December 27, 2017
It is customary at the end of the year to take stock of the last twelve months, to mark where we are and where we’re going; to commit to improve in the year ahead; to acknowledge what has been lost or achieved in the year that is ending. For 2017, that is a profoundly overwhelming task. Trump, in all of his vulgar, bigoted, narcissism, looms large, casting a pall over seasonal festivities, disrupting our efforts to be reflective, like a discordant wrong note in our favorite holiday carol. Yet we must tune out the noise and conduct this annual accounting, if we intend to be more than just hapless victims swept up by forces that we cannot control.
On Christmas Eve, the over-caffeinated bigot in The White House fired off a series of tweets attacking Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, effectively elevating the steady drumbeat of attacks on federal law enforcement from the right wing propaganda machine to the Oval Office (Source: “Trump Uses Twitter to Criticize FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe,” by Ryan Lucas, WNYC Radio, NPR.org, 12/24/17). Trump’s tweets were followed by Representative Francis Rooney calling for a “purge” of the FBI (Source: www.msnbc.com/msnbc-news/watch/gop-congressman-calls-for-purge-of-fbi-1124032067621, 12/26/17).
It is evident that Republicans are zealously pursuing the goal of obtaining absolute, uncheckable power, democracy be damned. They announce their authoritarian aims openly, calling for purges of career civil servants and passing legislation that punishes states that vote for Democrats. After twelve months of Republican control of all of the levers of federal government, it is beyond cavil that they pose a clear and present danger to our republic. Their animating principles are authoritarianism and hatred of people of color. This administration pursues racism as official policy. It has cruelly rescinded DACA, rendering 690,000 young people (94% of whom are Latino) vulnerable to deportation to countries that they have never known (Source: “Key Facts about unauthorized immigrants enrolled in DACA,” by Gustavo Lopez and Manuel Krogstad, Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org, 9/25/17). The Trump Administration has rescinded Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 Haitians, leaving them vulnerable to deportation in 2019 and is considering rescinding protection for 200,000 Salvadorans, who were initially accorded Temporary Protected Status in 2001 by George W. Bush. This is despite the fact that Salvadorans covered by TPS have a 95% labor participation rate and are the parents of 192,700 U.S. citizens (Source: “TPS has three words, only one is temporary,“ by Mark L. Schneider and Aaron Schneider, The Miami Herald, 12/26/17). This administration seems to take pleasure in cruelty where people of color are concerned, devising inventive ways to separate families and inflict maximum harm. Any lingering doubt that Trump is personally driven by pernicious and ignorant racism should have been put to rest by the New York Times’ story detailing his rage at the increased number of visas granted to Afghans, Haitians and Nigerians (Source: “Stoking Fear, Trump Defied Bureaucracy to Advance Immigration Agenda,” by Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, The New York Times, 12/23/17).
Enduring a year being governed by people whose decisions are grounded in racial animus and a desire to establish an authoritarian regime has been destabilizing and frightening. Those of us targeted feel under constant assault from the people who took an oath to protect us. Yet through our shock, rage and disbelief, we have responded with incredible resolve that has not wavered. We began the year by mobilizing the largest protest in this country’s history one day after Trump’s inauguration. Using the roadmap from Indivisible.org, progressive groups sprang up around the country, including in every Red state, to hold our elected officials accountable and defeat two efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. We toppled Confederate monuments all over the South and finally held men accountable for decades of sexual harassment. Coalitions of Black people, young progressives and disgusted suburban moderates elected a Democratic governor in Virginia and a Democratic Senator from Alabama! 2017 was a year in which we learned the profound truth of James Baldwin’s observation, “that, ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” 2017 is also the year that we have shown that we are up for the fight.