Shift Happens

These are the best of times and the worst of times~ Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Many of us in the U.S.A. are grieving the election of Donald Trump and his emerging alt right plutocracy and cronyism, on top of rampant extreme violations of our U.S. Constitution and Bill of rights to flagrantly marginalize and bully critics and dissenters.

But last night, I found an unexpected source of solace listening to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. I found myself in nodding in agreement with Ms. Lynch’s perspective on the long term impact of our current political upheaval into the hands of the far right. I’ll paraphrase her statement, “…we have to remember that history is a much larger evolving story than our current political backwards shift. Progress moves far slower than many of us activists prefer, but it always moves forward. She added a caveat worthy of remembering when the going gets tougher,  “ all progress for all time, faces push back after each move forward, then progress moves onward again.

The Big Shift, the Great Turning, the Great Transition, . . . whatever you choose to call it, we are already deeply in it. It’s no longer in future tense, that’s for sure. The ground is shifting in dramatic upheavals, upending everything we thought we knew was so.

Like a flock of deer in headlights, everyone I speak with is truly unable to grasp the full prospect of the alt right’s taking over the people’s government, marginalizing most of us, all while putting plans into motion to rape of our Mother earth all over again, only now more aggressively.

But as Anne Galland of Moveon.org offered recently, “…the final stage of grief in this case isn’t acceptance—it’s organizing.”

As soon as I heard about the Women’s March in D.C. on January 21^st, I proclaimed that I was going! Now that reality has settled in, I’m sadly reconsidering my physical presence.   I’m told that it is expected to be the largest march ever in D.C. (No kidding:) 

With the recent warning signs of a coming of rule of law (

There’s no doubt in my mind that we are being given another chance to restore, and re-story, our possible futures across all five generations and into the eons ahead.