As we move through the longest nights of the year, I've been thinking about us over 60 folks. While recognizing that some of us are wrestling with ill health, and a few of us still shoulder debt--we are free. We progressives have a shared community: we have our ethics, our well-formed and long-tested values. What just happened to our country won't really happen to us--we made it to our 'golden years.' We owned our own bodies, we swam in clean streams and breathed almost clean air.
Our crops were gathered and our groceries processed by illegal immigrants--who we can now stand up for because we've nothing to lose. We can do the same for those young women coming behind us; we can guard and support them with impunity. We can insist on gun safety while we keep 'loving our neighbors.' We can continue to speak our minds, while also supporting journalists who tell the truth. It goes on & on, what all we can do. We can give up on a lot, we just can't give up on one another, or on what we believe.
That's what I'm feeling so strongly--more than the anger and the grief: The over 60 "us" in the U.S. Linked arms, friends, facing 2025.