Now What by Esther Nelson

Eight years ago (2016), Donald Trump became the 45^th president of the USA.  I felt much the same way then as I do now—eight years later—when Trump somehow was re-elected to that office.

Back in 2016, one of my colleagues brought a short essay by Alice Walker (b. 1944) into his classroom a few days after the election.  Many of those university students were upset–even dazed—by Trump’s victory.  How did it happen? Here’s a link to Walker’s work—a piece that’s just as appropriate today as it was eight years ago.

Walker opens up her article: “When I was a child growing up in middle Georgia, I thought all white men were like Donald Trump.  They too seemed petulant and spoiled, unhappy with everything they were not the center of, brutal toward the feelings of those ‘beneath’ them, and comfortable causing others to act out of hate.  How did we survive this?”

Walker continues by focusing on her father, a poor sharecropper with eight children.  He was so desperate for systemic change that he walked to the voting polls, casting the “first vote by a black person in the county.” He voted for Roosevelt’s “New Deal” as three white men (holding shotguns) watched him.  He hoped the “New Deal” would open up opportunities for black people along with whites.  Walker then tells us something about her family.  Her aunts and uncles learned trades—those allowed for black people—and they raised children. She notes, “…the white world…attempted to squeeze them into corners so tiny that to the majority of ‘citizens’ of the cities they lived in, they did not even exist.”

I am fearful and saddened with the results of Election 2024.  Actually, I’m outraged and have all manner of somatic symptoms—feeling of a stone pressing on my chest, tachycardia, and loss of appetite.  So, when I went to my local YMCA for yoga a day or two after the election, the usual forty-ish African-American man was behind the desk, greeting people while insuring the check-in process went smoothly.  “How are you?” he asked me.  I looked him in the eye and said, “Not well at all after the election.”  He smiled broadly and said, “It’s a beautiful, balmy day.  Enjoy it.”  Really?!  He quickly then pointed to the skin on his forearm and said, “It’ll be all right. When you walk around for a lifetime with this (meaning his dark skin), you learn to grab joy when and where you can.” 

Point well taken.

Our human history is weighed down with people living in less than ideal (sometimes harrowing and deadly) circumstances.  I felt that acutely when the YMCA man gave voice to his burden of inherited oppression and grief.  I immediately thought of the suffering Palestinian communities in Gaza, decimated by American-made bombs.  So much suffering. The war-torn Ukrainian people. Holocaust survivors of genocide.  Cambodians as well.  The list goes on and on and on.

The following paragraph of Walker’s essay is crucial:  “How to survive dictatorship.  That is what much of the rest of the world has had to learn.  Our country has imposed this condition on so many places and peoples around the globe it is naïve to imagine we would avoid it. Besides, do Native Americans and African American descendants of enslaved people not realize they have never lived in anything but a dictatorship?”

Walker admonishes us to study.  Understand the people you vote for.  Know your history and how there is an ongoing attempt to eradicate that history.  Know the issues.  A few months ago, as I went about my duties in my small corner of the world, a young woman from a state that has practically banned abortion told me she was not going to vote for Biden (this was before Harris became the Democratic candidate) because Biden “doesn’t want women to have the right to abortion and the other side does.”  I was flabbergasted and attempted to gently educate her, but I wonder how many people reflect this young woman’s ignorance of just plain facts.  We, as a country, seem to be asleep at the wheel.

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, is not your run-of-the-mill church.  I recently learned that the church has placed “banned books” in their library and encouraged the congregation to read them.  Jim Rigby, the pastor, posts an essay on social media nearly every day.  From a recent post titled, “The Heresy of Love,” he says, “Many politicians don’t want school children to even hear about the experiences of non-white and non-heterosexual people.  It’s obvious why.  Once you see others as fully human, traditional hierarchies of domination can be seen for the violence really (sic) they are.”

Walker ends her short essay with encouragement and counsel.  Our anger and shock “points to how fast asleep we were.”  We cannot afford to turn away from speaking out and pushing back on people who would ban books, suppress our votes, and make themselves rich at the expense of the poor.  I would add, “By any means necessary.”

Walker insists that “real change is personal.”  “The change within ourselves [is] expressed in our willingness to hear, and have patience with, the ‘other’….Anger, the pointing of fingers, the wishing that everyone had done exactly as you did, none of that will help relieve our pain….What do we do with our fear?  Do we turn on others, or toward others? Do we share our awakening, or only our despair?”

She sets the bar high.  As of today, I am in despair.  I MUST stay busy.  If I don’t, I’m afraid I will melt into a puddle of tears and drown.  So, I continue with my work at the women’s clinic, go to yoga, walk the track, walk some more, and medicate myself (gently) in order to get five or six hours of sleep a night.

Trump’s era of dictatorship will be chaotic and cruel.

And so it goes….