How do we keep hope alive when everything is coming undone?
I think the first and most important thing we must do is to wake up to the cold hard facts that there is an enemy who does not share our values or desires.
This enemy does not affirm egalitarianism, pluralism or governmental accountability. This enemy desires an authoritarian state, a permanent domestic and foreign war policy, and a privatized economy set up to benefit the uber-rich. We need to awaken a sense of urgency against an enemy that despises checks and balances and the way of life known as democracy. This enemy is the Republican Party.
Secondly, we must dedicate ourselves to get out the vote in 2018. As citizens, the great power of the vote has been neutered through apathy.
In our recent state elections, only a third of the ballots were returned. Now I grant that the Democratic Party is not a great solution. But there are still incremental changes we can make through them to stop the momentum of our enemy.
If we come out of the 2018 elections still evenly divided between red and blue states, this nation will be forced to bend the knee even more to the Oligarchs.
The Democrats are not the perfect, but they are the practical in this moment. If we come out of the 2018 elections still evenly divided between red and blue states, this nation will be forced to bend the knee even more to the Oligarchs. Whether it is Koch, Soros, Gates, Bezos or Buffett, the oligarchs do not care about us. Their interests are not our interests. The sooner we commit to that truth, the sooner the fire of renewal gets lit.
Third, we are beyond the effectiveness of dialogue or direct criticism of the Republicans. There is a boot pressing down on our own necks, the necks of our children, our neighbors and the future. We need to take the boot off. It is time to move into direct civil disobedience. But the problem is that we are not trained to do so.
Waking up America will require from us great sacrifices as we mount determined, nonviolent, consistent, escalating actions that disrupt the imposed order of civil authority.
Civil disobedience, if it is not done with strategic purpose that builds on the first action with a second and a third and a fourth, becomes a lame feel-good spectacle of street theater.
Waking up America will require from us great sacrifices as we mount determined, nonviolent, consistent, escalating actions that disrupt the imposed order of civil authority.
Such disobedience requires creative imagination and courage that emerges only from communities that train hundreds of people to become thousands of people with a strategy to stop society from functioning until demands are met. We have yet to create such training centers and communities of resistance. Doing so is our task today. The battle is long and slow. It will take decades to win. But win we must, so let us begin.
Rev. Rich Lang is the district superintendent of the United Methodist Church in King County. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Wait, there's more. Check out the full December 13 issue.