Pete Saunders (@petesaunders3 on Twitter) is one of my favorite bloggers; he writes a small blog, The Corner Side Yard, which generally focuses on urban planning-related issues. On Twitter, he describes himself as “Urban Planner. Editor/publisher, The Corner Side Yard. #Rustbelt lover. Detroit born/raised, Hoosier trained and Windy City polished.” I stumbled across his blog when I was reading and writing about Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (a book I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with an interest in history, race in America, urban planning, and/or cities). In his most recent blog post, Saunders discusses what he sees as the new narrative coming out of Detroit after years of catastrophes like the Kwame Kilpatrick administration, the Great Recession, and the city’s bankruptcy. He identifies rebranding, resilience, and redemption as the key narrative elements coming out of Detroit and discusses how they differ from the usual messaging employed by urban areas.
Rather than the standard “we have all the amenities you love!” that most cities try to promote, touting urban sameness rather than distinctiveness or authenticity, the message coming out of Detroit is, “we’re still here! We made it and we’re stronger for it!” (Detroit: Rebranding, Resilience and Redemption)
Throughout his post, Saunders has sprinkled videos which illustrate his point, and as I watched the videos, it occurred to me that while the post was about the rebound of Detroit, it could just as easily be a message of hope for 2020. So I include the videos for your viewing, whether as cheerleading for a city I love or as a reminder that while we have miles to go before we sleep, together we have the resilience to start the work of redemption.
Great Hall, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress
When AG Barr released his four-page summary of the Mueller report, I slammed head- and heart-first into an emotional brick wall. I’ve been reeling ever since with frequent and massive anxiety attacks and enough acid reflux to keep Tums, Zantac, Nexium, and Mylanta in business for a decade or more. The anger, the disgust, the despair, the hopelessness were enough to turn me away from my usual historical reading and buried instead in cozy mysteries and fluffy fiction. But that’s the path of privilege; the path which isn’t immediately and wholly threatened by the choking weeds of corruption and authoritarianism…and so can be used for escape. While my raging gut may have begged for retreat from the realities of tRumpism, I knew it could only be a temporary reprieve while I looked for ways to regroup. I found a path; a path with the most unexpected starting point: the writings of Gloria Jean Watkins, the American author; professor; feminist; and social activist, better known as bell hooks. This won’t be a comprehensive overview of bell hooks’ writing, but a glimpse of the stepping stones made by her that led me to other stones by writers, thinkers, and activists. Stand with me on each stone and feel the power of hope rediscovered.
President Barack Obama spoke in South Africa commemorating the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth at the 16th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
His speech was uplifting even as it warned of the challenges to our world from strongmen and the hatred and division they embrace.
From Time videos:
President Obama with his message of hope (which was also Mandela’s):
Madiba reminds us that: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart.” Love comes more naturally to the human heart, let’s remember that truth. Let’s see it as our North Star, let’s be joyful in our struggle to make that truth manifest here on earth so that in 100 years from now, future generations will look back and say, ‘they kept the march going, that’s why we live under new banners of freedom.’ “
Father Time Overcome by Love, Hope, and Beauty (1627, oil on canvas)
Today’s inspiration came from this song by Vienna Teng about a nascent activist, as well as Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Darkness: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.
So what is this “hope” of which I speak? Solnit says it best:
It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings. “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivete,” the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova recently remarked. And Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, early on described the movement’s mission as to “Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation, rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.” It’s a statement that acknowledges that grief and hope can coexist. Source:Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, pp. xiii-xiv
Grief and rage when I see this:
SERIOUSLY? WTH?
“The Democrats are not making any of this easy. They’ve decided it’s more fun to be the resistance than to do their job and help us govern the country.”
Mitch McConnell, who spent 8 years obstructing Obama and blocked Merrick Garland pic.twitter.com/fHBysL3z9T
— Indivisible Network (@IndivisibleNet) June 10, 2018
Set your hope on fire/action item
Call your senators, particularly if you have D senators, and encourage them to vote against cloture on all of 45*s judges; Senate comity has been abused (blue slips, anyone?) by the Republicans, and it’s long past time to fight back with all the tools we have.
Grief and rage when I see this:
The Trump administrating is arguing in court that the ACA’s requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions should be thrown out. This would be a return to pre-ACA insurance practices. Here are some reminders of how that worked.
Set your hope on fire/action item
Call your House member and senators, and let them know that this is a deal breaker; demand that they make a public statement, so that voters will know their position. Supporting a D candidate for the House or Senate? Contact them, and demand that they address this issue loudly and proudly.
Grief and rage when I see this:
top Trump economist Hassett refers to Trump pledge not to touch Social Security and Medicare as a “short-term” commitment to “prioritize” cutting taxes
New reports show that Trump’s deep tax cuts haven’t just failed to deliver on any growth – they’re depleting funds for Medicare and Social Security even faster https://t.co/66innW4s8Ppic.twitter.com/A3Uh2J2Mwa
Set your hope on fire/action item
See that tweet above? Those are your beginning talking points. Now get on the phone, and let your righteous anger loose.
Grief and rage when I see this:
A U.S. Senator asked for a tour of an immigration detention facility in Texas. Then the police showed up. pic.twitter.com/hxITQImiBL
Southwest Key Programs has issued a statement saying the organization regrets turning away Senator @JeffMerkley who attempted to tour the facility in Brownsville on Sunday. https://t.co/eTfBOfaGLJ
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) June 7, 2018
Set your hope on fire/action item
“I’m also pressing for a simple one-sentence law that says it is the policy of the United States not to separate children from their parents,” Merkley said. (Southwest Key Programs regrets denying Sen. Merkley entry ) Your action item in one sentence.
Grief and rage when I see this:
Canada is slapping tariffs on $12.8 billion of US goods — here are the states that stand to lose the most https://t.co/dKzz83l0fJ
They’ll be getting bargain basement prices. I’m wonder if there’s an accessible registry of LLC’s that have been doing the buying on the foreclosures? And how many are Trump shell companies? https://t.co/E0mWOL9Jchhttps://t.co/E0mWOL9Jch
Set your hope on fire/action item
Given the botched and frankly, inhumane, response to the crisis in Puerto Rico, a foreclosure moratorium should be the minimal response. #CanceltheDebt is another ask, as is a repeal of the provisions of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the “Jones Act”) which place such a burden on Puerto Rico.
With the rampaging destruction being carried on by the Republicans, this diary could be never-ending. But while we’re all helping in some form or another to make the Blue Wave happen in November, I wanted to illustrate that hope isn’t a state of being; it’s a series of actions that we take today. Preparing for November is, sadly, not enough. We must be working the phones, educating our friends and neighbors, and committing to act now. While no one person can do all of the work, together we create the ripples which will lead to the wave.
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On February 10, 2007, United States Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) announced his candidacy for president of the United States. On a cold day in Springfield IL, near the statehouse that he and Abraham Lincoln both served in, he addressed the gathered crowd.
Barack Obama:
This campaign can’t only be about me. It must be about us – it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice – to push us forward when we’re doing right, and to let us know when we’re not. This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.
By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. […]
I’m in this race [not] just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.
I want to win that next battle – for justice and opportunity.
I want to win that next battle – for better schools, and better jobs, and health care for all.
I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America.
The Obama Foundation will be a living, working startup for citizenship — an ongoing project for us to shape, together, what it means to be a good citizen in the 21st century. We are based on the South Side of Chicago and will have projects all over the city, the country, and the world.
We want to hear from you. Send us your ideas, your hopes, your beliefs about what we can achieve together. This will be your Foundation just as much as it is ours, so share your voice at obama.org.
I don’t have anything new or insightful to say about the mass killings we’ve witnessed, but my feelings about them need a voice before I fall apart.
The one last week, the one at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Colorado Springs, hit particularly close to home because I live just a few miles from there. One of the murdered innocents was Ke’Arre Stewart, a 29-year-old Iraq war veteran who was shot when he stepped outside the clinic to get cell phone reception. Ke’Arre’s brother Leyonte Chandler said it was his sibling’s Army experience that prompted his final act of heroism. “I believe that’s his military instinct, you know: Leave no soldier behind, leave no civilian behind, just leave no one behind,” an emotional Chandler said. “So he ran back inside, trying to help out others. I don’t know where he was at, as far as how many more breaths he had, but he knew. And before his time ran out I guess that was his main priority … to help and save other lives.”
The audience included some of the justices of the Supreme Court but not the ones (Catholics Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) who won’t submit to lecturing by THIS pope in case he would dare to talk about things like corporate greed, climate change, the poors, and the death penalty. And he did!
I don’t agree with everything this pope says but I welcome his words that encourage people to join with those of us who care about people, justice, and our endangered planet.
