Good News!

by Frieda Gardner, WAMM

Good news always surrounds us, though at times it seems invisible. As I write, three dismal events are ongoing: the Bush "inaugurauction," John Ashcroft's weird performance as a civil-rights saint, and some commission's meeting, designed to put a happy face on the stolen election of 2000.

Non-events are disheartening as well. Clinton has left Leonard Peltier unpardoned. Our liberal senators, Wellstone and Dayton, have cautiously refrained from walking out with the Black Caucus in protest of Florida's electoral votes. Al Gore has not renounced his support of capital punishment or a missile "defense" system. And the acerbic voice of candidate Nader is nowhere to be heard.

During such rough times, and in the dead of winter, it is worth sitting down--preferably with political friends and over food--to bring the good news back to the light.

Remember what we do in an average month, whether or not we get paid for our meetings, demonstrations, mailings, phone calls, planning and dreaming--all in the midst of family life, romance, snow shoveling, meditating. Of course it is never enough. And of course we cannot know what enough is.

Bring your s/heroes into the room, or turn to those sitting next to you. The ones who founded and sustain WAMM. Those young people whose first demonstration started over Highway 55 and continued in Seattle and downtown Minneapolis. The person who said, "I can only work for Mumia this year," and did. The woman who has steadily been there from her days in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom through last week's protest against the Iraq sanctions. The organizers of the Welfare Rights Committee.

In the face of powerful, pervasive, restlessly energetic capitalism, in a country where only nine percent of the population believe there is such a thing as "too much wealth," think about the strength and imagination it takes to be in it for the long haul, especially if you are poor, and/or African American, and/or Hispanic American, and/ or, and/or . . . Before you leave the room, congratulate yourself.

Look at all the newsletters and solicitations that clog your mail. Run down a mental list of all the small organizations--local, national, global--that work for peace and justice, that resist and reinvent. These groups don't make the morning paper, until, of course, after years, they win the Nobel Peace Prize, or a grant from MacArthur or McKnight.

Bring out your art: the lines, images, scenes, and notes, as important as air and water. (Today I gather Grace Paley, who speaks of "inventing the present," June Jordan, Goya, Yehuda Amichai, the Israeli poet of "Wildpeace," and the Southside Family School's social-justice musical comedies. And I recall Gramsci's motto: "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.")

Think of yourself as belonging to the necessary, hope-inducing good news of the long winter.