The Fierce Urgency of Now

After the 2016 presidential election I felt defeated; I think a lot of young people did. I had watched the last two elections work out the way I, and the adults around me, wanted them to. A lot of us were convinced by the last eight years that hope and change and a sense of "we-ness" would prevail as it had twice before. "Love trumps hate," seemed so obvious, I thought it would be proven on election night. I believed in an America that was constantly breaking boundaries we never thought we'd overcome; I thought we could only go forward.

I was wrong. That new aged thinking, as it so often does, failed.

The weeks after the election went by too quickly, and the days since Trump's inauguration have gone too slowly.

I think if anything, almost by force, this past election has made me more proactive and forced me to mature. Prior to Trump's win, I let a lot of other people do a lot of the work; and I only did things when it was convenient to me, because I always thought it would just work out--like it always did.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "the moral arch of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I used to think it bent that way on its own, that it would just get better because it had to; I no longer think that's true.

The moral arch bends toward justice, not because that's the natural order, but because we force it that way. We have to constantly work against the prejudice and the hatred that can so easily move the arch in the wrong direction. Instead of thinking of that Dr. King quote in terms of how it must be, I think of it as how it is and how it ought to be, where we should be moving toward.

Since the inauguration, I find myself watching old Barack Obama speeches; my favorites are from his 2008 presidential campaign and first term. I think those speeches are the most fitting because then, just like now, people felt a sense of hopelessness; and just like nearly a decade ago, his words inspire me.

Me at my first anti-Trump protest.

In November I felt beaten down and almost like I would have to keep my head down and just survive the next four years. At the Jefferson Jackson Dinner for the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Obama referenced Dr. King's belief in the "fierce urgency of now."

The "fierce urgency of now" was part of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, in the part the teachers don't tell you about. It's all about how there isn't time to waste because every minute spent waiting is another second where people are getting hurt. Those words really set a fire off in me.

Let's face it we are being led by an incompetent and malevolent man. The executive order banning Muslims was really the last straw for me; and the roll out for it was proof enough that the administration does not care about human beings who do not fit into some narrow rigid definition of Americanism, and it's scary if you don't fit perfectly within it.

I'm sure we'll make it through, collectively as a country, we will survive these four years; but I worry for the people who have and continue to get hurt. Relatively small things like how someone told my brother to go back to Africa or how kids on twitter say the most racist things now-a-days. And bigger deals like how people were blocked from entering the country, families being ripped apart in ICE raids, the possibility of hundreds of thousands going without health insurance.

There's a constant lull of worry sitting in the pit of my stomach, but instead of allowing it to hold me back, I'm letting it push me forward.

I've signed up to volunteer at organizations the Trump administration doesn't want to continue. I'm getting over my fear of needles to donate blood. I've called my senators and the White House probably over 100 times now. I learning more about what goes on in Washington D.C.--ask my friends I'm always listening to a podcast now. I feel as though I'm helping to bend the moral arch, instead of just being a bystander.

As I start mobilizing and see others a think about the brokenhearted girl sitting in Ujamaa back in November, I wish she knew the community that was forming around her. I wish she knew that the Women's March on Washington would be the biggest protest in US history--I wish she knew the collective power of the people bending the moral arch alongside her. I wish she knew her own power.

I wish she knew that she would feel the fierce urgency of now.