Over the course of the last few years, as our ship of state shudders on dangerous and uncharted shoals, I can feel the waves of despair shake the confidence of so many fair and decent Americans. How can this be our country? Where is all that I knew, and trusted, and cherished?
Today, in the wake of yesterday’s events on Capitol Hill, I hear these fears pour forth once more. It is understandable and even appropriate. But as someone who has the perspective of a long life and whatever approximation of wisdom that comes with it, I remain unbowed and even optimistic in what I saw.
Yesterday a courageous fellow citizen stood up and told her story. Unlike with Anita Hill, at least half of the senators on the panel treated her with respect. That is progress. Unlike in the past, many of those senators were accomplished women who you could imagine someday being president. That is progress. A culture that in the not-so-distant past had no notion of “date rape” now does. And that is progress. Millions of men, as well as women, will not stand for it. And that is progress. Across the country, a great spirit of righteous political fury is brewing, and it is propelling more women to positions of leadership. And that is progress.
Time and time again, in the course of American history, solitary acts of courage have blossomed into movements for social justice. When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, any Civil Rights Act seemed a hopeless dream. But she and the brave men and women who supported and followed her action with actions of their own knew that the path to justice was not going to be quick or painless but that they were on the right side of history.
The early protesters of the Vietnam War were written off as communists and un-American. So too was Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the other early women suffragists who gathered in Seneca Falls. Labor leaders, children’s rights advocates, environmentalists, those who marched at Stonewall and Ferguson, those who have fought for immigrant rights and against religious hatred and now in the #MeToo movement, these are fights for justice that are far from over. But millions of Americans are aware and awake and motivated to action. This can, and should, start at the ballot box.
And to this pantheon of courageous Americans, we can now add the name of Christine Blasey Ford. Whatever the tides of history are in the short term I believe that too many of my fellow Americans understand what is right and what is just to not have her voice echo forth with clarity well into a better future.
Steady. #WhatUnitesUs
