Let the rich quake with fear.
Let the racists seethe with rage.
Let the corporate media distort, divert, and ultimately manipulate what it calls news to defend the wealthy and powerful.
Some say, "Bernie is back!"
No. Bernie is not back.
Bernie has always been here.
And there.
We just had to find him.
And if not him, someone else.
And if not someone else, ourselves.
An Orange Menace stares at us from outside the window of the Overton.
He laughs at us
Swinging his golf clubs.
He is away from us, but tells us he is right here.
The Orange Menace's enablers push inward the window.
They implore us to divide ourselves.
They tell us there is no choice but to chain ourselves
To never-ending despair, anger, and fear of each other.
"Grab your guns!" they cry.
"Winter is coming!" they yell
As if they are in a made-up dark age vomiting something they heard
From watching a screen in a stupor.
No. It is better to ingest the words of the old poet
Who once told us
In a dark time,
"We must love one another or die."
We are not defenseless under the night.
We are not bound by separateness, but by our natural empathy we lost, but must find again.
We must push the window the other way.
The way forward.
The way toward light, away from night.
The way toward commonality.
To all those who share our bi-ped existence,
Even the ones we deride as "illegal."
And to those living creatures under water, in forests, in deserts, and those creatures too small or hidden to see.
To those with whom we share, and must share
And share alike to survive.
We must embrace and guard the lives of trees, water, rocks, and the sky,
Or else die with them.
A sage from the other side of my world once said,
"Let my country awake."
Did our country awaken today in Brooklyn?
Will it wake tomorrow when our voices shout back at the poison spewed from cables onto our living room screens?
Will we wake in time to save our children, and children's children?
Will we wake in time to save bees, and the masses of creatures and coral reefs heading toward final exits?
We are still asleep.
We are still asleep when we walk around accepting a world
Where three people own more wealth than half the people on the planet.
We are still asleep when dreaming of outrages of the day
While we suffer in despairing and isolating passivity.
There is much injustice in our world.
It overwhelms us.
Whelm back, then.
Push back, then.
Talk back, then.
Organize back, then.
Anger is an energy, they shouted back then.
Anger is an energy.
Just not the only energy.
There is energy in empathy.
In hope.
In love.
In knowing you matter, not in the end, but in new beginnings.
You matter. We matter.
And before we get too full of ourselves
Remember
We are matter.
Just like every other creature and organism on the planet.
Take care.
Push the window out. Push it forward.
Into the light.
