Sit Down
by DHinMI
Thu Nov 04, 2004 at 12:33:11 PM PDT
There were a total of five other people in the salon while I was there. I didn't hear anything said by two of them. Of the other three, each talked about leaving the country. I live in the Detroit area, so it's not uncommon for people to glibly talk about moving to Canada. While writing about the Canadian supreme court decision in 2003 to legalize gay marriage, Hendrick Hertzberg described Canada as "the kind of country that makes you proud to be a North American." As the grandchild of four Canadian-born immigrants to the U.S. who's spent plenty of time there, I can attest that he's right in lauding Canada, and I can especially understand why a lot of gay couples are seriously considering leaving Michigan for Canada. But until yesterday, I hadn't noticed the despair in the voices of straight people talking about leaving for Canada. My whole life I've heard about people seeking liberty and opportunities and freedom from oppression immigrating to the United States. Now I'm hearing people in search of liberty, opportunity and freedom from oppression talking about emigrating from the United States.
To anyone entertaining those thoughts, I say sit down. Sitting down and refusing to budge is one of our nation's greatest legacies. The modern labor movement achieved its power in the 1930's through the use of sit-down strikes, and as late as 1989 the United Mine Workers were still successfully using a sit-down strike against Pittston Coal. Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat and the sit-ins conducted by black students in the South inspired civil rights workers and drew attention to the indignities and injustices of Jim Crow. Throughout our history, the obstinate refusal to give ground where they believed justice was on their side has empowered people to bring about important changes that have made our country a better place to live, enjoy liberty, and pursue happiness.
We're at one of those junctures in our history where people need to figuratively sit down. We can not flee. We can't leave the work of building and strengthening a progressive majority to hold of Bush and the rightwing to someone else. Before we start to tell people that Bush does not have a mandate, we ourselves must internalize that fact. We must remember that this election was, once again, excruciatingly close. For the first time in nearly 200 years, the United States was attacked on the North American continent, and the presiding President squandered 80% approval ratings for his initial response to that attack and had to wait until the morning after the election to find out that the most votes ever cast against an incumbent President were, barely, not enough to drive him from the White House. We must not forget that the momentous meaning of Bush's victory could be great but that the margin was modest. We must remember that even though a narrow majority of voters chose Bush over Kerry, it does not follow that a majority want the kind of nation and government that Bush and his minions surely hope to create. Then, we must stand firm and hold our ground.
Please, no more talk about leaving for Canada. No more searching around for European-born grandparents so you can get an EU passport; leave the dual-citizenship shenanigans to washed-up athletes who can't make the US Olympic team and tax-dodgers hiding out from the IRS. No more talk about giving up on your country, your state, your local community, your party, or on politics. No more thoughts that might lead you to allow an electoral defeat to defeat you.
How you chose to respond to this defeat will not just affect you, what you chose to do will affects us all. Regardless of what Rove and the big-media spinmeisters may say, we're not the party of me, we're the party of us. When we are at our best, we are the party that exemplifies unity and solidarity. And if you leave the country or your community or politics, that's a loss for us--and not just those of us who voted for Kerry instead of Bush, but for all Americans.
Feel glum if you need to; I sure do. But don't wander away. Hold your ground. And don't stop fighting back. We all need you.
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