by Joe Courter
The words (printed on page 2) and melody of a wonderful Cat Stevens song from 1971’s “Tea for the Tillerman” flowed into my jukebox of a brain a day or two after the election. Already buoyed by the statewide victory of Abdul Al Sayed in Michigan in the race for Senate, we had our own Senate race with a surprising victory with Angie Nixon. Yes, as the multiple horrors of this Trump administration bombard our senses and sensibilities and we feel the threat of authoritarian domination coming down the road, it is really easy to feel overwhelmed. I refuse to concede to hopelessness and powerlessness. And here was proof that the control of the corporate Democratic party and huge outside money was being rejected by people who just want sensible, practical policies enacted — health care, education, justice for all, an end to ICE brutality, an end to needless wars. It was a profound feeling of hope in my heart. I could “feel a change a-coming.”
It seems the “shadow” over the ideals and policies being put forward by the wave of progressive candidates winning around the country, that dreaded collective tendency the Right calls “Socialism” is “breaking down.” It wasn’t enough anymore to just erect “walls of silence” around such ideas and aspirations; the needs have become so great and obvious that regular folks are saying we need “changes.”
What is driving a lot of this desire for changes? Grassroots political organizing, always the basis for motivating such progressive change, going back to the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti War movement, the LGBTQ movement, and the environmental movements. Right now we see a call for changes to be made, major changes like what happened under the New Deal in the ’30s such as Social Security, changes that will “stay and remain.” More and more people feel it can happen, “the day is coming,” and who is in the forefront of driving these optimistic changes? In many cases it is the young folks, perhaps organizing with Democratic Socialists of America or other affiliated organizations, who recognize their present and future are looking bleak, that people around them are hurting and something needs to be done; not the Hope and Change sloganeering of the recent past, but real change. The younger generation sees, or as Cat Stevens put it, “your children see the answers,” and as evidenced by those elections, “that you (elders) saw the same,” and many voted that way.
I am no Pollyanna, nor some blind optimist. The above was fun to put together, but we are deep into an authoritarian takeover of this nation. We do still have the ballot box, or at least hope we do, and November looms large as the best chance to exert some influence in Congress. Why is the Right throwing all the roadblocks into voting, making all their false claims? Because they know voting has the power to affect the course they have set as they seek to further entrench their power, and take all the riches they can from a system perched near collapse from the Crypto and High Tech bubbles bursting. Militarized policing and the surveillance state are huge growing threats to our liberties. Climate change is a real thing, and its effects will need to be dealt with.
We progressives oppose the policies of needless pain and violence; the taking away of rights, the suffering of people trapped in poverty and economic insecurity, the assaults on the environment, the environmental and human toll of wars, the genocide happening before our eyes.
The Right sees all this as a threat: that some people don’t deserve equal rights, that empathy and helping the poor and disadvantaged is somehow bad, that exploitation of resources should be accelerated, that wars are necessary and that Israeli dominance is the only solution. Our resistance to their forms of violence is in turn portrayed as OUR violent tendencies. Their propaganda machine is very powerful in driving this message. We want changes, they portray our desires as a threat to their rule. And so perhaps we are. We see the need for changes, and maybe the Constitutional weapon we have been given, the ballot box, can begin to turn it around. Maybe, because they are willing to classify our resistance as insurrection, and that seems to be the plan they are heading toward. Do what you can.
Excerpts from Changes IV
Cat Stevens 1971
Don’t you feel a change a-coming
From another side of time
Breaking down the walls of silence
Lifting shadows from your mind
Don’t you feel the day is coming
That will stay and remain
When your children see the answers
That you saw the same