Sunday, July 3, 2022

Each other’s magnitude and bond


Despite the unabashed hope in my last post, I’m not naive enough to think that one stellar and historically groundbreaking Black woman Justice joining the liberal wing of the current Supreme Court is going to be able to help turn thing around right away. After all, it took little more than a week for the conservative majority of the court to set fire to Roe, privacy protections, women’s healthcare, Miranda, gun safety, climate action, and the separation of church and state. The fight to restore these fundamental rights and to preserve other rights they’re still coming for—marriage equality, voting rights, contraception, so much more—will last generations, and will need to be engaged on literally all fronts. But what choice do we have but to stay on the field to make a better world for our children and grandchildren? Some days I fear the battle is already lost, and I am wandering in the wilderness, blind with anger and despair. On those days I stay close to home, reading, working, recharging, until I can remember that the battle isn’t ever lost unless we stop fighting. I’m exhausted beyond imagining sometimes. Just worn the fuck out. I know you must be, too. So let’s rest when we have to, but let’s also keep getting back up because a luta continua. Because as the poet and griot Gwendolyn Brooks so perfectly put it, “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”


Photo: Pride umbrellas at Cantina Rooftop NYC




11 comments:

  1. A luta continua. Yes. We keep getting back up.

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  2. I'm tired too. My great great grandfather was elected constable in Lowndes County, AL in 1871. Reconstruction was soon over and it was 90 years before another black man was elected sheriff in Lowndes County in 1970. It could take that long before we are back where we were a year ago. Especially if people don't take voting seriously enough to get out there and figure out what has to be done now to vote and do it. Needless to say, I won't be here and if any of my younger grandchildren are still alive, they'll be in their 80s.

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  3. Gwendolyn Brooks was right. And there is also this: “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
    "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
    ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

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  4. Yes, please. Keep getting back up. Your beautiful children and grandchildren - and mine, oh yes - need you. And me. And their mothers and friends and communities and audiences. Yes. It is hard. I cried way back when they put Justice Roberts on the court, with the nastiness that accompanied that whole scene. I am not crying this week. Too damn mad.

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  5. Agreed! We must stay the course. It will be a tireless battle but there is no choice but to keep on.

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  6. Yes, you are right - "what choice do we have?" We have to keep trying...

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  7. I've come to the same conclusion. After a period of despair, I have found my fight again. What a beautiful picture to accompany this post. I thought it was a painting at first.

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  8. It's just amazing how fast the court took us back to the 1800's. I read somewhere that there is a movement to bring back child labor. There are just no words.

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  9. I am not hopeful. The SC has agreed to hear a case from some red state declaring that they have the right to pick their electors regardless of how the popular vote goes. If the SC agrees, we will never have a free and fair election again. It won't matter how many people get out and vote if the state can legally disregard the will of the people.

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  10. I hope these terrible Supreme Court decisions motivate younger voters, who after all have the most to lose by allowing these extremist dinosaurs to take over the government.

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  11. We've had something similar in Alberta, death by a thousand cuts. It wears you down but that's the whole point, isn't it?

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