When I was in graduate school, I had, what I have come to believe,
a holy experience: I heard God. OK, maybe not God, and not even God's actual voice. Maybe I just heard the word of
God, spoken so clearly, so sparely and with such devotion that I could not help
but take them in and know that, at last, there was God.
The events that led to my epiphany were
profoundly prosaic: a colleague arranged for some hot shot guy from New York to
speak on campus. I’d never heard of Michael Harrington before. Then again, I’d
never heard of a lot of things. Who knew? Thankfully, I was a fast study.
So, on a spring day in 1985, in a faculty
lounge with large casement windows that spilled soft gold light onto plush
carpet and stiff-backed chairs scattered haphazardly around the room, I first
heard God speak. As a convenience, God used voice of Michael Harrington to make
his message heard aloud. Michael Harrington, speaking the truth of God (I
swear) had this to say:
We can
create a society that is not rooted in inequality and discrimination and power
and wealth. We can create a just society, based on the premise that our
Founding Fathers meant rather than
wrote: that all of us, men and women who are black and brown and yellow and
white, who are gay and straight and anything in between, who believe or don’t
as they see fit, we are all of us equal, and we have a voice that, when joined with
others, will always speak louder than
the tyranny of gross power and grosser injustice.
Michael Harrington, a professor of political
science at Queens College, and the co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of
America, a writer and radical and sometime Voice of God, spoke my truth to me:
money may be power, but the people - together - could be more powerful still.
Well sign me up!
I joined DSA then and there. Not
surprising, I left graduate school not long after, PhD be damned. I went to work
for a national poor people's organization. I was out to fight the good fight,
to rouse the rabble and give people a voice.
No, not give. Give is way too condescending and nobless oblige-y. My job
was to remind people that their voices, joined together, were a power to be
reckoned with. We had all been silent for far too long. Now was the time to be
heard.
For five years I fought that battle. I
moved 15 times back and forth across the country; everything I owned fit in the
trunk of my car. The cause was my world and I thrived in it. Even when I left
to wander the halls of Corporate America, I didn’t lose my ideals. If I no
longer fought in the trenches, my feet and my hands and my threadbare wallet strived
as best they could to keep up and change the world.
You can imagine my delight the first time
I heard Senator Bernie Sanders speak. His gravelly voice, and brusque New York
accent was beautiful. In it, I heard the Voice of God, just as I had decades
ago. Sanders, too, urged us to defend the poor, care for the needy, work to
build a society of justice and equality.
I know, I know: Sanders, and Harrington
before him, are not the Voice of God.
I am being dramatic and somewhat flip. Still, their words, their ideas, their insistence
that we are all responsible for one another, that there is an inextricable link
between business and people and money and the earth that must be carefully
maintained - these seem to me to be an echo of everything I've been taught
about God.
I sent in my $27, and wished I could give
more. I volunteered. I cast my vote for Sanders in the Illinois primary
with such hope! I watched and wondered and cheered him on, and at some
point I knew, in that icy pit that resides in my belly, that some invisible
corner had been turned, and that sweet moment of victory was all too
short-lived. Sanders would not win the nomination.
Ugh.
What to do? What to do?
You must understand: this was never
a question! What to do? In the holy words of Michael and Bernie (and paraphrased
by me): defend the poor, care for the needy, build a just society.
Look – Michael Harrington wasn’t perfect, nor is Bernie. They aren’t
God. I was lucky enough to have heard the voice of God whisper through their
words - words, so I believe, so powerful, they have made their way into the DNC
platform. What choice is there – really - but Hillary Clinton?
Is Hillary Bernie? No. She has her own voice. She fumbles around,
makes mistakes. Sometimes she even cops to them. She’s a politician – just like
Bernie. It just so happens I like Bernie’s message more, hear the whisper of
God a little louder, look past his
foibles a little easier. I’ll tell you, though – have you ever heard the
passion and the fire she can kindle when she stops running for President and
just talks? God is there, too, when
you listen, and she shines. She’s not Bernie. She’s not Michael. She’s not my
first choice. And while I think the path towards that just and equitable
society will be a little more layered than I’d like, still, I have no doubt
that she will walk this path, too.
For all you “Bernie or Bust” folks still out there, now is the
time to remember what matters: joined together, our voices will always speak louder than the tyranny of power
and injustice. For all of Hillary’s shortcomings and sins (real or imagined) –
to vote for anyone else will destroy that vision of a just society. I stand with Hillary because, I believe that my voice, added to
hers, and yours, and millions of others, will always be more powerful than insatiable fear and monstrous hate.
I'm with her.
#I'mwithher #hillaryclinton "thankyoubernie #feelthebern
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