Where we stand
How often, how many times, how many ways, must we fight for basic human values? As often, and in as many ways, as it takes.
Oh, my friends, it’s been a week. As we head into the holiday designated to recognize those whose labor makes our lives possible, comfortable, and beautiful, so many of those same folk are stretched and stressed beyond their maximum.
To our sisters (and all who love them) in Texas: we stand with you. To the voters of Texas: we stand with you. To the health care workers who are, again, working overtime: we stand with you.
To all who work so hard to protect civil rights, human rights, and democracy, we stand with you.
Others will offer sophisticated socio-political analyses of the anti-voting and anti-choice laws in Texas; of the shocking reticence of the Supreme Court to stop a law that creates cadres of vigilantes patrolling not just the behaviors, but the thoughts of women about their reproductive choices. (See sources after the photo.)
Here, on this page, we focus on the ways we work to manifest our personal values in public life. I’m thinking of the values that are sorely tested by these developments.
Autonomy: the rights of humans to make their own decisions regarding their bodies and their lives.
Inclusion: the importance of empowering all voices in conversations about the body politic and how it impacts individual human bodies.
Compassion: the need to put ourselves in the place of the person we think of as “other,” to listen to understand, to see the world through their eyes.
Justice: love made public, through fair and equitable treatment of all, with equality before the law.
The anger we feel as we watch these principles ignored, or worse, actively attacked and de-valued, can leave us depleted. How often, how many times, how many ways, must we fight for these basic human values?
As often, and in as many ways, as it takes.
This is a scary time: democracy, inclusion, civility, and civil rights are all being attacked. Remember: our real “enemy” is the fear that is used, cynically, to drive these attacks, not the folk who are drawn in.
Our strategies, then, must focus on removing this artificially-induced fear from the equation. We must return, again and again, to the stance of compassionate understanding. We must practice the values we want to enact.
To all in Texas (and elsewhere) who believe that restriction of voting and reproductive rights leads to a safer world: we stand with you, too; we all want safety. We disagree - vehemently - that attacking the rights of women and stripping voters of protections are ways to create the safety we all crave.
We invite you to turn your attention away from those who seek to use your desire for safety to make you fear your fellow humans. Turn your attention toward those who offer a vision of one human family, caring deeply for every member, lifting every member up, constructing communities of autonomy, inclusion, compassion, and justice for all.
That’s where we stand, and we would love for you to join us.
With gratitude to the laborers of our world, like flowers pushing up through every gap in the pavement.
To read more of the details of the Texas anti-reproductive rights law:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/texas-abortion-law-facts.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/03/texas-abortion-ban-states/