Women's March 2020, San Jose, CA: Dump Trump

About 8000 of us gathered today (Saturday, January 18, 2020) in San Jose, California - 75% women and 25% men from what I could gather - at the Arena Green in downtown San Jose, California, to participate in Women’s March 2020. Similar marches - estimated at 180 - are taking place in small and big cities throughout America today. The march has three objectives: Dump Trump in the November 3^rd presidential election, empower women and enshrine their rights in laws and in practice, and save Planet Earth from the catastrophic effects of Climate Change.

I listened to Karrington Kenney, the 16-year-old junior and VP of the Black Student Union at Milpitas High School. “Make sure to vote in December,” said the poised and persuasive speaker. Under Trump, we are witnessing unabashed racism. We must do our part in defeating the haters and the White Supremacists. Kenney was instrumental in outing a history teacher in her school who wore blackface last year at Halloween. Although the teacher apologized, Karrington reminded us to be vigilant and proactive in calling out racism wherever and whenever we see it. She quoted the names of the African-American women who, as NASA engineers and mathematicians, made incalculable contributions to America’s space program. That they did it in Jim Crow South made their contributions that much more remarkable.

Karrington Kenney, Milpitas High School Student, Addressing
Women's March in San Jose, January 18, 2020.

Sabrina, a third-generation Jewish American, was holding up signs with her teenage daughter that read, “You Can’t Complain If You Don’t Vote!” Her grandmother was born in Stockton, CA. When she was 3, she was sent to Germany to be looked after by relatives. Then the Nazis took over. Her grandmother and family narrowly escaped being Holocaust victims: A church “certified” that they were Catholics. When Sabrina’s mother was 3 years old, her grandmother migrated to the U.S. with her daughter for good in 1948. “And so here I am,” said Sabrina. “I want everyone to understand how lucky we are that we can assemble like this and vote. And unless we vote, we deserve our leaders. That’s how we got Trump. So make sure you vote on 3^rd November!”

Sabrina tells San Jose Women's March participants that
unless they vote, they have no right to complain.

Can we restore the rule of law, decency, justice and democracy in the United States, come November 2020? Only if we do our part and vote our conscience. Words are meaningless unless backed by action. "Vote blue no matter who," read an impassioned poster. Evidence of Women Power was everywhere. The nation is counting on America's women to rise and lead the nation to justice, decency and rule of law by decisively defeating Trump.

Here are some more photographs to give you an idea of the energy, passion and activism that are beginning to animate Americans in this critical election year.

Love in the Time of Climate Crisis

That the leap-year 2020 will be enormously consequential - from paupers to billionaires and climate refugees to mansion dwellers - is clear even to those not blessed with 2020 vision. The climate crisis is here to stay. California's 'Paradise' has literally been burned to the ground. Brush fires in Australia are forcing laid-back Australians to flee to the sea. The earth has never been hotter, the drought never more punishing, wildlife never more threatened.

So how does love survive in this eco-apocalypse that shows no sign of abating and all signs of accelerating? 

True, hope is not a strategy but as long as we work toward a goal, and don't hope more than we work, there will be a future worth aspiring to. Many of us are perhaps obsessed with selfies, but there are far more selfless people, particularly among women and the young, who are bringing healthcare, education and hope to the marginalized and the ignored. Haroon Yasin in Pakistan, Priya Prakash in India, Luisa Bonin in Brazil, Nashin Mahtani in Indonesia and Alain Nteff in Cameroon are transforming societies through their transcendent activism. Never heard of them? Well, then, find out! They are only a click away.

Love thrives even in the darkest places. A single spark is all it takes, and suddenly despair surrenders to confidence and ignorance to enlightenment. We can expand our limited horizon to one that stretches all the way to infinity. Digital Dystopia taking over life? We can break free. Time for meaningful work vanishing because of absurd demands made on us worker-bees? We can cut loose. No time to listen to songs of trees, birds, the wind? Yes, there is, if we pause to rediscover the beauty of wild places blooming just beyond our doorsteps.Want to learn the true nature of time? Listen to the trees.

Singing male towhee - Photo by Hasan Z Rahim

Sapsucker - Photo by Hasan Z Rahim

Forget virtual connections. Stop waiting for ephemeral digital affirmations. Meet in cafes and parks. Walk the forgotten trails,  behold the restless, churning sea. Lift your eyes from the small screen to the many-hued sky above. Lose yourself in the starry, starry night to know that we are not alone, that we are more than the sum of our parts. The clever hopes may have expired from the low and dishonest decade we just left behind, and it may get even worse, but not if we act on our noble instincts - does Greta Thunberg ring a bell? - and fill even a single life with hope and love. Don't forget the November 2020 U.S. presidential election. We have the power to undo the wrongs and make things right.

New year's Eve - Capitola Beach, Santa Cruz County, CA  Photo by Hasan Z Rahim

The greatest tragedy of life is not finding one's calling. We can find ours if we only listen to our hearts. And we will, in 2020, as hope and love beckons.

Gettysburg Address’ Stirring Call Still Relevant, 156 Years Later

You can also read the article here in the San Jose Mercury News

One hundred and fifty-six years ago today, on Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa., that is as stirring a call for reflection and action in the 21st-century United States as it was in the 19th. Using a mere 272 words and lasting all of two minutes, the 16th president evoked the meaning and purpose of America in the midst of a deadly Civil War that has particular relevance to today’s polarized, diminished and adrift America under President Trump.

The context of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address underscores its relevance. Union armies had defeated the Confederates four months earlier in the decisive Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest in the Civil War. Haunted by grief at the war’s toll, Lincoln nevertheless saw himself as the guardian of the nation’s soul in abolishing slavery and preserving the republic. He warned the gathering of 15,000 that the Civil War — which would last another 17 months — was testing whether the nation that was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … can long endure.”

Yet the nation had to endure even if the war was threatening to tear it apart. “We are met on a great battlefield of that war,” said Lincoln. “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.” Evoking transcendent words like liberty, dedicate, consecrate, hallow, devotion, birth, freedom and God, Lincoln rallied the Union forces to persevere until the Confederates surrendered and the nation could emerge intact and stronger. He was also using the moral force of his presidency to put principle over privilege, pluralism over tribalism.

America has fallen far since Trump took the oath of office in 2016 through his solipsism and his brazen acts to preempt and pervert the constitution. While the list is long, the words he uses at rallies and in tweets to attack individuals and institutions opposing his maleficence reveal the extent of his transgressions: fake, suck, savages, shifty, liar, lowlife, human scum, go back.

Yet we also hear the echo of Lincoln’s message of duty, honor and warning in the words of public servants speaking out against Trump and his cabal. One such is Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine, forced out for refusing to play along with Trump’s foreign policy shenanigans. In her deposition to the House impeachment investigators, she said: “I have served this nation honorably for more than 30 years. I, like my colleagues at the State Department, have always believed that we enjoyed a sacred trust with our government. We frequently put ourselves in harm’s way to serve this nation. And we do that willingly, because we believe in America and its special role in the world. We also believe that our government will protect us if we come under attack from foreign interests. That basic understanding no longer holds true.”

As we prepare to vote in the presidential election in less than a year, we should remember the concluding words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address containing the most profound definition of democracy: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Donald Trump is determined to turn the United States into a “government of me, by me, for me.” On Nov. 3, 2020, we will vote not only for candidates but also for the heart, mind and soul of America, for truth, accountability and rule of law so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”