It feels to me today that I have been in a storm all of my life. Never a period of peace, always a struggle for justice. Never a moment where we could rest in confidence that all will be well.
When I read Leon Liwtack's great book "Been in the Storm So Long" years back I picked up some humility because I could measure my own experience, tough as it is, against that of African Americans, who have a much tougher time of most everything. But I instantly identified with the title of the book and much that I read there. And I think that there are a few connections between that book and today. One is that had the Confederacy been fully defeated and the Confederacy's leadership and the south's planter aristocracy been treated as the traitors that they were, and had Reconstruction succeeded and been extended, we would not be debating states' rights, gun control, reproductive justice, structurally-based racism, and labor rights today. Those questions either would have been settled long ago or we would be approaching them in a different context. The Jackson Women's Health Organization would be doing its good work without interference.
I don't think that I am mistaken in believing that the loudest voices celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on abortions and guns this week are celebrating the rise of a New Confederacy.
Every storm ends and there are rainbows. I heard it said two weeks ago that, yes, the world is broken, but what is broken can be mended---not by time, but by intentionality. The world needs our light in this storm.
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