"The problem is that seven years ago, the Democratic National Committee decided that Hillary Clinton would be our next presidential candidate," said the chair of the Coahoma County (Mississippi) Democratic Party.
The time was a little after 8:00 pm CST on election night 2016. The polls in the Eastern Time Zone had been closed for more than an hour, and, already, television networks were predicting that Donald Trump would ascend to the US presidency.
Two days earlier, on the Sunday before the election, CBS News'
60 Minutes had aired a segment called "The National Mood," which featured a focus group of 25 persons, carefully selected to represent the full scope of America's political continuum.
CBS News consultant Frank Luntz asked the participants, "How many of you are voting
for your candidate?" Three people raised their hands. "How many of you are voting
against a candidate?" The other 22 raised their hands.
In less than 30 seconds, this group had defined the mood of the American electorate, most of whom would vote
not
for but
against the major parties' nominees.
Divisiveness reigned. Democrats were divided between Clinton's elitists and Bernie Sanders' progressives. Republicans were divided between a growing number of radical conservatives and a waning number of moderates.
The divisiveness was fueled by Clinton's inability to relate to the traditional Democratic base and by Trump's violent rhetoric against anybody who was not white and Christian ... and for him.
And while conservatives reveled in Trump's victory, a massive number of people-oriented voters found themselves waking up to a nightmare, determined to ... Well, to do something!
Ironically, I was four days away from having my eyes opened to historical horrors and atrocities related to slavery, segregation, and white supremacy, which are the hallmark precursors of ethnic and political divisiveness in today's America.
These lessons would come via the
Living Legacy Project (LLP), an organization based in the Unitarian Universalist church.
More specifically, these lessons would come via a
Living Legacy Pilgrimage, an historical tour, hosted by LLP, to locations of significance in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
That was my reason for being in Mississippi on election night, as yet unaware of just how much the next few days -- on that pilgrimage -- would redirect my life.
From November 12 to 19, we pilgrims -- 35 of us -- rode a bus from Memphis, Tennessee, through Mississippi and Alabama.
We visited 13 sites of extreme brutality against blacks or places where, in spite of violence and the threat of violence, major successes toward integration and freedom were attained. We heard African Americans tell their stories in ways that white American education ignores or "white-washes."
Yet, as our tour group delved into this dark period of American history, much of our conversation was about the darkness that would soon move into the White House, a darkness emblazoned with the newly elected president's discriminatory plans for Mexicans and Muslims, his disrespect for women, his advocacy for violence against anyone who spoke against him.
While Trump promised to "Make America great again," we saw that America had never been great for Africans kidnapped from their tribal lands and enslaved to work in the fields and factories of privileged white Americans.
While white supremacists claimed that America belonged to them (and not to the indigenous people who were here first), we saw how Jim Crow laws of the 1800s led to beatings and lynchings of thousands of blacks in the early 1900s and to ongoing racial profiling and minority marginalization that still exists today.
Clearly, somewhere along the decades from the 1770s to now, America had lost -- or never actually lived up to -- the "self-evident" truths "that all Men (and Women) are created equal" and the concept that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" really applies all people, regardless of skin color.
There, I learned about a group called
Voters Not Politicians and their nonpartisan, citizen-based election reform effort to end gerrymandering in Michigan by amending the state constitution. The success of that campaign, a pilgrimage of sorts, was the subject of my
previous blog.
But I'm back to blogging now, and for
the next several weeks, I'm going to post the highlights of the Living Legacy Pilgrimage, drawing parallels between then and now -- just as our group of LLP pilgrims did.
The similarities are too many. The atrocities and injustices of the previous centuries and decades are in our face, politically and socially, again today.
Fortunately, a growing number of people are awakening to and rising up against these injustices inflicted by an oligarchic minority on vast segments of our human population.
It is my hope and desire that, through the upcoming blogs about the Living Legacy Pilgrimage, you will join the growing number of concerned and caring citizens who realize that we, today, are the creators of our modern living legacy.
By linking historical knowledge with political participation, we can change the rules of an unjust game. And, as we learned in Michigan, by ending gerrymandering, we can pull the geopolitical rug out from under incumbents whose votes prolong white supremacy and racial injustice.
What is a pilgrimage?
"A pilgrimage is a ritual journey with a hallowed purpose. Every step along the way has meaning. A pilgrimage is not a vacation; it is a transformational journey during which significant change takes place. New insights are given. Deeper understanding is attained. New and old places in the heart are visited. Blessings are received and healing takes place. On return from the pilgrimage, life is seen with different eyes. Nothing will ever be quite the same again.
--from "Behold Your Life" by Macrina Wiederkeh
Next blog: Living Legacy Pilgrimage
