Friends,
When historians look back on this dark time, I don’t think they’ll see the end of what we value in America. More likely, they’ll see the beginning.
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of taking something or someone for granted until you’re in danger of losing them. It’s only then that you realize how important they are.
I think something similar is happening in America, and what we’re realizing is how important are some values we’ve long taken for granted.
Many people tell me they hadn’t really appreciated democracy until the last nine and a half horrible months. Or the rule of law. Or due process.
Many hadn’t fully understood the meaning of tyranny and the critical importance of standing up against it.
People who never paid much attention to America’s widening inequalities of income and wealth are now seeing its devastating effects — and understanding why it’s crucial to foster a fairer system.
The last nine and a half months have been frightening — but they have also opened our eyes.
To view what occurred Tuesday only as as a reaction against Trump, or as a demand for “affordability,” misses this essential reality.
What occurred Tuesday is, I hope, the beginning of America’s reassertion of its founding ideals — which for too long we had taken for granted.
We’ve come to this new beginning because of the fight many of us have waged over the last nine and a half months: In No Kings Day demonstrations. At Republican town halls. In letters, postcards, phone calls. In knocking on doors to get out the vote. In our incessant, continuing, uncompromising resistance.
It’s our victory. Our movement. Our power.
Zohran Mamdani began his acceptance speech Tuesday night by noting that “For as long as we can remember … working people … have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. …. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.”
“While we cast our ballots alone,” he continued, “we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. … we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.”
These sentiments are spreading far beyond New York.
We are winning because we never stopped fighting. We’re winning because we haven’t allowed Trump and his sycophants to force us into hopelessness. We’re winning because politics is something we now do.
It’s far too early to declare victory. We can be sure that worse is to come from Trump and his lapdogs.
But Americans are becoming aware of what we’re losing. And we are starting to demand it back.
That’s Tuesday’s real victory.
This post has been syndicated from Robert Reich, where it was published under this address.