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Twenty Steps of Resistance

Writer's picture: Marvin T. BrownMarvin T. Brown

Even before its publication, the title of my book, Twenty Steps Toward a Climate of Justice, has taken on a new meaning. Trump’s policies against workers, against diversity, against women, against law enforcement, against the Earth, has turned the steps toward justice into steps of resistance.

 

I am a writer wondering what to write, I will not be deported, or fired, or expelled.  Around six years ago, I thought that talking about a “climate of justice” would be a good way to prompt us to say what needs to be said. I wanted to focus on our nation’s climate of injustice the European founders created in settling on Native lands and employing an enslaved work force for the sake of their prosperity.  

 

Much has been done to change this climate, but as the recent election reveals, the climate of injustice has not disappeared.  Far from it, its present appearance has cast a shadow over all the progress we have made.

 

I am reminded of a conversation with a visiting African student in the cafeteria at Nebraska Wesleyan in 1961.  He had just traveled through the South and shared his observations.  That was the same year that our campus chaplain traveled to Harrisburg, Miss to register voters, and told us of the dangers that Black people faced there.  I am reminded of my trip to Montgomery after the first march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and our stay in the Black community until the end of the second march from Selma, because they believed that white bodies would keep the KKK from terrorizing the community.

 

I have been thrown back 60 years to a world where segregation was accepted, and lynchings were permitted.  I also remember, however, that Kamala Harris said, with many others, that we will not go back.  She and her supporters made the call.  It’s our responsibility to figure out how to answer it.

 

Maybe if we read The Twenty Steps Toward a Climate of Justice also as Twenty Steps of Resistance, we can keep a focus on what we must protect as well as what we must promote.




 

 

 

 

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