"A NEW GENERATION"

“A NEW GENERATION”

            Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, caused quite a stir last week at a MoveOn event.  She indicated that she planned to be part of a movement to impeach Donald Trump.  She used profane language to describe the Trumpster that shocked many people.  For many folk, her language was more difficult than the call for impeachment. 

            It is indicative that a new generation of leaders are coming into Congress, and I recalled a generational moment like this with my children.  When they were new teenagers, we were watching some macho movie on TV, and the protagonist called the bad guy a “melon farmer.”  I asked David and Susan what he was talking about, and they were genuinely shocked.  “Dad, don’t you know that ‘melon farmer’ is a censored word for the other m-f word?”  I was at first surprised that they even knew the “m-f” word, but then I remembered my own childhood, when at age six I knew all the cuss words, even if I didn’t know what they really meant.  I replied that while I sometimes thought in the “m-f” language, I never spoke it, so it was outside my perceptual field.   They told me that there was a new generation coming, and that I had better get accustomed to it.  Little did I know that cable was coming and that the “m-f” word would be used a lot on TV.

            I do not like the “m-f” word, but whatever one thinks about Congresswoman Tlaib’s use of it, her determination to take back the American government is a signal that there is a new group of representatives in Congress.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most publicized, but there is a significant group of newly-elected Congresspeople who are not only dedicated to impeaching Donald Trump, but are also dedicated to reconstructing American society in order to better develop justice and equity in our midst.  On one level, it reminds me of the energy that John F. Kennedy brought to the Presidency when he was elected in 1960.   I could not vote in that election because I was in the 9^th grade, but if I had been able to do so, I would have voted for Richard Nixon.  I was still deeply held in the captivity of racism and sexism and militarism, and though there were signs breaking out of changes to come (like Brown v. Board and the Montgomery Bus Boycott), I was still longing for the white men’s context to be retained 100%. 

            Even though I was opposed to JFK’s election as president, I was astonished by his inaugural speech in 1961.  Many things struck me in that speech, but this phrase has come back to me in these days:  “Let the word go forth from this time and place….that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”  JFK was more “white male oriented” and conservative than I thought, but his election was part of the calling forth of  a new generation.  Indeed, it took his life, but the forces that were unleashed would fundamentally change American society, as people classified as “black,” as women, as poor people, as gay and lesbian people, and others began to hear that the basic phrase of the American vision applied to them also:  “all {men} are created equal.”

            And, to paraphrase another American president, we are now in a struggle to see if that proposition of equality can long endure.  Donald Trump and his base hope that it cannot endure – indeed, he wants the federal government shut down because it gives him a feeling of having dictatorial powers.  Yet, a new generation has been called forth, led by Barack and Michelle Obama, and now bearing fruit in all these new folk in Congress.  2019 will be a very interesting year, as the investigations of Trump and his ilk begin to report out, and as the struggle for the idea of equality deepens and hardens.

            We give thanks for this new generation, and we hope that they will provide breakthroughs similar to those we saw in the 1960’s.  No guarantees, though – we’ve seen many of those breakthroughs weakened by SCOTUS, which seems poised like the SCOTUS of the 1850’s.  JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK and many others all were assassinated in this struggle.  The resistance to equality is deeply rooted in American history.  So, it is up to us to find our place in this new generation, to help maintain the power of the idea of equality, and to deepen its reach and its meaning.  Let us find our voice in this volatile and exciting time.