Notations, January 20, 2025
Frontlash
Ain’t nobody going to steal my joy: https://open.spotify.com/track/2u1P6Ie12yWXlrNqzKbRYw?si=f249fcb44e9c4d1f
It’s not true that we can’t be both hopeful and heartbroken — the most hopeful people can also be in despair. Hope is a discipline.
Our entire life is a wild experiment full of unpredictable outcomes.
Bill McKibben — big movements; wedges and leverage, fearful hard time. Something in America has come to an end, arc stretching back to FDR has come to an end. Might be a cup we wish we could have passed. Now we need to drink from that cup with grace and courage as best as we can.
Charlie Jane Anders — throw parties for friends who are scared and alone. Play, en-joy, there’s been a systemic attempt to dismantle art. Create own alternative journalism to share art and teach and learn. Build new systems. So important to be simple minded. You win because your movement is more attractive and more fun.
Akaya Windwood — Be very kind, very nice. Cuddle, hold each other. Hug more. Hold backs. I got you. Let’s feel each other’s care and love.
Liz Ogbu — Hope is a discipline. Having fun is a discipline. Healing and communing is a discipline. These are not throwaway things. Dreaming is a discipline. Every time we plant a seed, something is on the way. You can plant the seed, do the little act. Take a moment. Little acts, and tending to them, will bring the lush garden of the future. Each seed planted is a prayer.
Anand Giridharadas — 3 Final Thoughts: Be more radically honest, beyond convenience. We’ve lost our grip on America and it doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve allowed ourselves to be dismissed as UnAmerican, we have allowed a bunch of billionaires to claim the center of Americanness. We have to fight for that territory back instead of allowing ourselves to be on the edge. How do you act and show action? We can’t have the only action be by extremists.
Rebecca Solnit — Authoritarianism fears the public. Remembering our collectivism, our power, our hope, our dance skills. The future does not exist. It’s being made in the present. We have a hell of a lot of power together. Let’s keep hope alive.
Serenity Prayer
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference”
Quotations by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
Strength to Love, 1963.
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964.
“Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”
March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959.
“I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.”
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 26, 1967.
“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
Christmas sermon, Atlanta, Georgia, 1967.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963.
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.”
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964
“It is not enough to say ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but the positive affirmation of peace.”
Anti-War Conference, Los Angeles, California, February 25, 1967.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Strength to Love, 1963.
“Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.”
New York City, April 4, 1967.
“We are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs ‘down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”
Montgomery, Alabama, December 5, 1955. Here, King borrows a verse from the Bible, the Book of Amos, which he frequently reused in speeches.
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
Stride Toward Freedom, 1958
