The Beginnings of a Plan

Many Things, Not Just One - Part 2

This Field Note follows up on my most recent (April 19) suggesting that what our nation needs now is not one campaign plan of resistance but a thoughtful grassroots citizen-based strategy of many parts to counter-balance the vengeful “wrecking-ball” in Washington. Many readers responded with helpful suggestions. I am grateful to you all.

Many Things, Not Just one - Part 2

Twice in the past ten days I have been reminded by friends of something the great Joan Baez famously expressed some sixty years ago.

“Action,” she said, “is the antidote to despair.”

I feel the wisdom and the force of her words now, even more so than I did in my college days. I do remember feeling shock and a rising despair that morning in 1970, when I awoke in my dorm room to the grim news that four Kent State University students, each one of them about my age, had died by National Guard rifle fire while protesting the Vietnam War.

Very clearly I remember my feelings on that morning - anger, outrage, loss, and wondering what had happened to my country.

Here I will share words from a marvelous sermon this month from the Rev. Meagan Henry, who shepherds a flock in Brooklyn, NY. Her powerful, healing words are on point for me now (and maybe you also?) a mere hundred days into the rampaging wrecking-ball of the vengeful Trump administration. The regime that’s laying waste to so many alliances and programs that serve families, save lives, and have kept the world from blowing apart.

“Many of us find ourselves asking: What difference can I possibly make? In the face of such daunting challenges, does what I do really matter?

“Friends, I believe the answer is an unequivocal yes. Each of us matters, and what we do matters—especially in times that test our democratic values and our faith in humanity’s capacity for goodness.

“And so, I implore you now more than ever, do not give in to despair.

“Even though despair is seductive. It whispers in our ears that our efforts are futile, that the machinery of oppression is too powerful, that the arc of history might not bend toward justice after all. Despair tells us to retreat, to protect ourselves, to give up. It would be so easy…

“But make no mistake—despair serves authoritarianism well. Systems of oppression thrive when we believe ourselves powerless. Tyrants and their sycophants count on our surrender.”

We must not surrender, though everyday we see more clearly how the power of the federal government now seems arrayed against everyone’s best interests.

Next, I am grateful for all the replies I’ve received from my Field Notes post of two weeks ago, titled “What’s a misled Nation to do?” Hopeful comments and suggestions have come via email, calls, as well as responses on this newsletter site. I have been stopped for discussion on sidewalks and in the aisles of grocery stores, by good citizens yearning for a way to move past anger and to be constructive.

This has reminded me of all the good people in our good city and, I believe, in all our cities. People don’t like what they are witnessing with their own ears and eyeballs.

I’m still compiling, but so far the suggestions have ranged from small to large, including these which represent clusters of ideas…

• Send letters to Congress especially those elected from Middle Tennessee, to members on both sides of the political divide. Many sitting there in silence now seem much too squeamish and reluctant to talk back to the White House, fearing personal retribution.

• One reader eloquently insisted:

  “Always show up. Always say what you know. Call, write, or email every day. The elected officals work for you: they are YOUR public servants and are bound by the US Constitution to work within the framework of the law. Hold them accountable every minute of the day.”

• Direct engagement with Tennessee’s US senators Blackburn and Hagerty. Another subscriber wrote: “I never thought that I would be missing the Republicans of the past so much.”

• Organize neighborhood meetings to inform each other on the enormity of the potential damage to health, housing, foreign relations, and to America’s arts and culture.

• Attend rallies and demonstrations, and help to organize them if you are called upon.

• Write letters to Tennessee newspapers and on social media. Encourage them to state clearly their institutional opposition to what the wrecking-ball is doing.

• Another subscriber suggested: “We need to ‘take a stand’ with our family members, friends, church or other faith-based communities, refusing to be intimidated by ignorance and fear mongering.”

• Realize that any effective resistance and opposition will likely not come from the Democratic Party this time. With very few exceptions, the normal cohort of state and national Party activists seem to be silent, exhausted, or by knowing their numbers don’t have enough weight anymore.

• Talk with each other often. Stay in touch. Share this column with friends and family.

Bottom line: Say something. Do something. Show action, not despair. There is no time for that. And do not wait for the hamstrung Democratic Party to unveil the One Plan. This is bigger than that - much bigger than a normal election-year fight between two tired political parties.

Keep thinking how to spread the rising call for action, all across our civil society, both to beat down despair and push back on the looming darkness.

Superman is not coming to save us.

© 2025 Keel Hunt