In the Face of Fear for Our Nation We Must Commit to a More “American America”

The storming of the Capitol witnessed by a nation in shuddering disbelief, a nation unmoored from its cellular belief that our centuries-old democratic ship of state, and the democratic caulking that binds and strengthens it, and the strong democratic winds of a nation that propel it, would never, ever be rocked.  Yes, perhaps challenged from without – the War of 1812 and the War of Secession – but never from within, no, never the unthinkable: the ship’s caulking loosened from within, its sails torn from within, its compass and purpose bent and realigned by none other than its captain—President Trump.  

As the rioters broke through into the nation’s Capitol, they did so with a sense of brazen impunity, for indeed they had been sent, commissioned by a President who urged them “to fight” and by Rudy Guiliani who exhorted a “trial by combat.”  On December 19, the President told them to “Be there.  Be wild.”  And they were there and they were wild.  The rioters counted on the President’s commission.  “Their confidence as amateur berserkers was as striking, as was their ease,” writes commentator and author Rebecca Solnit.  “They were swanning around like tourists on their crime spree, showing their faces on selfies, posing for journalists, taking souvenirs, trashing the place like at a frat boys’ party.” But “frat boys” dramatically understates the insurrectionists’ intentions: they had breached security and assaulted officers in their hunt for Vice President Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Our ship of state shuddered from a traitor from within who organized and impelled mutiny from the ranks of those, White and mostly male and angry, those seeing and seething as their America morphs to one younger, an America more diverse, of richer and more varied hues and ethnicities. They feared a new and changing America, for across the nation in statehouses, mayors’ offices, and city council chambers new Americans were already aboard, recaulking our ship of state, sewing old sails, proudly hoisting new ones.

In dramatic juxtaposition to the attack on America’s capitol, another event appears:  at the very same time, the same week, the State of Georgia elects two Democrats to the United States Senate, Jon Ossoff, a young Jewish man and documentary filmmaker, and Raphael Warnock, a Black minister, their election having been deemed improbable if not impossible by most pundits. Not, however, by the brilliant, stalwart, and impassioned Stacey Abrams, who rallied not just the state, but the nation, mobilizing millions for a hope in Georgia that became, stunningly, a political reality: two seats in the U.S. Senate!

I have spent decades as a public servant on the local, state, and federal levels.  I have had the good fortune to have been in the thick of political, policy, and program struggles.  I picketed during the Civil Rights Movement and more recently at the NRA.  I may have felt worried, felt deep concern, but I was always sustained by my “beloved community,” and by a deep belief in the inevitability, though slow, of progress for racial and social justice.  But last week, for the first time in my life, I felt fear — not personal fear –but fear for our nation.

Georgia helped to allay these fears, as did the imminent arrival on January 20^th of a new “captain” and crew.  And so do these words from Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation: “Our founding aspirations were just that: aspirations.  It’s been the work of generations…to realize these aspirations.  And while much remains to be done, and undone, I believe we can emerge—and are emerging—a more unified, more equal, more just, more American America.”  Walker continues: “Yes, the ideal of democracy is the greatest threat to the ideology of White supremacy; neither can long endure in the presence of the other.  That is why today –and every day—we must renew our commitment to protect our democratic values and institutions from all enemies, foreign and domestic, especially those falsely disguised as patriots.”