water and the wave: on change, hope, voting, and elizabeth warren

When I was in the fifth grade, we had a mock election. We read about the main candidates in our Scholastic Magazine and then we submitted paper ballots. The class was very upset when the results turned out to be an exact tie between George W. Bush and John Kerry, because a single person in Ms. Anderson’s class of 25 voted Green Party.

That Green Party voter, of course, was me.

Not that I knew anything at ten about the political parties outside of what I heard on talk radio my dad absently listened to when he drove me home, or saw briefly on the news, but Scholastic Magazine described the Green Party as one that cared about being anti-war and taking care of the environment and gender equality, and so that seemed like a good choice to me at the time, because those things seemed like good things and I didn’t really understand taxes or what big government was supposed to mean in the Republican or Democratic Party descriptions.

When I was 14, after mock primaries in the 8th grade, I found that Barack Obama was a man I wanted to support. He was sharp and persuasive, and I really believed in his campaign of Hope and Change. I remember attending a rally on Johnson Field at the University of New Mexico. Four years later, I phone banked for him and happily voted for his second term.

By the next presidential election, however, college had made me tired and jaded and cynical. While I was often proud to see this man lead our country, when his speeches gave me comfort and hope for another world, I also had to learn that President of the United States is not just a figurehead but Commander in Chief and leader of a nation with roots in genocide, slavery, Christian extremism, White supremacy, and imperialism. Even now I am still heartbroken about his deportation policies and the drone strikes that led to pain and suffering in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; I’m very well aware that eight years of a Black man holding the highest office in this country often meant that the status quo of this nation was upheld and those most marginalized did not feel any material change in their lives.

In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected the Republican nominee for President, something in my heart broke that day and I gave up. I completely stopped paying attention to the Democrats and I gave in to despair. It didn’t matter to me whether Clinton or Sanders won; I knew both of them would lose to Trump. If I had learned that electoral politics was the about the status quo of this nation, then I knew that Trump’s nostalgic rhetoric for a fantasy America tapped into this nation’s id, and it would thrill America down to its very toes to find that its legacy of xenophobia, racism, genocide, misogyny, and military imperialism had in fact been the right path to a good America all along.

I did a lot of other things that year, like work on my student teaching and graduate school work. I tried to make my time in classrooms as inclusive and loving as possible. I spoke out when I had the chance against oppression in my daily life. I donated to organizations I felt could change community, like API Equality — Northern California, or Planned Parenthood, or local movements to protect immigrants and people of color. I tried to contribute to systemic change at every point I could outside of electoral politics.

But on Election Day, I crumpled, weighted with the sadness of a self-inflicted prophecy. Even though I had wanted to believe everyone else that logically, it would all work out, part of me was unsurprised by the results. All of me was horrified at the reality to come.

I truly wish I hadn’t accepted Trump’s win as fact. I wish I hadn’t been so arrogant to assume that I knew the inevitable. Because of that despair, I gave in to the very strategy Trump and fascists use to gain power. I let fear break my spirit and my connectedness to the people, land, and water of this planet.

The suffering we have witnessed these four years all across the globe has reminded me of samsara, what we call the endless cycle of suffering in Buddhism. Suffering has sparked the urgency of compassion in me, returned bodhicitta more deeply to my awareness, for bodhicitta is the compassion that moves us towards action and enlightenment when confronted with the suffering of the world.

So, while I perhaps have held onto the values I had as a child voting for the Green Party, becoming an adult has meant that I am learning how to hope again, the way I did when I was a child.

How to truly, honestly hope and have faith. For me, I think hope is the willingness to imagine and sketch out a future; I think faith is about trusting in the unknown, trusting in mystery. It is precisely because we have no idea what tomorrow will bring that we should trust in the future. Hoping and having faith are two skills I practice every day with young people in the classroom, who often seem to do it effortlessly. They’re so willing to believe that just because I was angry with them in one moment doesn’t mean I will be like that the next day. They’re willing to dream big dreams, and fight anyone who minimizes, invalidates, or dismisses those dreams.

And when they’re not hopeful, when they are despairing, it is absolutely my job to help them find that hope in themselves. It is my job to model faith. I have faith in you. I have faith that we’ll figure something out. And if worst comes to worst, I am so happy we tried so very hard to hope and have faith along the way. I am so proud of who you became, every time you chose hope and courage, every time you decided the good choice was the one worth making. Don’t regret this result. Turn around and look at the process.

We are both water and the wave. Meaning, as I’ve learned from my mentor Jeff Chang, that culture and history is shaped by both the singular moment and the swelling of movements. adrienne maree brown and emergent strategy call this the wavicle. Thich Nhat Hanh says we are both water and the wave.

So this year, in 2020, my intention is to be fearless. To let go of fear of disapproval, fear of not succeeding, fear that injustice may prevail. I hope this intention will be felt in my classroom, in my personal life, and in my communities and family.

There’s an urgency to this moment and in some ways, we don’t have time to be afraid. Not while fascism and disinformation are on the rise. Not when our house is on fire. Not when joy and freedom and our future hangs in the balance.

But from a personal standpoint I want to let go of fear exactly because joy and freedom are at stake, and I want to spend more of my time in the present moment, enjoying what and who is good around me. The less time I make for fear, the more I have for love and imagination. The more I can embody freedom in the present moment, and let that moment swell and crest into a movement for liberation.

One way I am practicing fearlessness and hope this year is that I am going to be vocal and express excitement for Elizabeth Warren, that I want her to win the Democratic primary, defeat Donald Trump, and become the 46th President of the United States. I am going to talk about her and her policies, I am going to do what I can to fight with her, for a big dream of an America that I may be happy to belong to.

Because I want to live in a country where the daughter of a janitor who was expected to marry safe and stay at home can have the opportunity to become a public school teacher, a law professor, a Senator and President of the United States.

I want to live in a country where the person who holds highest office truly understands the joy of teaching, understands that teaching is about wit and human compassion, like when she’d hold office hours for her dog at law school so students could take her dog out and soothe themselves in troubled times, who was so beloved by her law students that journalists couldn’t use quotes because they were too admiring and fawning about her.

I want to live in a country led by a woman who was willing to change her beliefs about the world when confronted with the truth through research, who was willing to get out of the ivory tower and duke it out with the likes of Joe Biden to protect the everyday American in 2005, who overcame anxiety to the point of vomiting to comfort the American public during the 2008 financial crisis on John Stewart’s Daily Show, who worked to build a federal agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure big companies did not take advantage of the everday consumer with predatory schemes.

I want to live in a country led by a woman unafraid to hold those who abuse their power and wealth to task, because she has done so for so much of her, from a Wells Fargo CEO to Betsy DeVos to the powerful professor who sexually harassed her when she started teaching at Harvard and even had the gall to ask her to eulogize him, not knowing she would be forthright about his harassment of her at his funeral. It means a lot to me that she was willing to challenge those within her party to do better and to do right by the people, exhausting Obama’s administration about their responsibility to the consumers during the financial crisis and those who had been scammed into taking on student loan debt.

I want to live in a country where policy is shaped by the people, which Warren has already demonstrated in her commitment to BlackWomxnFor, when she will hold a “People’s Policy Making Summit in the first 100 days of her administration that puts Black women, working people of color, disabled people, indigenous people and diverse community leaders and experts in the driver’s seat of the structural reforms she is will enact. People most impacted by systems of oppression know the solutions and should be central to crafting policy change.” She has also demonstrated this in the rigor of her 50+ policy plans she has already laid out, often praised by experts across all fields for the amount of consultation and outreach she has done to make sure researchers, policy experts, and those whose lives will be impacted by these plans are included. You can see this reflected in her plan for Protecting the Rights and Equality of People with Disabilities. You can see this in the depth of her LGBTQ Policy plan. You can see this in her willingness to take on an ask to consider a Blue New Deal at a town hall, and she then crafted the first policy of its kind for oceans sustainability, or her update to her farming plan after Black farmers told her it didn’t cover them.

I want to live in a country that taxes the wealthy to fund universal childcare for children ages 0–5, that puts 800billion dollars into K-12 schools, that forgives 95% of student loan debt and makes two- and four-year public college free. I want to live in a country with universal healthcare. That has at least eleven plans to tackle the climate crisis head-on and sees it as inextricably linked to racial justice. And so on. And so on. And so on.

I understand that perhaps this whole thing is rigged, that Elizabeth Warren is flawed, and I have my own tunnel vision to miss things. I understand that she is a cisgender white woman of a different generation. I completely understand if the harm in believing and perpetuating a family myth and white revisionist myth of having Native ancestry, and conflating tribal membership with genetics is a nonstarter for many folks. I think she will continue to make mistakes, and perhaps one day she will lose my trust too.

Or, perhaps, she will jump fully into the beauty of these plans, these dreams she’s offering, and we may see a better world on the other side.

Right now, I have faith that she will keep her promise of being accountable. I hope she continues to astound me with her talent, her stamina and commitment to people, and that she continues to change for the better. I want to believe that if we move together, perhaps the we will find those opportunities, the weak points in the armor of this rigged system, and push through.

And if she doesn’t win, then I will support whoever the Democratic nominee is, and keep hoping. I will hope that they are responsive to the needs to the people. I will hope for more and more people to run for public office all over the country. I will hope for more and more agitation and activism to hold institutions accountable.

And it is my deep and sincere wish that this year, you too do whatever strikes hope deep into your heart. Maybe you’re hoping and fighting for another candidate, or other people. Maybe you’re hoping we can do this without status quo politics, in the strengths of our communities.

But whatever you do, may you be unafraid. Dream big. Fight hard.

And if worst comes to worst, I am so happy we tried so very hard to hope and have faith along the way. I will be so proud of who we became, every time we chose hope and courage, every time we decided the good choice was the one worth making. Don’t base everything on the result. Turn around and look at the process.

We are both water and the wave.