We know how powerful having vision, a positive attitude, and progressive goals are. We know to look for assets in ourselves and our communities. We know change comes when people work not alone, but together. We know how important movement building is.
We feel so much frustration at the elections. We feel it with every TV, cel phone, text message, website, and radio reminder that pours through our lives 24/7. We feel the impact on the most vulnerable in our communities, whose voices may be silenced or worse with decision-makers who value exclusion, demonization, and inequity.
Despite what we may feel as New Americans or Old Americans, this is no longer a land of individualism. We have evolved beyond the theologies, philosophies, land-use planning, public policy, liberal attitudes and beliefs that held great influence in the past. We are one. We commit ourselves to working as one, to build the circles of resilience, of resistance, of restoration of the human family.
We may not be able to touch the lives of those suffering across the world, but we can touch the lives of those on our block who face increasing hostility from racial stereotypes, class warfare, and the socio-economic manipulation of the most vulnerable. We will not let the media-political-entertainment machine continue to only be fueled by the pain of others, masked in the broken ideology that the best way for humanity to survive is by living alone and caring only about ourselves.
Mainstream liberalism cannot sit back any longer and observe and analyze. We must be on the front lines. A path is before us all, to begin again with vision, attitude and goals for progress. We start with ourselves, preparing ourselves to be in authentic relationships with our families, communities and the human family by both unlearning our petty prejudices, and learning new skills and knowledge to be engaged in community building. We are careful rethink practices that have divided us along race, class, generation and more within the progressive community. We nurture the fire within to step out of our comfort zone to give a little more to give in ways that strengthen our voice, ways that bring us into direct contact with the uncertain, struggling, marginalized and surviving participants of our great nation. Crafting together a new way forward.
Where we talk across generation
Where we popularize our class consciousness
Where white folks bring an attitude of nonviolent listening with folks of color
Where we reject demonizing and minimizing the identities we bring
Where we put our minds, bodies and souls to work in direct contact with other human beings, where there are no strangers, only friends we’ve never met*
And we say yes to being in relationship, to doing God’s work of connecting one by one, and believing that the tasks of community organizing, of reaching out in person, on the phone, in group, are a political and spiritual practice of building wholeness.
*with thanks to Sisters of the Road
