Stayed On Freedom
Election Reflections #1: What those who've come before us can teach us about staying in the fight.
“I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom…” Civil Rights Spiritual
Journal entry: November 7, 2024. I find myself of two minds this morning. On the one hand, I'm deeply troubled – surprisingly, less by Donald Trump as a person than by the power religious authoritarians and believers in theocracy now hold in the United States. Because, in addition to having their man, their “King Cyrus”, as they called him, in the White House, they hold a majority in the Senate, and perhaps the House, and a supermajority on the Supreme Court. In fact, without that supermajority's court ruling, Trump would have been confronting the legal ramifications of his actions after the 2020 election rather than campaigning.
I feel the weight of all that, and especially of Project 2025, the theocratic playbook for reshaping us into a religious state. It boggles my mind that they think the same religionized governance that doesn’t work for Islam in the Middle East will somehow work for Christianity here.
I'm deeply troubled by the growing attacks on protections for trans people, how provisions for safe abortions have already been struck down, and by new measures, no doubt, to come, including even harsher treatment of undocumented immigrants and threats to build a border wall between us and Mexico (but not us and Canada) -- all made possible by the mass of recently passed laws that disenfranchise people who don't agree with this agenda, including, most notably, the gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Then, just one day after the election, there were already signs of greater aggression toward targeted groups. Metropolitan Community Church, San Francisco circulated an email to congregants stating:
Due to the results of the election, some individuals are feeling emboldened to attack LGBTQ online gatherings. During our Wednesday Contemplative Service this week, we had two Zoom bombers who posted hateful insults in the chat. They were quickly kicked out of the meeting and their chats were deleted. If you join us online and there is a Zoom bomber, please pause as we remove them from the meeting.
And that all feels dire. It's sitting in the pit of my stomach even as I write this.
But, then, there's this other mind -- the one that recalls the grief a barely three-year-old me saw as people broke down in the street after Martin Luther King's assassination. In Me and Mary, I describe how this was one of my earliest memories. I wrote: "I didn't understand why all the adults around me were weeping so profusely. I remember watching a man sit down on the curb outside our house, head in hands and shoulders shaking with silent sobs. I didn't know what had happened, but I knew it was awful." But we got through that.
And I recall in 2004 when Americans resoundingly voted to send George W Bush back to the White House. I remember how dire that time was, and how, not unlike now, the religious right controlled all branches of the US government -- a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court and Republican control of both houses in Congress. And worse, every newspaper from the New York Times to the Washington Post, with the exception of one -- Knight Ridder -- was beating the drumbeats of retaliatory war against Iraq, who we'd wrongly accused of being responsible for 9/11.
I remember participating in a small peace rally with other Columbia grad students. There were 12 of us in front of Low Library, holding signs when, all of a sudden, we found ourselves surrounded by a mob of hundreds calling us traitors to our country and throwing things. Were it not for campus security, I'm not sure what would have happened.
And not unlike what we’re already starting to do now, we’d scapegoat a minority for the 2004 election’s outcome. Back then, we blamed same-sex couples in Massachusetts and San Francisco for daring to marry the person they loved. Exit polls indicated that so-called "values voters" came out in droves to stop those marriages from happening and to prevent the “fall of America” that was prophesied if marriage wasn’t “saved”.
That was, for me, in every respect, a horrible time and I wondered if it was possible for us as a nation to come back from that. I remember thinking that with control of the presidency, all of Congress and the Supreme Court, the self-described "moral majority" -- the same who'd been adamant that God had ordained segregation and white supremacy -- had won. But they hadn't.
By 2006, the same supermajority of Americans who'd been for the war on Iraq were now against it and thought that the war was a mistake in the first place. That year, Republicans lost control of Congress, which meant that across the nation, governance was shifting and equality was winning the day. And all that made the unlikeliest outcome imaginable possible -- the election of an African American -- just four years after I thought perhaps the dream of an inclusive America was over.
Undoubtedly, this will be a tough next four years, and I'm already thinking about what we need to do to get through it. I'm reminded of the state of things after the passage of the even more restrictive Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, one that made it illegal for people NOT to participate in the return of escapees to slavery. Further, any person aiding a fugitive -- even by simply providing food -- was subject to up to six months imprisonment and a fine of up to $1,000 ($40,000 in today's terms).
But this, like religious authoritarians flexing their political muscles after the 2004 election, had the opposite effect. Because, when you eliminate all legal means of protest, all that's left are illegal ones. So, the Fugitive Slave Act gave birth to the Underground Railroad and galvanized the abolitionist movement. Enslavers’ efforts to solidify an oppressive institution galvanized the American people to end it. That's the first consequence.
The second is this: Any approach based on authoritarian ideology is already destined to fail. That's why things fell apart just when those seeking to "take the nation for God" achieved absolute power. The coalition couldn't hold. And it never will. Because everyone involved believes they hold the authoritative truth, and if that's the case, there are only two options, convert everyone else to your perspective or splinter. In This Land Is Your Land, I describe it this way:
It is because of this that the Catholic Church, 600 years after having been declared Rome’s state religion, would splinter, with both factions claiming to be the “One, Holy, Apostolic Church.” Then, in the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church would split again. Then, Protestants would diverge into over 200 denominations from Anabaptists to Schwenkfelders, then, each of those would split; which is how Baptists, my own denomination, ended up with 50-plus distinct variations claiming the name.
This is why the takeover failed in 2004, and why it won't work now, especially given the 20 additional years of population shifts. We don't have to defeat that group. We need simply resist their efforts to further break the system, re-enfranchise every citizen and do the work on ourselves so that when the time comes, we're able to build something better. Because, despite the rebranding of their message from "segregation forever" when they were Democrats to "party of the faithful" as Republicans, trading out Klan hoods and burning crosses for raised Bibles and armed marches, little about the underlying substance has changed.
Sure, the circumstances we're facing today feel insurmountable. But that's exactly how the Freedom Riders felt when they were trapped on a burning bus or how the Selma marchers felt when confronted by armed, deputized KKK members on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Back then, they didn't have the numbers we have or people in office we do. All they had was their spirits. It was enough then. We have so much more now.
Historian John Meecham, in a November 6 New York Times piece said: "Americans learn their lesson the hard way. It took a civil war for us to finally end slavery and it took all kinds of bloodshed and strife in the 1960s to put an end to segregation.” He describes how this error will no doubt require much more grief and sorrow, but, he continues, “Odds are we'll learn our lesson and go back to casting our vote for what's best for the country and not selfishly for what's best for ourselves."
That last phrase -- casting our votes for what's best for the country and not what's best for just ourselves -- is the foundation of what it means to be a democracy -- a system that endows each citizen with a portion of ruling power, and with great power, as Peter Parker/Spider-Man learned, comes great responsibility. At the heart of this is a gross misunderstanding of "democracy". We've been told it means "majority rules", but it doesn't. It means "the people (demos) rule (kratos)," – the people rule -- meaning each of us has a sacred responsibility to work toward the well-being of all of us.
Grasping the stark difference between those two concepts, "majority rules" and "the people rule" is absolutely fundamental to our future, and all kinds of nations, from Hitler's Germany to the Soviet Union, from North Korea to Afghanistan, that have sought to abolish democracy rather than strengthen it have found it immensely difficult to sustain, let alone flourish.
"America is no fragile thing," President Obama said during his farewell address, as he sought to warn the nation about the importance of guarding our unity. "But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured." And he was right on both accounts. We're by no means fragile. But at the same time, we can't relentlessly rail against the bonds that hold us together, only to be surprised when they ultimately fail.
I think that's also where I am today – somewhere between the realization of the tenuousness of our situation and the recognition of our resilience. My guess is that this is where I'll be for a while. And that's OK. Conflicting feelings can be a powerful driver of change. But there’s one significant difference between now and where I was when I woke up this morning. I’m no longer of two minds. Like that old Civil Rights spiritual declares, my mind is now firmly stayed on freedom.
I will not run. I will not hide. I will not cower.
That’s what the note I put on my laptop screen back in 2017 after I’d been traumatized by a white-presenting police officer said. The officer, after asking for my registration, unholstered his gun when I indicated it was in the glovebox and explicitly asked his permission to open it. His eyes were trained on me the entire time and I could see that he was ready to shoot me if I even shifted in the wrong way. I slowly removed the paper, handed it to him, then, put my hands back on the steering wheel. He then retreated to his squad car and to his partner to run my plates.
I was incredibly shaken by the experience, of knowing that one misunderstood move on my part could result in my death at the hands of a man whose job it was to protect me. I felt both violated and betrayed. He had the gun and institutional power, yet by the look on his face, he felt that he was the one in danger. Mind you, this was early afternoon on I-5, not some secluded back alley at 2 AM.
When it was over, the officer, showing a bit of humanity and remorse, said to me, “Sir?” I’d been looking straight ahead, waiting for this experience to be over. I looked toward him and he’d removed his sunglasses. He seemed to want to say something. There was a quick intake of breath, a biting of his lower lip, then, a sigh. “Have a good day” was what he finally said, before giving me a bit of a remorseful smile and walking back to his car.
It took me a day to stop shaking. And then I got angry. Not at the officer but at the system – one that had racialized him and victimized me. I sat down and wrote a simple mantra – I will not run. I will not hide. I will not cower. So, three years later, when Trump sent federal troops to face off against protestors in Portland, I mobilized my old clergy network, the same one I built for the Obama campaign, and we gathered in Portland, forming a Wall of Clergy, alongside the assembled Wall of Moms and Wall of Veterans.
I will not run. I will not hide. I will not cower. That’s how I feel today. My mind is stayed on freedom – not just for me, but for everyone. My foremost thoughts are about what I, as someone who has fought his whole life for a different future than the one we're headed toward today, should be doing to help us create a better one.
In This Land Is Your Land, I call this period from 2012 (the year non-Anglo births surpassed Anglo births) to 2030 (when this new non-majority generation starts reaching voting age) our nation's Time of Turmoil. If I'm right, we've got between four and eight more years of the kinds of power struggles that could set us on fire or rend us asunder.
But the good news is if we can make it through this seismic shifting of American identity and emerge from this crucible with a deeper respect for one another, but we'll not only survive, we'll have developed the capabilities that will enable us to endure. The choices we make now, how, together, we opt to navigate these troubled waters, is also how we choose our fate.
Labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill, shortly before his execution, amid worldwide protest, wrote a statement by telegram sent to Big Bill Haywood, fellow organizer and both co-founder and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the world's largest labor union wrote, "Goodbye, Bill, I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time mourning. Organize! Don't mourn - organize! He then turned that sentiment into a song, Joe Hill’s Last Will, written in his cell on November 18, 1915, the eve of his execution:
My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kind don’t need to fuss and moan —
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? Ah, If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you. — Joe Hill
Here’s an amazing version by Fred ALPI:
Don’t mourn - organize!
That became their rallying cry, and that movement would go on to change labor practices not just here in the states but around the world at a time when workers had virtually no power. If the Wobblies (their nickname) could do it then, we can certainly do it today. One of my favorite MLK quotes is "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I think there's perhaps nothing more important for us to remember today and over the coming months.
Because if we can recognize that this isn't new, we can learn from all the others before us who have faced earlier iterations and have overcome. We can understand the context of the issues we're facing and in doing so, perhaps learn to finally put them behind us so that this new, non-majority generation can be free of the limitations that defined us. We can do for them what those before us did for us -- hand off a more perfect union.
I started this reflection with one great Civil Rights spiritual performed by the amazing Resistance Revival Chorus, a diverse group of women and non-binary individuals committed to using music to unite us. Let’s end with another – Ain’ Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round by legendary Sweet Honey in the Rock and arranged by the incomparable James Horner.
“I’m gonna keep on walking,” they sang, “Keep on talking, marching up to freedom land.” And that’s exactly what we need to do. Because the only way this is over is if we, the emergent majority, this new, diverse, inclusive, empowered America allow it to be. If we accept that it is.
“It’s gonna happen, Granddaddy,” said Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to his Klan grandfather in the 2021 film, Son of the South, based on Bob’s autobiography. “I’ve met the people changing everything and they’re… You can’t stop them. They are tougher, they are stronger, they’re more resilient, and they’re right.” That was true in the 1960s and it’s true now.
Today, more than ever, I feel the depth of the sentiment Martin expressed in a lesser-known section of his I Have a Dream speech:
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
And he was right.
I woke up the morning after the election with a troubled heart and a conflicted mind.
But no longer. My heart has settled and my mind is now stayed on one thing – freedom. Not just for me or the people close to me but for all of us.
Because I know this – if you and I keep on walking, keep on talking, especially right now – then Freedom Land is just over this last hill.