I’m writing this on October 2nd, a day when the government has been shut down for two days because Democrats have finally found a spine and refuse to accept a spending bill that would impact access to healthcare for millions across the country.
I write this as a flotilla is being intercepted by the Israeli Defense Forces, and videos surface of men in army gear and semi-automatic rifles surrounding and advancing upon a boat carrying nonviolent peaceful protestors looking to get to Gaza.
I write this the morning after an ICE raid took place on the South Side of Chicago, where over 300 federal agents stormed an apartment complex, destroying homes and zip-tying families, including children.
(There is no end. The National Guard in Chicago and Portland. The convening of military generals. The attacking of progressive organizations, including the one that I work and organize with, and calling them domestic terrorists.)
I also write this on a plane to Utah, pretty giddy and excited, to celebrate a very close friend getting married.
Times are bizarre. I feel like I’m living through a dystopian horror movie that has accidentally been edited into a 20-something coming-of-age film, glitching between scenes of chaos and devastation… and scenes of laughter, connection, friends, and joy… the small intimate moments that make everyday life feel meaningful.
It is strange.
A few weeks ago, I was at the U.S. Open surrounded by thousands of people, and couldn’t shake how peculiar it felt. As we struggled to figure out who to cheer for in the Osaka vs. Gauff match, as we admired Reilly Opelka’s serve (well, at least I was lol), as we waited in hopes that a camera might plaster our face to the jumbotron, as we sipped on our second overpriced honey deuce… a war was (is) ramping up in the background.
I don’t have to continue to list all the things that Trump, a fascist, an authoritarian, a wanna be dictator who might get his way if we continue to treat this as a scene from a dystopian drama happening somewhere off in a faraway land, has been doing as of late. I hope you are awake right now to what will go down as one of the most pivotal moments in U.S. history in the past 50 years, hell 100.
If you are awake and if you are paying attention, you, like me, might be asking, what am I to do?!
I am an organizer. I spend most of my waking hours in Sunrise, a youth climate movement that is now taking on authoritarianism, thinking about how to build movements of people with the courage to act to make the world a better place. And even then, at times I feel helpless, stuck and confused.
I can’t help but think (I know I know, I’m thinking a lot… but not acting enough!!!) about what life might have been like in the moments leading up to Hitler’s rise to power, where he eventually carried out the state-sanctioned mass murder of over 6 million Jews. Think about that, 6 million. That’s nearly all the people living in the entire metro area of cities like Houston or Miami.
This was not in the 1800s; this was in the 1940s. If you have a grandparent 85 years old or older, they lived through this.
Photo courtesy of African American Civil Rights Museum.
I also can’t help but think about the young students in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who sat in lunch counters across the South, sat through white supremacists yelling in their faces, throwing food at them, and burning lit cigarettes into their skin, to protest segregation. Later, these young people rode buses (called Freedom Rides) into the South, facing brutal violence from white segregationists, including bombings and murder (several lost their lives), to fight to desegregate interstate buses.
Instead of sitting, watching, and thinking, they did something. They chose courage over complacency, bravery over cooperation.
***
I’ll close this internal monologue by saying, I’ve been thinking a lot. About values and morals and integrity. And in all of this, I can’t help but be haunted by the question… while the world is falling apart, who will I be? If in 2 years, the U.S. has fallen fully to fascists, to a dictator, to Trump, will I have wish I had done more? 10 years from now, will I sit proud of the human I chose to be at this moment in history?
Ahhh don’t know how to end this, but I’ll say to the last question, I hope so.
P.S. I did not answer the question in the title. To be honest, I’m not sure yet. But I do know two things. One, it will take masses of people coming together to speak out, stand up, and resist Trump. And it will be movements and organizations (including Sunrise and many others) that will play an active role in making that happen. If you wanna learn more about what we think, check out the pieces here and here and here.
PPS. I hate to be an alarmist, but despite how normal things may feel now for you or for me, things are bad.
Dejah