Over the past year or so of political wrangling, I have been very tempted to weigh in. But I put off writing about the Sander’s/Clinton primary for the most obvious of reasons, I had nothing new to add to the storm of cheers and critiques that swirled and roiled the political air. But we are now down to the hard case, only a few months to go before a most critical election, and the conversation is beginning to turn in a sour direction.
I have lived for over seven decades in an ever-changing America. I have witnessed the pain, the struggle and the sacrifice, in blood and treasure that change, especially lasting change, requires. I have witnessed the calls to the barricades, the struggles that came after, and the small victories that have paved our path to this moment in history. Out of all of this I can tell you, the biggest enemy we have to fight is not the other side, it is ourselves – our egos, our sense of righteous indignation, our passion, our demands for ideological purity. These are the seeds of defeat. In every major progressive movement of the last century, the opposition attempted to plant the seeds of division. The FBI planted agent provocateurs in the Civil Rights movement, the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the Women’s movement. Local police and even anti-union companies have for many years developed and deployed strategies seeking to destabilize, splinter and defuse progressive groups trying to organize and recruit for people based solutions to common problems. This is not new. It is an old and all too often an effective tactic.
Now it’s your turn. In the next little while the activist left will be bombarded with reasons to doubt each other, and to denounce your leaders. Accusations will be hurled, evidence produced (and even manufactured) and rumors will be circulated to all and sundry. You will see articles geared to make you doubt, raise your suspicions of those fighting beside you and urging you to give up the fight. It has already started. The perfectly timed e-mail leak this weekend is only one example. Don’t bite! You have too much work to do.
Supporters of Sen. Sanders felt the Bern and gravitated to his call for a “political” revolution. To the surprise of many, including their candidate and their party, they quickly became a political force. They became motivated, activated and answered Bernie’s call by the thousands. Well done!
But that was the easy part. Like generations of activists, soldiers and converts of all types, we are now faced with the reality… Revolutions are a lot of hard, dirty, disheartening, and very time-consuming work. The call to action is easy, but the action is anything but.
Although I didn’t count myself as an early Bernie supporter, I certainly applaud his supporters for the activism and the effort they have undertaken. As an old union guy, I love to see people get engaged at the grass roots level, to advocate and fight for the changes they want. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is staying in the fight. The hard part is taking the losses and not giving up. The hard part is realizing that simple solutions to complex problems aren’t really solutions at all. The hard part is learning that the fight will exhaust you, require deep and sustained sacrifices, cost you friends, family and maybe even employment. The hard part is the nights when you doubt yourself and the worth of your effort. The hard part is just beginning…
Bernie’s call to arms was, by necessity, a trumpet call to simple solutions to difficult, complex problems, which barely hinted at the difficulty and trade offs they really required. You want free tuition to higher education, fine! Who is going to pay the tab, and what are you going to do about their resistance to giving up their resources for your purposes. How will you enforce the change and who will police it? How will you find or build the infrastructure needed to accommodate the new student population that will result? Where will you find the teachers? And what about existing debt, do you forgive it? If the government pays for your education, who gets to chose the curriculum? These are thorny questions and will require a LOT of debate and compromise before they are even partially resolved.
But before we get to that work, before we start deciding who should cut the cake and in what size pieces we have to earn the right. Saying you want change is not change. It’s just a slogan, a chant, until you buckle down and do the work that makes change possible. And we cannot do that work if we spend much of our time bickering and fighting each other. Bernie knows this. He has labored in this vineyard for many, many years. He knows that victories are few and hard won. He knows that compromise and commitment are part of the same struggle. He knows that leadership doesn’t always require that you claim the field. He knows that you must seek and preserve allies in the struggle. And most importantly he knows that the fight is not about any one person, including himself, but rather about the goal of progressive change.
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, he acknowledged this reality. He knew if the fight was to be won it must be carried forward not just by him, but by others. Bernie is an important leader, but he is not the goal, or the struggle. The fight has just begun. It’s time to unite and go forward. A Luta Continua… the struggle continues.