~o~
This
was meant to be a presentation on simplicity, on contentment and joy in the
face of a consumer society fueled by injustice and greed and
sustained by a culture that values permanent dissatisfaction over
gratitude and care. It was meant to grieve how this precious earth,
this fragile whole made up of human and natural communities, has been
looted and crushed, poisoned and neglected. It was meant to celebrate
the ways, little and large, in which we could bring about healing our
own fragmented lives and communities. And it was meant to celebrate
how the earth itself, this beautiful and terrible hum of living and
dying, is worth celebrating and grieving and loving and exploring and
protecting. I was going to talk about gardening with my grandparents
and parents, and hiking with Holly. There was even a sentimental
childhood memory about buying seed potatoes and onion sets with my
father.
I
really hoped I did not have a compelling reason to put that presentation aside last Tuesday.
Although
I was not expecting a Trump victory, I was also not surprised. I have
spent a good deal of my life around people that helped carry him to
success. Although we can’t generalize to individuals, we can notice
the trends. Despite the rhetoric around economic issues, Trump’s
victory was not a blow against neoliberalism, evidenced by his
willingness to cut taxes, deregulate industry, and bust unions.
Instead, Trump’s vision appealed to those who have felt the
symptoms and impacts of neoliberalism, such as job loss, and did not
like it. Trump offered a message built around the assurance that the
spoils of neoliberalism would include the middle class, mainly white
folk who have felt their privilege threatened both by an uncertain
economic future but also by movements for equality and justice among
traditionally marginalized people who are growing in number,
visibility, and power. The economic world we have inherited and
sustained has always required the suffering and oppression of
marginalized people, especially black and brown people and women, as
well as the pillaging and destruction of the earth. So even if it
carried mainly sentimental, a-historical meanings to most followers,
the slogan “Make America Great Again” was a startling reminder of
just who has born the cost of that so-called greatness, and who will
likely bear it again. If you don’t recognize this as white
supremacy at work, then we need to have a conversation.
As
such, social media and independent news have become clearinghouses
for reports of abuse and assault committed by people who felt
permitted to do so in the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral college
victory, an eruption and intensification of the hatred and violence
we witnessed throughout the campaign: swastikas painted in bathrooms
and on storefront windows; a teacher threatening students to behave
before Trump sends them back to Africa; fifth graders chanting “Build
a wall!” at Hispanic students; vandalism of a unity banner
expressing care and support of marginalized people; a 10 year old
student sent home from school early because a classmate grabbed her
genitals; a gay man with serious injuries when Trump supporters
smashed his face in with a beer bottle; countless examples of
harassment, of POC being told to “go back where you came from,”
of women being threatened with sexual violence, of women being afraid
to put on their hijab. There is an entire twitter feed called “Day
1 In Trump's America” and a tumblr called “why we’re afraid”,
both documenting the abusive and self-congratulatory celebrations of
Trump’s victory. Tragically, suicide crisis hotlines are reporting
that they are receiving twice as many calls as usual. Transgender
hotlines in particular received what they described as a
record-breaking number of calls.
All
the while, I keep seeing liberal friends counseling us to be calm, to
give Trump a chance, to be unified. They speculate that Trump’s
misogynistic, racist, hateful rhetoric was just a show, and that
President Trump will be a different man. Trump’s victory speech
called for unity, after all. While I don’t agree that this is a
time to stay quiet, or that we should waste even one moment that we
can use to organize and resist, it is worth considering what Trump
himself has said about what’s in store. So setting aside what VanJones aptly called a “white-lash,” let’s take a glimpse at the
possible shape of a Trump presidency.
To
begin, Trump is surrounding himself with a collection of people whom
marginalized people already know as problematic under the best
conditions. I’ll stick with just two examples here that connect
with some of the many implications for POC. First, Rudy Giuliani may
become our Attorney General. This is the same man who championed
racist ‘stop and frisk’ policies (a practice, we should note,
that Trump said he’d like to see implemented nationwide) and has
ignorantly and repeatedly condemned the Black Lives matter movement. (SOURCE) Second, Sheriff David Clarke is a possible nominee to head the
Department of Homeland Security. Clarke has also repeatedly attacked
the Black Lives Matter movement, going so far as to say, “I’m
tired of hearing people call these people black activists, they’re
not activists, this is black slime and it needs to be eradicated from
the American society and the American culture.” (SOURCE) He’s also opposed policies that address gun violence and proposed
including a semi-automatic rifle on the Great Seal of the United
States. (SOURCE)
Further,
of the 47 names of possible nominees for Cabinet positions we know of
at this point, only two are people of color (Ben Carson and David
Clarke) and only eight are women (Sarah Palin, Pam Bondi, Victoria
Lipni, Jan Brewer, Mary Fallin, Cynthia Lummis, Carol Comer, and
Leslie Rutledge). And several of these people are being considered
for the same position. In short, Trump’s answer to leading a nation
that is clearly divided and even more clearly facing both direct and
systemic issues of injustice against marginalized and minoritized
people is to surround himself with white men. (SOURCE)
As
for policies, Trump has promised to slash service programs and repeal
legal protections for vulnerable people, including people with
disabilities, senior citizens, and their families and caregivers. One
option, to block-grant Medicaid, would mean that states with more
low-income residents will lose much needed funding. It would also
mean huge slashes in funding over the next ten years, with resulting
cuts in services. Trump has also promised to repeal the ACA. Without
going into the difficulties and complexities involved with such a
process, there are changes that can be made that will result in even
more limited access to health care. (SOURCE)
LGBTQIA+
folk are also bracing themselves for what’s ahead. At the very
least, it seems unlikely that we will be able to depend on federal
protections. More likely, Trump will rescind President Obama’s
executive orders that offered some levels of protection from
discrimination. Trump and Pence have said they want these decisions
to be in the hands of the states and local communities, and most
states don’t provide protections. The prospect of what a Trump era
Supreme Court might do is also frightening for many reasons across a
broad spectrum of issues beyond LGBTQIA+ concerns, but they also
include the current cases related to transgender rights. (SOURCE)
And
what if you are a Muslim? Trump toned down his call for a "total
and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,"
revising it to read as a ban on “immigration from terror-prone
regions where vetting cannot safely occur.” But this is simply
code, and immigration regulations are written in such a way that
Trump could very well ban entry into the United States to anyone who
has a passport from countries that he determines are “terror-prone.”
The ban is a horrible idea, but it is a very real possibility. (SOURCE) And such a ban would also have ongoing impacts on Muslim citizens
living in the United States.
Another
area of grave concern regarding a Trump presidency is in relation to
the health of our planet. By now, I hope I can assume that the
relentless assault on the earth is as well-known as it is
well-documented, yet Trump’s plans could make things considerably
worse. Brad Plumer of Vox
has outlined some of the red flags we already know about:
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“Trump called global warming a Chinese hoax. He couldn’t have been blunter about this. He also tapped Myron Ebell, an avowed climate denier, to head his EPA transition team.
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“Trump has said, straight up, he wants to scrap all the major regulations that President Obama painstakingly put in place to reduce US carbon dioxide emissions, including the Clean Power Plan. If Trump wants to rewrite these rules through executive action, he can. Or Republicans in Congress could try to pass a law forbidding the EPA from ever regulating CO2 again.
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“Trump has also hinted he wants to downsize the EPA. ‘What they do is a disgrace,’ he has said. He now has the power to rewrite or scale back other regulations on mercury pollution, on ground-level ozone, on coal ash, and more.
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“Trump has said he wants to repeal all federal spending on clean energy, including R&D for wind, solar, nuclear power, and electric vehicles. This would require Congress, but it’s not impossible.
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“Finally, Trump … wants to pull the United States out of the Paris climate deal. There’s nothing stopping him here. Technically, the US can’t officially withdraw for four years, but for all practical purposes, the Trump administration could ignore it." (SOURCE)
Trump’s
100 day plan also included lifting “the Obama-Clinton roadblocks
and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone
Pipeline, to move forward." (SOURCE) It’s no wonder Plumer titled his article, “There’s
no way around it: Donald Trump looks like a disaster for the planet.”
All
of this is just the beginning, based on what Trump has outlined in
his own plan and promises, and
I didn’t even try to fit in most
policies, from the possibilities of war to the roll back on
reproductive rights to criminal justice reform to
immigration to women’s rights and
more. We can be hopeful that
Trump
won’t try or be able to
keep his promises, but we cannot count on it. And this also
doesn’t address what might
be done legislatively by a Republican controlled Senate, House, and
White House, or, as I
mentioned before, what
decisions might unfold during
a Trump era Supreme Court.
Nevertheless,
it is important for us to remember that, despite the terrible
potential, the election of Donald Trump is not yet the worst tragedy
humans have faced. And if you are just now becoming aware of the
injustices thriving in the USA and around the world, you are very
late to the game. Let us be clear: the current global economic system
came into existence on the bones and backs of millions upon millions
of human beings, through the tragedies of genocide, slavery, and
colonialism, and the ruthless extraction and use of natural resources
without consideration for disastrous ecological impacts on natural
and human communities. Further, the current global economic system is
maintained through the continued exploitation of billions of human
beings working, living, and dying under oppressive, dangerous, and
economically unjust conditions, and the continued ruthless extraction
and use of natural resources with little consideration for the
impacts. For those on the margins, crushed under the glittery boot of
capitalist expansion, the meaning of life is reduced to survival. For
those outside of power but within the circle of privilege, the
meaning of life is reduced to consumption. We sustain it with the
choices we make when we shop, invest, and spend our time. The earth
and everything and everyone on it is reduced to a potential source of
profit, and we are
reduced to a pool of data that can predict what we are most likely to
buy and when.
The
way history unfolds will include our own actions, and though there
are never guarantees, there are enough of us that we can act in such
a way that another world becomes possible. It will necessarily
include looking honestly at how we got in this mess in the first
place. Yet this can be tricky. That human history is overflowing with
injustice is one of the most bewildering and difficult realities for
people to face with honesty, especially by those who benefit from
that oppression and exploitation. It’s a price we have been all too
willing to see paid, as long as someone else was doing the paying;
it’s the price that has been paid by a planet squeezed to death by
our insatiable, ignorant greed. Sustainability has no place in this
world, and cannot have a place until we collectively realize that we
cannot consume our way into justice, either social or ecological. Yet
we have proved, again and again, and I’m especially talking to
white people here, that we would rather not be honest about the ideas
and actions that have led us to this point, and that sustain systems
that are overwhelmingly and obviously unjust. As long as there is
profit to be made or power to be grabbed, as long as our conveniences
and adoring self-views are more important than justice, as long as we
feel helpless in the face of it all, there will be easy reasons to
excuse, justify, or hide our complicity.
What is called for is a different set of values, practices, and
systems that are oriented around caring instead of craving. We need
to intentionally build communities and join efforts to organize for
change - locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. We need to
move from accumulating to showing hospitality, from dominating to
nurturing, from alienating and isolating to connecting and sharing.
It is a shift from hubris to humility and from white supremacy to
true equality. The history of human oppression is the history of imperial power, told through the never ending stories of people crushed by food insecurity, forced
evictions and exile, landlessness, debt, hunger, violence, war and
occupation, environmental pressures, and famine. If we listen to their voices, both past and present, we can recognize our
own fears and suffering in their cries for justice.
We
have just passed through a brutal election season. It has occupied so
much of our thinking, feeling, talking, and doing. We are exhausted,
and we are uncertain about this world in which we live. We have come
face to face with many things we knew but had avoided in our culture
and society. In many ways, this election season brought out the worst
in us, making known the prejudices, fears, greed, and violence that
we have usually kept hidden away. So even before the ballots were
cast on Tuesday, the challenges and injustices plaguing our nation
and world were and remain clear: climate change and threats to
ecological health, food security, and biodiversity; the
militarization of our societies and reliance on coercion, violence,
and war; and the maintenance of economic and political power that
relies on the exploitation of the most vulnerable among us, through
both hidden and overt racism, sexism, gender and sexuality antagonisms, ableism, and
similar oppressions.
Martin
Luther King, Jr. named their source as the giant triplets of “racism,
militarism and extreme materialism.” It is our work to cultivate
communities that not only denounce their evil, but announce and
embody another way. This is true no matter who is president and no
matter who controls congress: we must announce the way-things-could-be as insistently as
we condemn the way-things-are, with all its injustice. We must dream of a future and re-imagine a society where people live peacefully with each other and the earth, our health bound up
together. We must remember to work for what we love with even
more enthusiasm than we expose that which we fear.
How
we work for what we love is something we discover together. There is
so much being done already, and we may find our place in these
movements or find ourselves in the midst of something new. But the
first step is to begin reflecting and acting now, so that wisdom has
a chance to start her work. I offer some first steps here for people
not yet engaged in acts of solidarity but who want to make a start in
being more intentional about understanding and acting to care for
this fragile whole of natural and human communities.
1.
Study
your lifestyle and
reduce your
consumption.
Take the time to understand how much you consume, where the goods you
consume come from, who profits, and
what and who are exploited along the way.
Regularly
spend time with a no-buy commitment, not to purchase anything for a
day, a week, a month, or even a year. Divest in companies that make
their profits through unjust economic and ecological practices. You
may
not change the world by examining and
adjusting your
lifestyle, but you will begin to understand the world better and see
all the little ways you are part of upholding and benefiting from
what
bell hooks has insightfuly
named as imperialist-white
supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.
2.
Listen to marginalized people and populations. Read and listen
outside of your demographic through books, blogs, articles, podcasts,
twitter feeds, and social media. If you are white, listen to people
of color. If you are straight, listen to people in the LGBTQIA+
community. If you are a man, listen to women. If you are a citizen,
listen to immigrants. If you are financially stable, listen to people
who live paycheck to paycheck. If you are cisgender, listen to
transgender and nonbinary folk. If you are able-bodied, listen to
those living with disabilities, or with chronic illness. Listen to
religious minorities. Listen to those who are suffering from the
impacts of pollution. And as you listen, don’t hide from the many
ways you discover that your own life contributes to and benefits from
injustice. Listen honestly. Study the history of injustice; learn how
racism and sexism and ableism and other systems of oppression have
been tools used by people to accumulate and keep money and power. But
also study the incredible history of social and ecological justice
work and movements. Discover heroic actions, beautiful art, soul
freeing poetry, and thriving communities. Conversely, I’d like to
say, without qualification, that no one in a position of relative
privilege has any business telling marginalized people how to feel or
what to do right now.
3.
Financially support marginalized people and
populations. As you listen, you’ll discover ways you can
redirect your spending money you saved in step #1 to the people at
the margins who are working hard to resist, unmask, and overturn
injustice. There are incredible organizations, blog authors,
educators, researchers, business owners, musicians, artists,
caregivers and more. Too often, marginalized people are expected to
educate, care, and entertain without payment. For those in a position
of privilege, we are subconsciously taught that we are entitled to
the free labor of those at the margins. Supporting these folk is an
act of resistance to this conditioning, an act of justice in the
economic sphere, and an act of community building and solidarity for
all of us working for a world of peace and justice. It will also help
amplify marginalized voices so that others can listen, learn, and
join the work.
4.
Choose some practical steps you can take. If you have
marginalized friends who are in distress, you can do things like:
-
carry names and numbers of hotlines and services in case of crisis;
-
keep a bag of resources with you that help with stress relief and self-soothing (mine has coloring books, play-do, and the like);
-
offer to help with cooking, chores, childcare, errands, and other daily tasks;
-
check in with them from time to time, with no other agenda but to listen; and
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give them space, because no one is entitled to the trust of marginalized people right now. And if you are in need of empathy, make sure you don’t add to the burden of someone already overwhelmed by what’s going on. Don’t put that on them.
Again,
especially for white people, we have centuries of historical momentum
behind us that have shown that there is a very good chance that we
are not trustworthy, that we care more about centering our own needs
and feelings, and that, in the end, we can’t be expected to vote
against white supremacy with our ballots or our lives. So even if you
are the best-hearted, most loving person in the world, show it by giving marginalized people space when they need it, and put your
energy into confronting injustice. There
are many lists of ideas being formed right now, most of them
are
very simple and practical, and they
can play an essential part in building community over the weeks,
months, and years ahead.
5.
Do not be a bystander. If you share social circles with people
with power and privilege, speak up and act out in whatever way suits
your personality and circumstances. For some us, that means
protesting, arguing, and calling people out. For some of us, that
means listening and asking hard questions. For some of us, that means
sharing articles and memes on social media that provoke thought. For
some of us, that means being willing to have the same, exhausting
conversation over and over again with people we care about. For some
of us, that means creating art and music and stories and poems. But
whatever your path, one key is to not stop. Marginalized people
usually don’t get to take a break. Use your privilege to help
shoulder some of the nonstop pressure. You’ll be giving others some
space to breathe, while you get a glimpse of what it is like to be on
the margins, and while you practice your skills in working for
justice and make some good in the world.
This
is a short list, and it is by no means going to get us where we need
to go. But it is a beginning, and there are millions of us who have
left things up to others for far too long, and
a beginning is what we need.
So
I will wrap things up with the reflection we shared together earlier:
Friends,
we join a long struggle when we wrestle, honestly and
compassionately, with these difficult questions of how to live fully
without benefiting from the harm done to fellow humans and the earth.
But while our complicity is woven into the fabric of our modern lives
and electoral politics, neither denial nor guilt will move us
forward. We can cultivate practices and communities
that bring a careful, loving attention for people, animals, plants,
and minerals. And though this has been a difficult week, it is only
the first of many weeks in which we must emphatically insist and act
upon this conviction: we can work with one another to
form communities and movements that both produce and use the wisdom
and technology we need that make a life of dignity and joy available
to all and that make it possible for us to embody, and not just
declare, the aspiration of both justice and peace.
