At first, I felt it more as a loosening of tension I’d been holding in my body. The tautness had become so normal I didn’t even realize how much I’ve been bracing for the next assault for the past ten years. Ever since 2016 the hits have kept coming. Even after the initial jubilation following Biden’s win, first came “Stop the Steal,” then the January 6th insurrection, the MAGA rallies, the Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights, the Trump decision giving the president absolute immunity for official acts. And then, with the 2024 election and Trump’s return to office, the attacks seemed daily -- from the disastrous cabinet appointments to the purging of anyone who wasn’t a loyalist, to the rollback of renewable energy and the destruction of public lands, the dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, the decimation of public health, the cutbacks on SNAP, Medicaid, and ACA funding, the ICE gestapo and Operation Metro Surge, the invasion of Venezuela, the war on Iran, the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais hollowing out what was left of the Voting Rights Act. Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did, over and over again.
I truly feared we were witnessing the demise of even a semblance of a democracy and the installation of a long-term authoritarian regime simply through the Republican and Trump administration’s efforts to prevent the American people from having a voice. From the outset of his second term, the threat loomed that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, preventing another election from taking place. Even in the last few weeks, the Trump administration interference with the 2026 elections has been threatening the outcome of the midterms. So, it has taken a while for recent election results to sink in.
Perhaps because, much to my dismay, my own congressional district has remained red, the impact of the blue wave across the country had been diluted. Perhaps because I’ve been resisting for so long, I’ve not trusted enough to let down my guard and feel the joy. Yet, in a recent essay, Rebecca Solnit invoked Michelle Alexander’s suggestion that we are not the resistance, they are, holding back the mighty river of the public will. I realize now that I’d stopped believing. The way the people of Minnesota responded to the ICE invasion inspired me, gave me hope, and may even have prevented Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act. But I feared we were an island in a red sea.
Then yesterday, Scott Colom was declared the winner in Mississippi, the first African American to win a Senate seat from Mississippi since the Reconstruction, when the very first African American in the Senate, Hiram Rhodes Revels, was elected there in 1869. For a brief time after the Reconstruction Act of 1867, African Americans won election to southern state governments as well as to Congress, and laws were instituted prohibiting discrimination in public transportation and accommodation. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Compromise of 1877, certifying Rutherford B. Hayes as the next President on the condition that he would dismantle the Reconstruction, brought an end to all this.
The combination of immersing myself in the long legacy of racism in this country detailed in Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, and how it is stamped into the muscle memories of generations in this country as presented in Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands, coupled with the groundswell of support for the anti-Black, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman hatred in the MAGA supporters had left me bereft. I had become convinced that five hundred years later we weren’t that far from the origins of this country in genocide and slavery and that the racist and patriarchal ideologies on which this country was founded were still prevalent in the mindsets of the majority of Americans, that the 150 years since the Civil War was not that long ago and not long enough to change hearts and minds. I’d come to believe that Trump hadn’t stirred up this hatred, but rather had tapped into something long-standing in the fundamental American character that would endure despite efforts to instill a more just and equitable, in bell hooks’ words, “ethic of love.”
And then Scott Colom’s victory in Mississippi broke through that barrier of grief and dread in me and I started to see that yes, indeed, the waters were gushing. Voters came out by the thousands and millions to reject a politics of hate. The 2027 Senate will welcome its first Native American, first Muslim, and first openly gay members. Voters in Florida, Georgia, and Wisconsin elected their first Black governors. In Texas, voters chose a Latina to be their governor. In New Mexico, Deb Haaland, will become the first Native American woman governor. And in a local election, Sheila Lamb, a Native American woman and water protector, will become the mayor. The people voted in a new, younger, more progressive Congress. They voted for the people’s voices, for their immigrant neighbors, for their trans kids, for diversity, for equity, for inclusion of those who had been excluded for so long, for the earth, for the water, and in Mississippi – for Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and Fannie Lou Hamer. I’ve wondered if Nina Simone were still alive if she’d write a different, hopeful and celebratory version of “Mississippi Goddam,” because look what happened in Mississippi.
I know it’s important to stay vigilant. I’d taken too much for granted after Obama was elected, thinking the tide had changed for good. But for today, I’m letting the long exhale release the tension of a decade and taking in the moment of the river busting through the dam. As a hopeful Sam Cooke sang long ago, “It’s been a long time comin’, but I know, A change gon’ come, Oh yes, it will.” I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.
Sources
Cooke, Sam. “A Change Gon’ Come.” 1964.
hooks, bell, All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co., 2000.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. New York: Bold Type Books, 2016.
Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017.
Simone, Nina. “Mississippi Goddam.” 1964.
Solnit, Rebecca. The Dam Broke, the River Roared: More on That Magnificent Election.