Quote of the Day (Rebecca Solnit, on Activists’ Anger and Love)

 

“Most great activists—from Ida B. Wells to Dolores Huerta to Harvey Milk to Bill McKibben—are motivated by love, first of all. If they are angry, they are angry at what harms the people and phenomena they love, but their urges are primarily protective, not vengeful. Love is essential; anger is perhaps optional.” — Writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, “All the Rage,” The New Republic, October 2018

The image accompanying this post, showing Rebecca Solnit, was taken Sept. 10, 2010, by Charles Kremenak.

Quote of the Day (Rebecca Solnit, on Hope, Uncertainty and Action)

“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what is may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.”― Writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (1997)

Quote of the Day (Rebecca Solnit, on Hope As ‘A Power You Don't Have to Throw Away’)

“Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.”― Writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (1997)

International Women's Day 2018: Action Needed Now

Earlier tonight, I came home to find on Facebook a longtime friend rather teasingly challenging me to write something about International Women's Day 2018. Normally, I stoutly resist urges to plug some person, place, thing or event on my blog—and particularly, as in this case, when I don’t feel as if I had anywhere near as much time as I’d like to research a subject.

But this past year has been different. Even a lifetime of being all too familiar with male crassness and sexism left me woefully unprepared for revelations by women I have known for years, even since childhood, offering a viral catalogue of misbehavior inspired by the #MeToo movement. It shouldn't have, but the endlessly unrolling list, with one long-valued name after another, left me reeling, sad, and, ultimately, angry.

I wish International Women's Day were unnecessary. But I also wish that an appeal to men’s basic decency—“Would you want your mother or sister to be treated this way?”—had succeeded far more often in the real world than it has done to date. 

In the past few weeks, I have read much—even from professed progressives—who wonder whether the #MeToo movement may have pushed too far, prompting a backlash. A backlash may indeed be inevitable, but if so, it will only be because all reform movements inspire reactions, not because this one has been unduly excessive. 

In fact, from my conversations with several longstanding female friends—friends of unquestionable integrity—I suspect that the movement has not even come close to revealing the full extent of the inequality, condescension, and sexual power plays present in the American workforce. 

Far beyond the fields of entertainment, journalism and politics that have garnered the lion’s share of headlines, the business world, with far less glamour that can brought to bear by celebrity accusers, continues to operate with impunity. 

The theme for this year’s international Women’s Day has been #PressforProgress. For the sake of simple justice—for the sake of according so many women the equity that their intelligence and hard work should have afforded them long ago—that motto is the least we all them. 

As much as anything, the events of the last year illustrate, according to a fine essay on the #MeToo phenomenon by Harper’s columnist Rebecca Solnit, that “power generates a cushion of obliviousness around it.” She goes on to enumerate how to counter this:

“That means, first, treating people with respect regardless of their status: not taking the invitation to disdain or ignore. It means being aware of how your status may cut you off from what others know and may share among themselves; it means knowing that you do not know. It also means questioning the insulating tendencies of power.”

 

Quote of the Day (Rebecca Solnit, on Joy in Politics as a ‘Fine Act of Insurrection’)

“Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”― Writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (2004)

Congratulations to Doug Jones (pictured) for narrowly defeating the execrable Judge Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate in Alabama.

But this joy can only be momentary. The true “fine act of insurrection” must start now: a concerted movement to impeach The Donald and drain his daily poison from the well of American life.