An excerpt from an e-mail from Prairie this morning that she’s granted me permission to post:
I think my biggest fear now is that all of the momentum that was built before the election will vanish now. People will become apathetic. “What’s the use of trying–there isn’t anything I can do.” The post on your website from the guy saying we should support the president terrifies me.
If we don’t continue to protest with every breath, to fight with every weapon granted to us, if we decide it’s a lost cause and surrender, we will be the cause of the downfall of at least the country, if not the world. There is no way that a country so divided can continue in the manner in which our country is trying to function. The potential that was once possible for our country is vanishing before out eyes, and unless we fight with all our strength, it will disappear before most people even realize it’s gone, never to be retrieved, into an abyss so deep and so permanent that that wonderful potential will never be recovered.
To surrender, to blindly support someone just because he is the president, is the equivalent of saying we don’t care about the future. “Damn all of those who may come in the future. I’m going to offer support for policies I know are wrong, for policies I know are hurting people, just because I’m too afraid, too ignorant to stand up to authority.” We cannot allow this to happen, and yet I fear that we will.
People will go back to believing that their votes don’t count, that they are helpless to fight the oppression they see coming, that they have to support the president just because he’s the president. Will we allow ourselves to be led like sheep toward hatred and fear?
I won’t. I’ll go out fighting in whatever way I can.
“Rusty Nails” by Nine Inch Nails from the album Rusty Nails (1994, 1:04:04).