And I'm gonna send the sun your way
Wake you up with a dawn full of golden rays
I want you around
Don't let the darkness get you down-Nikki Lane “Send The Sun”
I bit my cheek on Thursday. It still hurts. I’ve only been able to eat with the right side of my mouth for the last couple of day. It seems to be healing but you never know. I just hope it heals before Christmas. My end of the semester cold decided to get a head start and started inflicting itself on me yesterday. While not in full swing yet, I can feel the germs marshaling their forces like Patton after the Battle of the Bulge. Also, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won the recent UK elections on Thursday, keeping Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party out of power for at least another four years. Shit sucks.
Shit sucks, but that’s just the nature of the world. It sucks sometimes. The fight we’re in, a fight for justice, for equality of outcome, for not having to sacrifice for your future just to make ends meet, is a fight that can seem unwinnable. At times the odds can seem overwhelming, as if the only options that exists require giving in. Like your goals, goals that would make the world a better place, are an impossibility. Giving up seems like the best and only option. And yet.
And yet.
And yet. The Club From Nowhere, a group who raised money every week in increasingly difficult situations just to make sure that the Montgomery Bus Boycott didn’t fail, never gave up. The socialists, anarchists, and working-class people fighting for the eight-hour work day didn’t give up, even in the face of violent state repression, or the death of their comrades. John Brown, Jeremiah G. Anderson, Stewart Taylor, Oliver Brown, Dauphin Thompson, and the other raiders at Harper’s Ferry did not give up in the face of the evils of slavery and certain death.
Trump’s election galvanized the left in the United States. Post-election wins in places like Chicago, NYC, and elsewhere bolstered it. Corbyn’s loss shouldn’t cripple it. The fight for justice remains long. There will be losses, and horrible ones at that. Creating a world more beautiful takes time. This fight isn’t about me, my bit-up cheek and my oncoming cold. It’s about fashioning a world for ourselves and future generations where no one has to decide whether to buy insulin or food. A world where people don’t die because their parents didn’t have money. A world for the many not the few.
So just remember. My cheek already feels better and getting some sleep and eating a few clementines will going tidy this cold right up. The UK is not the US. We call it soccer for chrissakes. As inviting as it may seem to sit in the dark, get drunk and listen to Neutral Milk Hotel, the Earth, and the people on it need saving. Dust that dirt off your shoulders, turn up the Run The Jewels and remember that all is not lost.