Don't Give Up!

I turn on the news and slump into a chair. Another day of horrors, and I wonder, how long can this go on?

Every day brings another storm of horrifying news. We're exhausted and overwhelmed. This isn't a presidency - it's a steamroller, a carefully concocted agenda of maximum damage. We have, God help us, elected to the most powerful position on earth a man with a bottomless hunger for power, and now, standing beside him, the richest man on earth with a chainsaw, and behind them both, a faceless crew of bureaucrats hungry to remake America according to their plans. They've been planning this for years, and now they're on the move.

There's no place in those carefully written plans for you or me. No place for hungry children or struggling families or migrant workers; no heart or whisper of compassion. This is not a government that remembers the needy or gives water to reaching hands. This isn't a government that respects the hard work of the people who send out your Social Security check or answer the phones. This is a flock of vultures, hovering and diving, over and over, stealing away the world we used to know.

The casual cruelty of it takes my breath away. They fire people in the middle of the night. They lock people in trucks and shuffle them in chains onto planes. The wealthiest man in the world gloats about stealing food from the hungriest people on earth.

And the president sits and signs order after order, following those carefully laid plans, and his manic buddy smiles and sends his crews to destroy our country, and every day a new horror comes pounding on our door.

I'm sick with outrage and fear. Congress looks the other way, too afraid to speak out, and the country I've known and, yes, loved, seems to be at the risk of being stolen before our eyes.

But then I have to stop and tell myself: don't despair. To despair right now is a terrible mistake: it gives away our strength, and we need every ounce of strength and cunning and vigor and passion right now.  I love this country, and I'm not giving up without a fight. 

That's probably a foolish thing to say, when the battle is taking place far from us, and we don't seem to have much power to sway it either way.  But maybe we were born for this time.  We can keep calling and writing and speaking out and marching.  Would you want, down the road, to look back and think, I could have done more?  I wish I'd taken time and lent my voice and my time to the struggle?

Now, as never before, we all need to stand up and fight.

The strongest antidote to despair is action.  Talk back to that despair and go make some phone calls.  Help at the next election.  Join your local Democrats and get involved.  Go to the next protest and hold up a sign. You still have a voice.  Use it.  Don't just give up.

We're all feeling overwhelmed. But we have strength in each other. Find your purpose - pick the issue that you care about the most and get involved. Rest when you need to, but then rejoin the battle. Connect with others who care, and get strength from each other.

We can save our country. The fight is happening in a hundred ways: in the courts. In parking lots. On city streets. In an avalanche of letters and phone calls. Let's fight to save our future.

Most of all, keep in the center of your vision the America you love. Not the old one that some want to take us back to, but the one we are becoming, with all our diversity and disagreement. We can learn again to reach across the aisles and listen to each other; we can find our common ground again. We can be better and stronger than ever before.

I believe this with all my heart.