Many people are quoting Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And many people believe that means that eventually things are going to get better. But you know that’s bullshit. There is no “moral universe.” And we don’t know what it tends toward, if anything. What we do know is that our constitutional structure is fragile, and the election of a succession of the wrong kind of people could bring the whole structure down. It doesn’t help to pretend that a rising tide lifts all the boats. It may lift boats, but at the next tide, it drops them back down again.
What are we to do? We don’t know the future, and a study of the past doesn’t really make us safe. This is what we must do: We must continue to fight hard, whether or not we think it is going to do any good. Especially if we don’t think it is going to do any good. There’s nothing else. We can’t give up now. There have been many times when people fought because that was the only thing that wasn’t cowardly or that wasn’t indifference. We can’t be cowards or lazy. We have fought because that was all we had.
Years from now when our children, who are the future, ask us, “What did you do when he became president?” we have to be able to say, I fought back. I gave money. I supported Planned Parenthood and Southern Poverty Law Center. I joined ACT-UP. I marched. I marched. I never stopped marching. I carried signs. And I chanted. And I wrote. And I sang.
C and I were at the rally on Sunday at Faneuil Hall, and we will be at the Women’s March on Saturday, and we will not stop. This is the moment, folks, that Camus was speaking of, when Sisyphus steps off down the hill again. This is our moment.