So I’m at the Take Back America conference, seeing the event with the dual eyes I have been using for viewing this entire election season thus far.

At this conference (nicknamed the “progressive convention”); the passion is in people’s eyes, their
bodies aquiver with the idea of advancing progressive ideals. it’s been a while since we had a national moment of victory.

The speakers here are talking about green jobs, healthcare for all,
workers’ rights, Martin Luther King - things/ideas/people I take
seriously, believe in, need. and more than ever before, the speakers
and participants here are referring to a history of nonviolent direct
action and civil disobedience, the idea of protecting our democracy
with actions that make our words mean something. so that makes me happy.

on the other hand, the talk is always far better than the action. we
are on a very fine line where people want to hear real talk about
race, for instance, but also want to see themselves as beyond racism.
yesterday obama gave the best speech i can ever remember hearing from
a politician, the kind of speech that everyone from electoral cynic to
obama fanatic had to lean into. we have waited for this kind of
speech, we have dreamed of this kind of candor about race from a
national platform.

where obama has most excited me has been in his deflection of
responsibility back towards the people. he is willing to occupy the
space of charismatic leader, but not of magician race/economy/world
fixer. in speeches like yesterday’s, he is saying ‘i come as an
observer, as a listener, and to channel what i see and hear - what i
hear behind closed doors as well as what i hear in town halls’.

sitting and listening i thought lovingly
of the white racists in my family, of those impacted by economic
injustice and combatting addiction and prisons in my own family, of
their proximity to each other, of the long journey we have to a point
where both sides of my family are equal, respected, evolved, free of
hate and bitterness.

sitting at this conference with people who desperately want to see
change and watching them arch and writhe with the pleasure of hearing
their own inner heart’s desire for healing makes me want to open my
own heart to them. election years are so tricky this way. for a moment
people are willing to believe, to join with those of us who work day
in and day out on radically changing the status quo of gross
inequality. for a moment it feels like the momentum is there to get
the work done.

i sit over here prudish, my heart also beating faster after such a
speech, wanting to writhe and moan a bit myself, but not wanting to
give it up on the first date. i have been, we have been, so
mistreated, bamboozled, lied to and abused for so long - i want us to
have the HIGHEST standards for our next moment in history. for the
organizations, and the leaders and for the people who lead those
leaders.

it looks like this:

personally, i want to engage each and every individual i meet in this
greater process of honestly addressing and advancing racial justice.
this means the hard questions to the white folks in my life about what
they are doing to uphold racist practices, policies, patterns…how do
they benefit? this means asking the people of color in my life how do
we look at each other with mutual solidarity, making sure that no one
race or ethnicity advances at the cost of another, and that on the
most personal level we aren’t waging our struggle from a space of
hatred and vengefulness, but of a greater love and greater humanity
than any of us is capable of alone. it is time for us to need each
other enough to be real with each other.

organizationally, it means that leaders and boards can no longer
simply speak to their dreams of diversity, and go so far as
tokenization in the pursuit of that dream but never a step further. it
means engaging people of color and impacted communities (impacted by
economic and environmental injustice and human rights abuses) at the
decision making level in all of our work. it means that wealthy people
and majority white organizations have to be willing to show that they
trust people of other races and class backgrounds in the key decisions
about budgets, about campaigns, and about a shared vision for the
world we want.

in leadership it means refusing the urge to oversimplify, as obama did
when he reduced the complexities of the middle east situation to mere
radical islam, instead of acknowledging that in israel, as in america,
the desire to be safe somewhere has led to colonization and
displacement that must be righted, that in israel as in america there
are people who have been placed behind walls, behind borders,
contained out of sight so that others may live. it wasn’t right the
founding of America and the injustices towards Native Americans
resonate today. We have to have race solutions that actual heal,
rather than point fingers and marginalize, and we have to be most
consistent with our loving acceptance of each other in the solution
process when we have the most to lose, the most at stake, when it is
the most uncomfortable.

i am excited to be alive at this moment, when there is so much work to
be done. i am excited to take the ideas and enthusiasm back to the
streets and farmland and the coastlines and the coal-impacted
communities who are waiting for us to wake up to their needs and join
them in changing no less than the entire world.