Goodbye, 2023. Part of me hates to see you go, while another part of me is giddy to leave you behind.
Hello 2024!
Whether we embrace it or not, the clock keeps ticking— goodbye, hello, goodbye.
Welcome to the the worst of times—a new and escalating cold war with China, a hot and destructive proxy war in Europe, and now a preannounced genocide by Israel being executed against the Palestinian people in Gaza. On top of this, racialized police violence rages unchecked, environmental collapse is on full display, fragile and often anemic democratic institutions are on life support, religious authoritarianism is on the rise, women’s bodily integrity is under sustained assault. The overlapping crises threaten to overwhelm us—it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Welcome, as well, to the best of times—26 million people took to the streets in 2020 in response to the police murder of George Floyd, the largest public outpouring for racial justice in history; women across a wide political spectrum have refused to accept a medieval definition of their rights; labor has won historic, game-changing victories from the Writers Guild of America to Amazon and Starbucks workers to the United Auto Workers; and broad forces are on the march world-wide to resist plunder and extraction, and to preserve life on earth.
I wake up each day and glance at the poet Mary Oliver’s hopeful words taped to the wall, capturing something of this prevailing paradox: “Just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” YES! It’s the end of the world as we know it, (and I feel fine).
Charles Dickens would recognize our predicament at once: the winter of despair and the spring of hope; an age of foolishness and an age of wisdom; Darkness in mortal combat with Light. But life is never one thing in isolation from every other thing—yes, there’s exploitation, but there is also resistance; progress, yes, and also backlash. If we freeze our focus, we will sink into despair and miss the dynamic, noisy, frenetic magnificence of life as it’s actually happening—the world that we encounter every day. Where does one thing end and another thing begin? Where are we looking, and what are we looking for?
Contradiction, says Viet Thanh Nguyen, is the “perpetual body odor of humanity!”
You may not be interested in politics right now but, as Rousseau noted, politics is interested in you. Contradiction. Think reproductive freedom—politics—climate sanity, war and peace, health care and education and housing as human rights—politics, politics, politics. Resolve this year to be political in this sense: pay attention, get involved, participate, act on what the known demands.
Keep rising!!
Bill Ayers 