Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Pick up any US liberal newspaper today and there are reams of columns speculating on the fate of our country. What will happen and how quickly to our country with Trump as president and a cabinet of billionaires as they destroy an already shredded social safety net? As for foreign policy: what will be the fate of Ukraine with US/NATO determined to weaken Russia, but Trump ready to end war with Russia. And the Middle East: it’s a speculative gamble as to the fate of Syria with the new government(s) – HTS, formerly terrorists, and lots of others who have joined them to rule. Turkey is intent on controlling the fate of the Kurds in northeast Syria; and Israel is adding to settlements in the Golan Heights and already expanding farther into Syria and Lebanon.
You will find very little, though, about the climate crisis or the fact that we are in uncharted territory with the release of carbon dioxide from the arctic tundra. No longer a “carbon sink,” the arctic tundra shifts now to be a source of carbon dioxide thus auguring in a future of accelerated warming temperatures. The parallel catastrophe to the growing likelihood of nuclear bombs being used, has been relegated to back page news. Climate scientists can barely find an audience for their despairing pleas.
On Sunday January 18, 2025, from 12:15 to 3pm in the Second Congregational Church, an event in Franklin Country will lift us above this downward spiraling existential reality. It is appropriately called Our Projects for 2025: Envisioning the World We Want. Their efforts will bring together dozens of organizations, each with a singular mission but all epitomized as doing social and environmental good. The sponsors include Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, Western MA CODEPINK, the Interfaith Council, Amherst Young Feminist Party and more than twenty-five other participating cosponsors. This coalition group aims to provide an alternative vision by creating a public conversation with community organizations ranging from peace and justice, reproductive rights, creative education and housing initiatives, to free food for those who need it, justice for the imprisoned and for civil and immigrant rights, as well as for climate action.
The program includes speakers; singalong music, with songs from local musicians; space to share information and meet with those who are dedicated to particular organization missions; and a simple lunch provided by those organizing the event.
The local event replicates the Peoples’ March (formerly Women’s March) in Washington DC and hundreds of others across the country held on the same day – each challenging the necropolitics of our times. They aim to make the weekend of January 17-20 a weekend of Help Not Hate, as a way to honor Martin Luther King and show the politics of democracy, resistance to inequality and intolerance are ways to strengthen, not divide, our local communities.
What is striking about these gatherings is the organizers. It is primarily women from diverse interests working at the community level to build a cohesive movement from the bottom up across the country. They stand in contrast to the nearly 100 percent men at the top in our country that gain their cohesion from hostility.
“March,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024
Equally striking is the style of women at the community level and men at the top. The women’s groups and other like-minded groups across the country have more firmly than ever resolved to organize in mass resistance to the anti-humanist, anti-feminist, anti-democratic in-your-face politics here in the US. And that is why – no matter the obstacles we face, we have no time for despair.
Neither political party has shown any moral authority on Israel. A Senate majority recently voted to approve $61 million in mortar rounds to Israel with only 19 democratic and 1 independent senator voting against the measure. Bernie Sanders has finally called out the ruling class of American for what it is – an oligarchy, a government of a few with influence because of money, politics, and corporate and military power. But it did not start with Trump – it was with us before Trump and is not only a Republican phenomenon.
If we are to have a future, and not crumble like the Roman Empire over time, the people must lead with their moral vision of a government uncorrupted by corporate influence and money with a deep and meaningful commitment to being the party of the people. Most of the public do not feel they participate meaningfully in the political system. “A meaningful democracy would give the public the lead role forming those decisions…reflecting everyone’s active participation and deliberation.”
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