Stay Safe and Spread Compassion in Your Community

Today I struggle at making sense of the armed insurgences. The incident on January 6, 2021 was

not an isolated incident, was not the first right wing action against the federal or local governments. State capitols around the country saw similar armed demonstrations for months before this. These armed demonstrations seemed to be warm ups in a national effort to take control of the country.  All you had to do was listen and read the news to know something was brewing. Here are just some of the hints I found.

As far back as April 2020 an estimated 2,500 people have rallied in Olympia in response to Governor Jay Inslee’s stay-at-home order to limit the spread of coronavirus, defying a ban on gatherings of 50 or more people. These demonstrations continued for months. Tyler Miller, of Liberty At All Hazards and Matt Marshall of the Washington Three Precent both rightwing groups came up the plan called "Legislative Lockdown" and involved people camping outside of the state legislative building in hopes breaking inside.

In December it was reported that the demonstrations in Olympia had become meaner. Left wing opposition forces joined the rightwing demonstrations and taunts between opposing sides turned violent. The number of weapons multiplied. Firearms brought to the Capitol for months which seemed like a symbolic jester were now being pointed and fired to settle scores between political opponents. Saturday December 12^th extremists from both ends of the political spectrum clashed three times in Olympia, at least one person was wounded.

In May 2020 armed protesters dubbed the "American Patriot Rally” went inside Michigan’s state capitol building, tried to enter the floor of the chamber, but were blocked by state police and sergeants-at-arms. Several Michigan legislators wore bulletproof vests. These rallies continued for months culminating in the attempted kidnapping of the Governor.

Death threats by Trump supporters started becoming routine. Starting as far back as May 2020 in Kentucky where rightwing protesters demonstrated against the state’s measures to fight the coronavirus hung an effigy of Governor Andy Beshear from a tree. Protesters at a rally in Salem burned Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) in effigy. During the election process both Democratic and Republican Attorney Generals received death threats because of election results.

In Sacramento demonstrations by Trump supporters have gone on for more than two months prior to January 6^th 2021. Repeated clashes came down between far-right groups and counter-protesters that led to violence in the streets of Sacramento. The brawls and beatings that occurred at these weekly protests were instigated by far-right groups like the Proud Boys.

During the certification of states electoral votes Staffers at the Utah state Capitol were ordered to evacuate the building. In Georgia, police escorted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to safety as militia members gathered outside the Capitol building in Atlanta.

In Olympia, things heated up when the perimeter of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) mansion was breached by a large group of pro-Trump protesters. Inslee was home at the time, the governor and his wife were moved to a safe location.

In Kansas, state police monitored a group of protesters who entered the statehouse in Topeka. The state Highway Patrol said they had no plans to increase security, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. The protesters later dispersed without incident.

Two Seattle city police officers were at the January 6^th 2021 insurgence on the capitol and have been put on administrative leave. An investigation was opened to look into what their role in the violent mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters that stormed the nation’s Capital. For me this brought these demonstrations close to home.

The story goes on and on from Congress women Lauren Opal Boebert to armed protesters in Seaside Oregon. This will not go away any time soon. This intolerant climate intensifies a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our communities, block open debate and tolerance of differences in favor of ideological conformity.

For me it’s important that we resist this hate and join a movement for change with nonviolent actions. We need to reach out to our neighbors no matter what their political believes. In a letter published in Harper’s Magazine signed by 153 prominent artists and intellectuals declared that a new set of attitudes and political commitments have been wedged in our tradition of open tolerance and open debate two important democratic standards. We all need to fight against continuing this “Intolerant climate.”

In the near future our individual actions will set the stage for healing our communities. Maybe we should reach out to our friends, our neighbors and our community to listen and start dialog to find common ground. Publicly show your compassion, caring by reaching out a helping hand to all who need it. And stay safe during these layers of hard times.

New Years Reflections On Hope

 Hope sustains us through hard times. With that thought I didn’t think I could stop my New Year’sreflections with just the past year. I for one am reflecting on the last four years that have been challenging to find “Hope,” day to day.  As I reflected, I wondered what the definition of Hope, was. So, I looked it up in Wikipedia. It says that hope is an optimistic attitude of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.

I couldn’t stop my research there. I continued with a google search of hope which brought up all kinds of religious and faith references. That started me thinking what is the difference between hope and faith. What I found was that the difference between hope and faith seems to be based on one’s acceptance of the outcome. Faith is accepting the outcome as the best outcome even if it’s not the outcome you wanted; Hope is an action predicated on uncertainty with optimistic thoughts on the outcome. Our collective action/resistance of the last four years prepared us to act for the changes that took place in 2020 bringing us into a more hopeful 2021.

Hope comes in many different forms. As many of you know I went off to Bangkok to study Human Rights in 2017. When I think about the hope the people I met from all over the world who are actively struggling daily for human rights, I feel blessed. Because of this I have Hope that there are people everywhere making this world a better place. 

I have struggled with hope most of my life. When I started to reflect on when hope started to blossom for me.  Spirit of Hope from Years Past visited me and led me to 38 years ago when I became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is when I started seeing my life in terms of hope. I don’t want to tell you a hard luck story of the past, I want to build hope with all of you. Hope for a better life every day, and hope for a better world for all people.

Thinking about my personal stories when I acted on optimistic thoughts with uncertainty, I’m sure I could only have done this with hope by myside. Here are the stories I reflected on.  I opened my house to foster kids, teenage girls.  Shortly after each girl was placed in my home, I started knitting a Christmas stocking for them with their name on it.  I didn’t realize at the time but that act of knitting gave hope to the girl that just arrived and to everyone in the family that this girl would be with us and a part of our family when the Christmas holiday came. Today everyone in my family has a stocking knitting for them.

Before I left for the Peace Corps I was nervous.  But I was consoled by my sister and my daughter when they each wrote letters to me as goodbye presents.  My sister, Zoe, gave me so much hope in her goodbye letter and my daughter, Lani, confirmed this in her writing, “I am so proud of you! You have grown and changed so much during my life time and I am very lucky to have you for my mother.”  Getting a vote of confidence like this from my daughter means the world to me.  In Mali every time I read these it gave me hope in the work I was doing and I got teary eyed.

In Mali my friend Koro always was hopeful.  Her and her husband live in a space that is 10X15 divided into two rooms, they have not running water, no electricity, and they struggled and work hard for their daily needs and have very few daily wants.  Koro always said something uplifting to me, encouraging me to continue the work her and I set out to do, as she did her laundry by hand in a plastic tub just outside her front door.  Koro always greeted her neighbors making jokes and laughed.  She taught me hope has nothing to do with money, she taught me hope is about community, hope is about caring and when you care about others that caring comes back to you and fills you with hope.

One day three years ago I was in the check-out line at Costco there was a Muslim woman in front of me, she had forgotten her money and credit card. She walked away from what she wanted to buy with her head down as Costco employees started rolling her cart away to put the food back. The woman behind me asked the cashier how much was the bill and then pulled out her credit card offering to pay for it.  This woman ran after the woman walking away, caught up with her and after a short conversation they hugged then started walking back. The cashier stopped the person rolling the cart away.  I took a deep breath and said out loud “I am going to start crying.”  I gave the women who was paying a big hug and told the other woman to have a good day. I managed to held back tears until I got outside and put on my sun glasses, I cried all the way to my car and then some.  I wasn’t sad I was so full of hope in that moment. 

It’s stories like these that make me think we can get over the damage of the last four years by spreading Hope. We just need to ask ourselves where we get hope and how can we spread that hope to our community and the world.  Hope makes such a big difference in changing things for the better. 2021 for me has an abundance of hope for the future. If we can gather all the ways we have found hope in the last four years we can find the power to change years to come. HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL.

PS Thank you to a friend who asked me about this blog and wondered when the next installment would be posted, this was the inspiration for this entry.