"STATE OF THE UNION: LAST GASP OR HEADWIND?"

“STATE OF THE UNION: LAST GASP OR HEADWIND?”

            About this time 56 years ago, on January 14, 1963, George Wallace gave his inaugural address as governor of Alabama, after being elected in the fall of 1962.  It is the speech in which he touted the racist history and the present status of white supremacy in the South, using the infamous words “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”  Although he would later make a symbolic stand in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of Autherine Lucy,     an African-American student who wanted to attend her state university, he did not recognize the winds of change that would blow through the state in 1963.  The Birmingham Campaign awaited, along with MLK’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” and the powerful August March on Washington was already in the discussion stages.  Wallace did not realize that he was part of the last gasp of that breath of the counter-revolution to the civil rights movement that was revitalized in Montgomery and in Greensboro.  In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson would end neo-slavery, commonly called “segregation,” when he signed the Voting Rights Act.

            That law and others sent white Southerners scurrying to the Republican party, in order to start another counter-revolution, a movement which continues today.  I thought of this history as I listened to Donald Trump’s short speech on Friday, saying that he would sign a bill to re-open the federal government, after he had forced it to close for the longest period in American history.  I’ve wondered many times, and I wonder today – is Trump part of the last gasp of this current version of the white supremacist counter-revolution, the final part of the tsunami that began with Nixon’s Southern strategy, continued through the Reagan movement, and strengthened through the Cheney/Bush presidency?   Or, is the headwind leading us back to the 1890’s, where white supremacy regained its footing all through the country?  

         I wrote a couple of weeks ago about “the new generation” in DC, people of color and progressives elected to the House last fall.  I am hoping that Trump is the last gasp, but I am also aware of American history and how deeply racism and sexism and materialism are woven into our marrow.  Many of us thought that it had been stopped with the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  Yet, it has roared back again in the election of Donald Trump as President.  It is a reminder that we will likely never eradicate the tsunamis of race and gender and class in American society.  They are like the tectonic plates underneath the surface, always moving and shifting and seeking to re-align things back to favor white, male supremacy.  Yet we must always be working to re-align the configurations of power to favor justice and equity and compassion.

            This will be a big year in determining which way the current energy goes.  Even if we did not know it already, the Trump administration has revealed to us the way that rich people live and move and have their being – the ordinary rules of equity do not apply to them.  Colluding with the Russians did not seen like “collusion” to them because those rules did not apply to them.  Added to that revelation is the re-energizing of the marginalization of African-Americans and Latinx-Americans.  That trend will continue unless there is strong opposition to it, just as Speaker Pelosi demonstrated strong resistance to Trump’s taking the government hostage over the Halliburton (or some corporation like that) border wall.  The Mueller Report will obviously be an important part of this year, as well as the development of a Republican challenger to Trump (Romney? Flake? Corker? Hogan? Ryan? Others?)    Speaker Pelosi seems to be the equal, if not superior, to Trump in using power, so that will be very interesting.

            All days and all years are crossroads, but this year seems especially so. Last Gasp for white, male supremacy for awhile?  Or Headwind for a new tsunami of oppression?  How we reflect on this year at this time in 2020 will depend a lot on our energy and work in 2019.  Let us be about our business – to do justice, love compassion, walk humbly.