Cleve Jones: "This Is Our Country"

This is the first guest essay at Meditations in an Emergency. I'm proud to bring you yesterday's speech by the great Cleve Jones, who has for nearly half a century been a key organizer for the global queer community and the San Francisco Bay Area, gave a speech at the San Francisco No Kings rally in San Francisco. I loved it so much I wanted to share it with all of you, and Cleve said yes. He spoke it with fire, with passion, with clarity that we are in dire straits but we have not lost, and we are not giving up.

It was the perfect speech for the day, drawing on the way that so many people in their signs and costumes, their flags and messages, asserted that we are America, we are patriotic, we are the majority, we who believe in justice, universal human rights, equality, truth and accountability, in protecting the vulnerable and welcoming the stranger, we who are living out this country's old motto e pluribus unum: in many one. Anyway, this is Cleve's concise, on point, fiercely delivered speech:

Hello and thank you all for being here.

 The pronouns I use the most are the ones probably understood the least by those in the White House today. They are WE, US and OURS.

We are in this together.

And it is up to us to be the leaders we need to save our country and our democracy.

We come to this place this afternoon from many separate journeys. Our ancestors travelled different paths. But all our parents and grandparents and great grandparents and those before them - set their feet upon long and often difficult roads that converge here today, at this critical moment in the history of our nation and humankind.

 Among us today are descendants of the original peoples of this land and all those who came here, not to conquer or colonize, but simply to live. Refugees and asylum seekers. Ordinary people who fled war and famine and poverty and repression. People who have always asked for nothing more than the right to live and work and love and care for their families in freedom, with justice. They came to America in search of a dream that has always fallen short, always been flawed, remains incomplete and yet still inspires hope across the world. 

 We know the history of this land and its peoples. Those forced to walk the trails of tears. Those brought here in chains against their will and those who gladly gave all they possessed to get here. Those who arrived in overloaded ships to live in tenements and slums. Those who walked across the southern deserts. Those who endured Jim Crow and the nights of terror. All those who suffered and dreamed and sacrificed – not to some dreadful god of greed and retribution but for their children and their children’s children. For our future. For us.

 That dream – of what a nation by and for the people could be – is now threatened more deeply than any time since war tore our nation apart in the Spring of 1861, claimed the lives of almost a million Americans, and opened wounds that fester to this day.

 A fascist regime has taken power. Their billionaire cronies are further enriched. Working people are denied health care. Protections of our land and water and air are abandoned, as are freedom of speech and due process. Grift and cruelty and racism are celebrated. Women are denigrated and denied control of their bodies. Sexual and gender minorities are demonized. The military is deployed in American cities to combat fictional foes. Masked and unidentified thugs terrorize and abduct immigrants and native-born alike. They threaten sovereign nations from Denmark to Venezuela to Canada with war and invasion. They control much of the media, the voting systems of 27 states, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House but blame Democrats for the shutdown of our government while they continue to build prisons and detention camps across the land. 

 They did not come to govern; they came to destroy. And they claim we are the ones who hate America.

 Almost all of us use devices every day that link us to platforms that have become our primary means of communication – where we learn the news, connect with each other and plan every aspect of our personal, professional and political lives. And every one of those devices and platforms are owned and operated by men who dined at the White House just six weeks ago and lavished the President with praise. 

 My friends, the peril before us is grave and the danger to our lives and liberty is very real. 

 The beast is at the door. The hinges are strained. The locks are sprung. The frame is splintered and creaking. 

 And yet. 

And yet.

And yet we rise.

 We do not despair. We will not surrender, and we will not comply. This is our country.

Every one of us here, and all those marching in our millions across the land today, all of us have a role to play as we meet the awful challenge of this crisis. What is the special skill you will bring to this struggle? How will you build the offline networks necessary to organize and build this movement beyond today? Which are the communities and neighborhoods you can organize and defend? What will you do to strengthen labor unions, academia, the courts and other institutions of a free and democratic society? 

 What will you do to imagine and launch and sustain the massive campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience and non-cooperation that history informs us is now required?

 Look to your hearts and find the abiding strength that dwells there. Look to the sky and all the magnificent beauty that surrounds us still.  Look to those who stand proudly at your shoulders. Look to your ancestors and claim your future.

 We are the people.

Now is the time.

This is the moment.

That's Cleve. This is Rebecca with a message: Dear readers, I don't press you all to become paid subscribers or give paid subscribers content I don't make available to free subscribers or people who just wander in. But here's a cool deal: any subscription made in response to this piece will be donated to Cleve Jones's fund with the Horizon Foundation. Thank you to everyone who subscribes and everyone who's about to--

p.s. The bio from his website: Cleve Jones is an American human rights activist, author and lecturer. Jones joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s. He was mentored by pioneer LGBT activist Harvey Milk and worked in Milk’s City Hall office as a student intern until Milk’s assassination in 1978. Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and founded The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the world’s largest community arts projects, in 1987. HarperCollins published his first book, Stitching a Revolution, in 2000. Jones led the 2009 National March for Equality in Washington, DC and served on the Advisory Board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged California’s Proposition 8 in the US Supreme Court. In November 2016, he published a memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement.

And he's my friend as well as my hero and I'm still beside myself I get to hang out with him.

p.p.s. That's not a picture of us below.