How are you doing—are you doing okay? No is a perfectly good answer right now. I’m struggling too.
Over the last eight years, I’ve paid attention. I’ve kept up on my news. The podcasts. The books. Watching things absolutely insane, live, with my own two eyes.
And the naive person in me really believed that as the evidence of Trump’s wrongdoings, crimes, lies, etc., piled up, his supporters would see him for who he was: a con artist.
Some do know this about him and don’t care, while others are still somehow oblivious to it all. Regardless, the numbers were enough for him to win again — making the intentional or blind faith in him perhaps being what breaks my heart most.
I could go on and on. But just knowing how many people, from Republicans to poll workers, stood up against him to inform the American people, and yet many people still said, “he’s the right person,” is one of the things that makes me have fear about the future.
And then I take time to read newspaper articles from contentious points of time in American history and see that there were so many times where all hope seemed lost.
Which is not the greatest thing to get strength from. But it helps to know this great experiment has seen many challenges and is still standing.
Something I think about often though from what I’ve read is the editorial section of The Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City’s first Black newspaper, in the weeks before and after The Tulsa Massacre.
This community had overcame (and still endure) insurmountable challenges and created an affluent community with a thriving business district…. only for white supremacists to literally burn it to the ground in two days.
You can feel the pain as you read every word.
But what did they do?
They got right the F back up.
Knowing everything they lost. Knowing they had such an uphill battle. Knowing they were on their own. Knowing they would continue to endure more violence and hate in the days, months, years to come. Knowing they would have to cater to white culture and feelings, despite them being the ones in pain. Knowing they may never experience the life and dream they were building — something they shouldn’t have had to fight for in the first place.
And they just got right the F back up.
You can find all the articles I clipped and take this journey yourself at scratchpost.news/TheBlackDispatch.
