Time For Survivors Recharge, Colltalers

A handful of issues rose to the top of humanity’s woes at this wrapup of the year and decade. Climate crisis, income inequality, gender, race, and faith persecution, and a few others have all but prevented billions from living free, dignified, and peaceful lives, and life on this earth from having a future.
Still, we greet the new year with some hope and a few wishes, with heavy hearts but much resolve to turn the civilization around. That’s what’s at stake here. A lot to do on our own while street rallies continue until morale improves. But first, let’s vote out all the leaders who stand on our way forward.
Starting by the top: we must do what the Impeachment won’t and choose a new U.S. President in November. It’s clear that for as long as Donald Trump and his enabling sycophants remain in the White House, every one of those issues of concern has the potential of becoming unmanageable nightmares.
In three years, the president and his family grew richer as did the powerful who benefitted from his trillion-dollar tax break, while national poverty levels spiked. Immigrants and sexual and racial minorities were brutalized while white supremacists felt empowered. Environmental protection rules were dismantled as fossil fuel industries rejoiced. Women’s reproductive rights faced a threat and so did the Constitution and entire judicial system.
As a nation, we’re weakened and embarrassed by our overweight, unhinged, diatribe-prone ‘leader’ becoming a giant fatberg clogging global airwaves with the grease of his amorality. Save for misconception or lack of judgment, no decent American believes anything that he says unless their earnings depend

on them endorsing the ogre with the nuclear codes. But we’re all accountable to those we love; when the time comes, what will we tell them?
Americans must show Brazilians, Chileans, and Bolivians; Philippinos, Hondurans, and Guatemalans; Ukrainians, Indians, Pakistanis, and Yemenis; Iraqis, Iranians, and North Koreans; Hong Kong students and Pacific Islanders; the Polish, Hungarians, yes, the British, and every world’s indigenous nation, that we’ll lead the way. That we, as the richest and most powerful nation, will rise up and stand with them all by canceling one-term Trump.
But our commitment to change can’t obscure or let our purpose to be tainted by corrupt leaders. One of the great signs that things may actually evolve and we’ll survive this, is the increased global popular revolt. Someday we may catch ourselves in a better future, looking back at how we overcame incredible odds and rescued the planet and most species from the brink. People marched for existential causes, through the year and all over the world.
From the U.S. to Europe, from Latin America to the Middle East, with few focuses elsewhere, protests against lack of action on climate change, for gun control, women’s and gender rights, democracy, and freedom of choice, for indigenous people and the poor, have often seized global headlines.
Such mass reaction against oppression fills with joy the hearts of freedom fighters and democracy defenders. Yes, we’ve lost too many warriors and green activists, journalists, and justice advocates. And sadly, whistleblowers extraordinaire Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange remain in prison, exiled or facing mortality. Plus almost all wars and conflicts head to a state of permanence. No, not the world we’d choose to live in.
But by the same spirit behind Hannukkah, which started last night, Christmas, on Wednesday, and Kwanzaa the following day, it is a moment to count blessings and make our peace with what we could not save. Time to collect our thoughts, to dispassionately look back at the things we’re so passionate about and to comfort ourselves and those around us. Let’s prepare, gather strength and keep it all together. See you in your dreams. Happy New Year. WC

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