Rude Awakening

Like many people I know, I woke up that Wednesday morning, the day after the election, shocked and unnerved. I was supposed to have awakened elated - finally, a woman president! And hooray - we were joyfully continuing that long march begun a century ago, with the Wobblies and the suffragettes, that led to the union and labor movements, that led to the New Deal, that led to civil rights, that led to gay rights and marriage equality that led to gender equality and... Hell, you get it.

Did I say a century? Ha! Make it two. Let's not forget that whole contretemps with the folks across the pond. Let's not forget Hamilton and that rad hip-hopper Jefferson, and the other Founding Fathers. We have been marching steadily, (with a very painful layover while we straightened out the mix up over just who is a person and just what is property, and fought a war to ensure that everyone in the country got it), towards that bright, shiny future, which was supposed to be my bright, shiny present, of peace, love, equality and justice for all.

And yet, on Wednesday morning, November 9th, I woke up shocked and unnerved. And frightened. I am a woman. I am a Jew. My son is black. I fear for him most of all. On November 9th, while I woke up terrified (literally terrified at the revolution that was seemed to be taking place in my world) there were a whole host of people who woke up with this insane belief that it was ok to haul out the white hoods and disgusting invective and hatred that they had been keeping under wraps for what - a decade? more? a century? And if that weren’t enough, to add insult to injury, the cold water shock of realizing that this notion - that it had all been excised somewhere in the murky past - was merely one more instance of my white privilege. This behavior had always been around; I just had all the proper armor in place to not see it.

A month later, and I continue to be mind-numbingly outraged (sorry for the oxymoron, but I can't think of any other way to explain it), as I watch the (real) news and see, more than the mysogeny and racism and anti-lgbtqa hate speech spewing forth, but the great glee and lightening speed with which that That Man is dismantling 60 years of civil rights and liberties.

And, as I prepare to send my son off to university next fall, my black, liberal, loud and wonderfully vocal son, who has been taught to speak truth to power, I worry about the landscape into which he is stepping, and wonder if it's filled with landmines.

Actually, I don't wonder - there will be plenty of landmines (and some of them are actually good - you know, the ones that blow up youthful preconceptions or the petrified ideologies of the know-it-all teen that need to be softened or changed, that are a part of healthy college life). There are some landmines, though, that have been planted by the sudden normalization of all the other horrible "-isms" that have plagued our society and have been gaining ground at too rapid a pace. These are mines that can hurt. These are mines, I fear, that can kill.

Right about now is the part where I'm supposed to find some grace, some kind of uplift - that light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel that will ease my readers' (and my) mind, right? You know, the part where the dragon may have eaten the princess, but we find out, just in the nick of time, that she was cruel and not the real princess at all, while the real princess grabs the sword to fight the battle... I fear that the light at the end of the tunnel is really the light of the oncoming train.

I just typed "no one is racing to pick up the sword," and deleted it, when I realized that fear is not quite true. Many are sprinting towards the sword in the stone - all of us who are outraged and frightened, we are picking it up. We are speaking out and shouting truth to power. (Ugh. I found the sliver of happy after all. Yay me.)

We will continue the battle. We will face insurmountable odds. We will lose a lot. Not just lose, but scary lose - on the environment, civil rights, education, etc etc etc - but we will slog on. Because that's what we do. We slog. It will not be enough. Not right now; maybe not ever. "Enough" rarely ever is. Right now, though, it is all we have. So we will use this blade until someone - perhaps you, perhaps me, maybe my son one day - forges something more powerful, more permanent.

Until then, we will be afraid. Until then, we will suit up and show up nevertheless. And we will raise our voices to speak truth to power and lose a bunch of battles and fight through the fear and one day, we may actually win the war.

A Desperate Act of Love

I voted this morning.

I almost didn't.  For a split second or three, I actually considered not voting.  Because it was out of the way.  Because I was running late.  Because really, what would my one vote not cast cost?

And I went and voted anyway, because really-- if I didn't, what the hell?  Would it really matter?  (Never mind that I couldn't think of what I would say to my son, what excuse or lie I might offer him.  At thirteen, he is becoming keenly interested in the whole democratic process that is unfolding before him.  History in the making.  Democracy in action.  We talk politics all the time, my son and I, and seriously, my heart swells several sizes when we do, and i can see him get the issues, when he makes the connections and connects the dots, even if his opinion is not always a parroted version of mine.  Especially when his opinion is not a parroted version of mine.  I could have fibbed, told him I'd voted, but that lie sounded hollow, even to me, so-- what the hell; might as well vote.  Get it over with.)

As I drove to my polling place, really not so much out of the way, a name popped into my head: Mickey Schwerner. And then, almost immediately: Goodman.  I couldn't think of his first name (dammit), and it bothered me, teased my brain.  What the hell is his first name?  And the other guy?  Dammit; I can't ever remember the other guy's name.  But for some reason, I always remember Mickey Schwerner.

So I voted, and drove to my office, and went about my day, and started to write during some of the blank spaces in my crazy busy day.

Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman.  

In 1964, they joined with so many others -- members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) the NAACP and a bunch of college kids, the twenty-somethings of their day, and created Freedom Summer.  Their goal: register African- American voters in Mississippi.  Well over a thousand people, white, black, Christian, Jew, young old -- it didn't matter.  What mattered was that these people saw a broken world, filled with violence and ignorance and hatred, and they believed it was their obligation-- their responsibility; their right; their joy and purpose-- to heal it.

In mid-June of that year, Schwerner and Goodman headed south from New York to Mississippi, filled with passion and hope.  They met up with Chaney, a native of Meridian, Mississippi and fellow civil rights worker.  They believed that every person, regardless of the color of their skin, had the right to vote.  

So they started registering voters: men and women who had been kept from the polls by fear and intimidation and law all their lives.  That's it: registering voters-- black voters in the deep South -- during the Freedom Summer of 1964 -- that's what they did.  On June 21, the three of them went to investigate the burning of a black church in Philadelphia, Nashoba County, Mississippi.  In addition to believing all people had a right to vote, they believed all people had a right to worship and pray as they believed, safe from harm.  They were arrested by the police on trumped up charges, held for several hours, and then released, after dark, into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.  They were beaten there, somewhere in the dark, beaten and terrorized and murdered by a group of 18 men (though only seven were eventually convicted of conspiracy, eight eventually were acquitted by an all-white jury and three cases ended in mistrials).  

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were beaten and murdered that night by savages who were rooted in hatred and violence and fear.  They were murdered, in the dark, alone, because they believed they could heal a broken world. 

The world is still broken.  We see evidence of that every day:  people in desperate need, driven by poverty or illness or hunger or hatred; a planet that is being choked and starved.  There is greed and ignorance, intolerance and indifference.  Even now, access to the polls is being threatened, and there are many who are being deprived of their right to vote.  In 2012.  Not 1964, not 1865-- this year, this week, this day, there are people who are being disenfranchised.  There are a thousand thousand ills that plague us-- that can break our hearts and cripple our souls.  And yet, in the midst of this desperate need, there is light.  Kindness.  Healing.  Small acts-- great acts, even-- but acts of desperate love that stem the tide and bring grace and healing.

They changed the world, those murdered men.  All of them, all of the bright and brave and hopeful men and women from that Freedom Summer.  Not just them, but all them, all of the bright and brave men and women who have fought so valiantly, with courage and conviction and commitment, all of them, from every age-- they gave their lives to change the world.   And I?  I thought about not voting this morning, because it was inconvenient.  Because I was late and it was one vote among millions and really: what would be missed?  

What would be missed?  What would be missed would be my own desperate act of love, to heal a broken world.  One person.  One vote.  One voice. To heal and change and bring light to the darkness.  Do I care how you vote, for whom you vote?  Of course I do.  I have my own ideas and visions and beliefs on what is right, what is good (for the community, for the broken, for those who cannot speak, for those I love and those I don't).  What is more important, though, to me, is that you vote.  That matters.  Exercise your voice.  Make a choice.  Demand that you be heard.  Your voice, your vote- that desperate act of love matters.

People have died for the belief that voting matters.  People continue to die, every day, for their acts of desperate love and courage and faith, for their belief that they can heal a broken world.  And here's the tough part: we may never see the work complete, our world healed.  But (and this is the big part, the harder part): we are not excused from starting the work, from committing those desperate acts of love.  Our Jewish sages have been teaching this for centuries: Lo alecha ham'lecha ligmor v'lo atah ben chorin l'hitabel mimena.  It is not your duty to complete the work; neither are you free to desist from it.  (Pirke Avot 2:16)

Schwerner and Goodman and Chaney.  They were murdered in darkness, surrounded by hatred and fear.  They were killed for their belief that the world needed healing and their lives-- their voices, their ideas, their actions-- could heal.  The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King once said "If you haven't found a cause to die for, you haven't found a reason to live."  These three men, and the countless, nameless hundreds before and after who were murdered and tortured for their own desperate acts of love-- from Tienanmen Square to the Berlin Wall, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to any trackless, endless place where there are men and women who demand that they be heard, that their voice-- all our voices -- be heard, they found their reason to live.  And let us say: zichronam liv'rcha (may their memories be for a blessing).

Let us celebrate their lives.  Let us take courage from their faith.  Let us vote -- and argue and debate and learn and disagree and demand that our voices be heard.  Let us commit acts of desperate love, because we can heal our broken world-- one voice, one act, one vote at a time.