Vincent Hardin, an African-American historian of the civil rights movement, said, “We are citizens of a country that we still have to create—a just country, a compassionate country, a forgiving country, a multiracial, multi-religious country, a joyful country that cares about its children and about its elders, that cares about itself and about the world, that cares about what the earth needs as well as what individual people need” (from Marion Wright Edelman, “Dr. Vincent Hardin’s Call To Make America America,” Huffington post, 5/30/2014).
At the moment, the push to create the country our founders imagined can be viewed as a river swollen with activism and concern. Women are helping other women reach positions of national leadership. The Poor People’s Campaign is galvanizing legislative action across the country to address poverty in America. The 2016 protest at Standing Rock elevated the visibility of indigenous tribes and their struggle for environmental justice. Dreamers, students protesting gun violence, Back Lives Matter groups, voting rights advocates, prison reform advocates, people working for LGBTQ rights, those calling for police reform, and the Women’s March on Washington are all part of a torrential effort to achieve universal human dignity and equality.
Many people refer to these diverse efforts to create a more just society as “the resistance.” In other words, the resistance is typically described as folks who are out there resisting the status quo. Michelle Alexander, writing in the New York Times (9/21/2018), suggests that, in reality, these individuals and groups are part of a long lineage of people around the globe and throughout historic time who have fought for a more compassionate society. They are not the resistance.
The resistance belongs to those who would put up barriers and dams and walls to prevent society from moving in a more compassionate direction. Resisting is what people of privilege do when they are afraid that a policy, event, or idea threatens their way of life, or their established position in society. They create devices that will dam the flow, redirect the energy, shut it down to a trickle.
Resistance is what Mitch McConnell has done ever since Barak Obama was elected President. McConnell has prevented legislation from being taken up for consideration. He has resisted following due process to elect a Supreme Court Justice. He refuses to work with Democrats to produce any meaningful programs to address the country’s needs.
Resistance is what Donald Trump has done since he was elected. He has created funding barriers to educational and environmental progress, and used his power to send decades of progress in those departments backward. He has created barriers of all kinds to Muslims and to migrants at the Mexican border. He has converted funds for national health care into tax breaks for the rich and eliminated nearly every position and agency intended to protect the rights and well-being of citizens. He has resisted the confines of the Constitution at every turn.
Remembering where the resistance is coming from is important. The river of social change that we were born into centuries after it began, will go on for generations after us. “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was” (Toni Morrison). No matter how the waters may be dammed or diverted, the waters of the river of equality push forward all the time, while pushing against the objects in its way. And the objects in its way are prejudice, bigotry, misogyny, inequality, ignorance, malice, myopia, xenophobia, injustice, discrimination and oppression.
