on the capitol steps, and in my living room
I’m processing today.
A year ago, while hibernating through the pandemic’s winter spike in my grandma’s rural Wisconsin basement, I spent an entire day with my eyes glued to a television screen, realizing the mortality of American political sovereignty, and it’s implications.
As that day progressed, I would go on to see images of extended family members standing on the front steps of the capitol building, and even see the conflict reach my own home, as one family member almost assaulted another for disagreeing with their perspective on the riot. All this occurred while I watched my relatively homogenized, progressively-oriented peer group make bold, dehumanizing and condemning assessments of the insurrection, and its supporters.
In a few moments that day, I witnessed, internalized and struggled with the complexity of our civil strife; it became inextricably personal for me. As someone who has researched and immersed myself in historical civil conflict all over the world, and especially the United States, I reached a whole new level of despondency in our state of affairs. Not just because of what transpired that day, but also because of how we responded to it.
As has been the case since I initially set out to do it in early 2017, I’ve spent the last year continuing to work primarily in political depolarization and civic engagement through community building, but my resolve for the work has shifted. I’ve developed less of a tolerance for what I view as thoughtless and disingenuous perspectives; I’ve drawn a hard line between what I view as two prevailing mentalities for our path forward — 1) either we find our people, pick our sides, and get on with the impending violent conflict to determine our future society, or 2) we get over ourselves, build bridges and compromise towards some kind of serviceable collective.
I think there is too much of the prior parading about as the latter and vice versa. I may be jaded beyond my own recognition, but I think the majority of us find ourselves in the first camp, when push comes to shove. The advocacy and justice movements that want to tip power scales towards a new hierarchy as a way to right structural and historic wrongs, while signaling around inclusion, equity and sustainability to engage larger audiences. Alternatively, the unity and equality movements that feign at seeing beyond identity or just getting along, as thinly-veiled efforts to reinforce the status quo around issues like white supremacy and gender or economic inequality. They both stand to establish and/or reinforce a better outcome for “us”, while not ensuring the same for “them.”
I wish that looking back another year from this day, we could all say that we were honest about our intentions and resulting efforts, and sought to be in integrity with how they affect both the people we are organizing for and the ones we are seemingly organizing against. The visceral distrust that permeates nearly every aspect of our society right now, from the interpersonal to the institutional, is like an infestation of termites weakening the foundation of this house that we share — not to be a harbinger, but it is showing visible signs of instability and imminent collapse. The fact that we noticeably struggle to advocate for police reform without dehumanizing police officers, and likewise advocate for a post-racial society without acknowledging the racism that still defines the daily life of many people of color is indicative of what for me are different sides of a similar coin.
I’m still at a complete loss on how to reconcile with my family’s scattered discord throughout the political, civic and social landscape; in all honesty, aided by the pandemic, our relationships have only further eroded, yet found amiability through the resulting distance. I didn’t report my family members at the capitol to the FBI, and I didn’t call the police on my family member who almost resorted to violence, as a number of people recommended that I do last year. I just didn’t see how those pursuits of justice would result in any kind of positive outcome, rather I thought they could only perpetuate interpersonal harm and distrust. The clarity I do have to offer at this time is about the collective choices that we can make moving forward. Either we commit ourselves to fighting for what we want, we advocate, negotiate and compromise for what we can more readily have, or we negligently let this civil society fall apart on it’s own — for me the choice is pretty clear.
