The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
ACTION
Take courage!
RESULT
Optimism and confidence translate into action.
Let’s talk about courage. At the end of the day, I think that it matters more than just about anything else. It takes courage to fight for your beliefs. It takes courage to stand up for what you know is right, and to raise your voice.
The opposite of courage is cowardice. It is by cowardice that Trump raised his banner; he operates by milking cowardice, by feeding fears. He made people afraid that Mexican immigrants were going to take their jobs, and that Muslim immigrants were going to be radical terrorists. The antidote for fear is courage. Not only in individuals, but in nations; and there is a battle between fear and courage happening.
Malcolm X by Anne Pomel
Donald Trump did an excellent job of finding out the fears of his base and magnifying them.
I believe courage and truth ultimately will always conquer fear and darkness. When we look at the past few centuries, we see greater and greater movement toward liberation, toward freedom and equality. Compare our society right now to where we were when America started in 1776; as you know, women couldn’t vote, blacks were slaves, and as a nation we were in the midst of committing genocide against most of the native population of North America.
We really have come a long way from where we were a few hundred years ago. So, take heart. We can and we must go much further still. When you look at the big picture of history, the Trump era is part of an ongoing struggle, the march toward a more fair and just society, and that march has always been fueled by courage. People had to fight for their rights. It took courage every step of the way. Slavery was abolished in 1865, but then a whole century passed before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Change takes persistent commitment and courage.
It took guts to march with Martin Luther King Jr., you better believe it! Using nonviolent civil disobedience, the protestors of the civil rights era forced America to deal with the issues of segregation and racism that had been accepted as the legal status quo. Were it not for the individual acts of courage of every person involved, from Rosa Parks to those who marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, despite tear gas, despite being beaten by police with clubs, despite the fact that some people were killed by angry mobs, they protested in the face of armed troopers and municipal governments that wanted them just to shut up and accept things as they were.
If it weren’t for the courage of those who fought for what they knew was right, our society would not have changed. A society that is unjust and unfair will stay frozen in the status quo until enough people, with enough courage, work hard enough to move the dial, to change the balance.
There is work to be done, and it is going to require more from us than just being e-mail activists, Facebook rebels, and Twitter protestors. When we talk about the Resistance, we need to be talking about real life. When we look to the movements of the past, we see real-life rebels, and real-life courage. The outcome of where we go from here will be decided by the courage we bring to the resistance today.