the car before it's too late, walk home and breathe deeply into the knowledge that I will only be able to exercise a narrow influence over events, but that when my influence is added to yours and yours and yours, the train will ultimately be stopped.

Some will march, petition, write to their congresspeople. Some will get involved with local efforts to sustain pluralism, resist growing income inequality, protect our land and water. Some will make art as Woody Guthrie did, as James Baldwin did, as Picasso did when he painted Guernica. And some will be charged with the task of holding the space so that there can be an ongoing conversation in the spirit of both/and. Both economic anxiety and racisim gave rise to Trump. Both understanding how the Democrats failed their natural constituency in the election and how in its aftermath we can and must resist the result. We are the only ones who can make change, inch by inch, row by row as we used to sing lovingly to our children. We are all at risk and we need each other desperately.

http://ncdd.org/22174  Check out the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation's program to "Bridge the Divides"

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