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As we get ready to begin a new chapter of the US--exhausted, traumatized, grieving, and, perhaps, finally, hopeful, I want to say something:
I’m really proud of us.
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I’m really proud of us.
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I’m proud of all of us who have made calling our elected representatives a new daily habit; who have gotten involved in politics on the most local of levels; who have put their bodies on the line protesting. Who have donated more and more of their resources where it matters.
Who got trained in bystander intervention, legal observation & community organizing. Who built new organizations & built relationships of care and solidarity across difference. Who took professional or personal risks speaking out against hate.
Who have been working tirelessly on the front lines and in essential roles with COVID, who have given and cared and adapted and developed to take care of each other in ways we never should have had to, but nonetheless we did.
I am proud of us for fighting for a world in which each and every human being’s inherent worth, dignity, and life is regarded as a thing of consequence.
Each of us, created in the divine image, and valued as such. “What is the image of a person?” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel asks. “A person is a being whose anguish may reach the heart of God.”
I’m proud of each of us who heard what Rabbi Josh Feigelson calls the essential human question — “For whom are you responsible?” — and knows that the answer isn’t only ourselves, not only our families or even only our community, but, rather, all of us, all of us, all of us.
The work isn't over. The systems of oppression that enabled the last four years are largely still in place. There will be plenty of work to do, plenty of ways we must carry forth what we have learned these last few years into the work of making tomorrow more whole.
AND it's OK--valuable, even, I'd argue--to pause at moments of critical transition to honor the work thus far, to celebrate the wins, to see all of the fierce ways that we have held each other up until now.
May we continue to hold, and fight for one another, tomorrow.
May we continue to hold, and fight for one another, tomorrow.
