December 31, 2021
As this year draws to a close, it is tough to summon the characteristic optimism with which we usually turn the calendar page. This has been a year of incalculable loss. A loss of brilliant and prophetic Blackness, from bell hooks to Greg Tate to Desmond Tutu. A loss of transcendent artistry and creativity from Cicely Tyson and Michael K. Williams to Chucky Thompson. The words and the work and the beauty lives on, but we are left in a country awash in ugliness and anger, trying to chart a path forward with inconstant allies. 2021 has been a year of stasis, with one step forward and two steps back in the pandemic; where every gain has been stymied by selfishness.
On January 6th, we were stripped of any illusion that the center of this republic would hold based on tradition, inertia or a widespread belief in the Constitutional principles of representative democracy. We could no longer plausibly deny that for a large percentage of our fellow Americans, our skin color or sexual identity rendered us stateless persons with no rights they were bound to respect. To them, a President elected with our votes could never be a legitimate officeholder.
The promise of the spring that vaccines would free us from the tyranny of Zoom cocktails and quarantine pods gave way to a summer of hopes dashed by Delta, aided by the obstinately ignorant, who placed their faith in quack cures or an egotistical faith in their “superior” immune systems.
The institutions we relied upon to protect us consistently let us down. They were ineffectual at best or actively malevolent at worst— from a Congress incapable of passing voting rights legislation or a spending bill that would truly help children and families, to a Supreme Court recklessly undermining the Voting Rights Act or eagerly stripping women of their bodily autonomy.
Evil seems to be flourishing unchecked. Windows are closing on our chance to save democracy as state after state enacts a raft of legislation designed to entrench minority power — from laws restricting the franchise to those enabling a Republican minority to invalidate election results they don’t like. Meanwhile, the CDC’s covid guidance seems more informed by the dictates of CEOs than the needs of public health.
In the face of these daunting circumstances, it would be easy to give in to despair, but the truth is that acting as if there is no hope becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We still have agency and we can’t afford to squander it. Instead of looking to Washington to rescue us, recommit to focusing on your local school board elections, where hysteria over critical race theory has taken hold, to your local and state election administration, where the will of the people can be thwarted, and to your state legislatures that are busy passing all of these undemocratic laws. Most importantly, honor those prophetic voices we lost this year and remember that love is a verb. Real love requires action. If you love your country or your people, you must act! No other resolution counts. Happy New Year!
Each time I read a post of the Journal of the Plague Years, I come away with renewed hope. Thank you for the time you take to write these motivational posts. We can not stop spreading our message to move equity forward, to help people realize how more alike we are than dissimilar and it is time to work together to save our rights, our climate and that we can actually live together to build a future of working together. We need to do what we can to change the polarization that now exists to a communal effort where we respect each other, get vaccinated/boosted and where we are selfless as opposed to selfish.