All Over, Just Beginning

And Still We Rise, Eddie Schrieffer

By tonight, we will know, with middling certainty, our fate for the next four years. But today we wait to hear the collective exhalation of bitter, vague relief, or the sharp inhalation of renewed fear.

Either way, we are breathing.

Neither outcome will shift foreign policy from conquest to compassion; neither will grant reprieve to the imprisoned or give community to the lonely.

Neither will feed the hungry or comfort the grieving.

Neither will halt climate collapse, and neither will save us, even though I know you want to believe that it will.

And that’s not because this man is not historically and uniquely dangerous. But those horrors were here before him, and they’ll be here after.

We are staunching the bleeding, but the wound remains.

So either way, the fight continues.

In 2019, Bernie Sanders called this a “defining and pivotal moment for our country and our planet.”

He said:

If there was ever a moment where we had to effectively analyze the competing political and social forces which define this historical period, this is that time.

If there was ever a moment when we needed to stand up and fight against the forces of oligarchy and authoritarianism, this is that time.

Just a few months after he gave that speech, we would be asked to choose between the authoritarian and the status quo. Between the fascist and the fertile ground that grew him.

I want you to understand why that was a hard choice.

Trump was, and is, the most dangerous president in modern American history. But it was that modern American history that built him. He was created by a system that rewards glib, greedy men with incalculable power. A system that grinds the poor into the dust. That is steeped in white supremacy. He was cut from a fabric woven with inequality, and desperation. With exceptionalism. With quiet, sadistic authoritarianism.

For millions, his election represented their first encounter with insurmountable injustice. In the pitch of their outrage you could hear the incredulity of unexamined privilege. I know, because I was one of them.

For millions more, it was just America. I know, because I have spent the past four years listening.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Incredulous outrage can and must turn to action. One disastrous election awakened a somnambulant public. It lit a fire in damp wood.

And so, now, we have to keep burning.

Today, America and the world are once again moving towards authoritarianism — and the same right-wing forces of oligarchy, corporatism, nationalism, racism and xenophobia are on the march, pushing us to make the apocalyptically wrong choice that Europe made in the last century.

Because we are not the only ones awake.

We can become a stronger, better, more equitable nation — the nation we have always told ourselves we are. It is possible to fulfill the promises we have made to ourselves and to one another. It is possible to complete, as Bernie put it, “the unfinished business of the Democratic Party.”

But “back the way we came” is still lost. True redemption, and salting the earth that grew a man like Donald Trump, requires a wholesale transformation of the institutions and the attitudes that drive us.

[I]n opposition to oligarchy, there is a movement of working people and young people who, in ever increasing numbers, are fighting for justice.

It requires us to stop looking at wealth as an accomplishment and poverty as a moral failing.

They are young people taking on the fossil fuel industry and demanding policies that transform our energy system and protect our planet from the ravages of climate change.

It requires us to understand climate collapse is not just our reality; it is our responsibility. It requires us to hold accountable those who put profit over people and build fortunes on the backs of the dying.

They are people of color and their allies demanding an end to systemic racism and massive racial inequities that exist throughout our society.

It requires us to confront and dismantle a justice system shot through with racism, and immigration and foreign policies that value xenophobia as much as oil.

None of this is promised to us by the Democratic Party. And so, forging a better nation requires that we look at the ways our own “side” has created and reinforced these inequities. And it demands that we tear our own house down to the studs.

If we return to the way things were — if you go back to sleep — the boot will be cleaner, but it’ll be on your neck just the same.

So when I cast my vote, it was for a tourniquet; not a candidate. Not a party. It was for the possibility of continuing the fight for healthcare, for fair wages, for an end to prisons, for a sustainable future.

It was a fight against naked fascism. But acceptance does not mean agreement.

And I will wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and on January 22, and will fight just as hard against whatever administration stands between us and a better world.

It is time for the American people to stand up and fight for their right to freedom, human dignity and security.

The real power is in what we do between November 3rds. It is in the organizing and the outreach; it is in the education. Revolution happens in the streets and it happens in your soul. It happens no matter who occupies the White House.

My goal for this site is to talk about what happens next — after the ballots are counted and the dust has settled. You tell me: What’s next for you? For us?

Because whatever the count, the work doesn't change.

Solidarity today, tomorrow, and forever.