Earlier this week, I moderated a national virtual discussion featuring American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero and other leading American rights and justice leaders. The exchange shed considerable light on the seriousness of the times in which we live.
Our purpose was to discuss the growing civil and human rights challenges posed to myriad American groups—and especially poor and historically disadvantaged Americans—by the Trump Administration and its allies in the Republican-controlled Congress.
From threats to due process and established American policy commitments to basic civil and human rights protections, it has become increasingly clear that our current political leadership is seeking to turn back the clock on important gains we have made as a nation over our recent history.
The list of endangered rights and opportunities extends from issues like public education, voting rights, and police accountability to judicial independence, environmental protection, and minority and women’s rights.
The President’s contentious approach to governing and his predilection for picking battles with less powerful groups and individuals is grossly at odds with the best traditions of American political history and national political leadership. This is because he confuses what should be the President’s proper primary focus: namely, the people’s best interests, not his own.
American governance is noteworthy for its constitutional commitment to the informing power of the people—not elected or appointed officials, wealthy and privileged elites, or foreign influences. America at its best is a nation of citizen and grassroots activists.
This is what America’s founders so clairvoyantly advanced as the essential fuel of our nation’s democracy: the power of ordinary people to organize, to petition their government for redress of grievances, and to hold their leaders at all levels accountable to the best interests of the people.
Our national system of checks and balances, our system of guaranteeing civil and criminal due process of law, and our abiding commitment to protecting the rights of aggrieved minorities are among the core characteristics of our nation that have inspired so many across the globe to emulate American democratic practice.
Now Mr. Trump and his allies appear to be in substantial disregard of all that. They seem instead to want to circumvent long-established American ideals of fairness, inclusive public decision making, and prosperity sharing.
They seem to be moving at every opportunity to roll back basic protections for important American groups and to create expanded antagonisms and disunity between various national constituencies.
And all along they seem to be suggesting that basing their positions on the truth and facts is somehow unimportant.
These are unprecedented and dangerous leadership tendencies for our nation at a delicate time in our national journey. More and more, it appears clear the only approach that can save America from the worst of the trendline we are presently on is heightened public vigilance, resistance, and activism.
America is badly in need of renewed civic awareness and engagement. And gratefully the people and the major public interest leaders and organizations that represent their interests are indeed activating in these areas.
Diverse advocacy groups like the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the Center for Community Change, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the National Council of La Raza, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, United We Dream, GLAD, and Equal Voice Action, among others, are forging ahead (and with increasing coordination of effort) to respond to the growing list of challenges developing before us.
Absent continued sustained efforts of this sort to fight for what is right by fighting back, America can only emerge from its current chapter as a badly changed and damaged nation. We can do better than that and we will. Too many committed Americans hold these truths to be self-evident.
I close this report with the hopeful and inspiring poetry of Ben Novotny, an early twenty-something community journalist and youth reporter affiliated with VoiceWaves in Long Beach, California—one of America’s most diverse communities.
The words of his poignant poem, “We Are Still Here,” explain why the fight for a better way forward for America will ultimately prevail; namely because for those who are truly committed to America’s unique national promise there is still so much work to be done...
We are still here because we cannot let great power go unchecked, for we are not a nation of kings but a nation that rebelled against kings.
We are still here because we must show love and compassion toward others, because it is only when we show love and compassion toward others that we can make the world a better place.
We are still here because we must protect our children and grandchildren from bigotry and hate, for too many have died to protect bigotry and hate from coming to our shores.
We are still here because we must show our daughters and granddaughters that they are valued and loved and teach them not to place any limits on their hopes and dreams.
We are still here because while we may have come a long way, we still have a long way to go.
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