Maybe It is Dark Yet

It is quiet in the office now. I’ve been up since 5:00am but I slept poorly. Hillary Clinton lost the election to a man whose name I cannot bring myself to utter—it would stain my mouth. And today a great darkness pervades my sense of being. If it is true that the election was won by the votes of uneducated white males and females, then what have I been doing all of my life; what am I doing now? I have spent my life in education, believed passionately in the necessity, the efficacy, centrality of education in the effort to enable the creation of a productive and enlightened life. Study . . . and then study again I have practiced and taught. I teach others to practice the same art. From this activity I believed that we might receive redemption.

     But now the forces of ignorance, of hate and of reaction have gained control over the world in which our children will have to grow up. I do not think this struggle will be an easy or a pleasant endeavor, and I despair of what products will come from the effort.
     But I guess we must take heart from the energy we can bring to our work locally in opposition to the forces in the larger ugly forces encompassing the nation. I think we must become more dedicated, more radical, more unswerving to the work to which we have committed our lives for the good of the public sphere and the plight of those who have not benefitted from the advantages we have enjoyed. We have much to do and much of which to be very ashamed. I worry truthfully and obsessively about the future. And it would be wrong, I think, to slip into despair, though such is now my inclination. But for now I mourn the loss of my hopes in the possibilities for the future for ourselves and most of all for our children. But I know they now more than ever need our support. From Julian of Norwich I learn “All shall we well again,” and from Pete and the many others I have to believe that “We shall overcome.”

     Now, to the work.