Weekly Message 12/2/2024
This Week’s Message 12/2/2024
What does Donald Trump's victory mean for this country? Some pundits say Americans are getting what they deserve, selecting a man who sows division and reaps votes by appealing to our fears. One suggested his victory represented the end of the Rainbow Coalition, the final defeat of the effort to build a broad progressive coalition that would fight for the dignity of all.
These conclusions are a measure of our despair, but a false guide to our course. Trump’s victory in 2024 tells us that we need to rebuild and revive the Rainbow Coalition now more than ever. The Rainbow provides the hope that is the antidote to the fears that Trump sows, the coalition that is the counter to the divisions that he peddles. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is built upon a simple proposition. To build a more perfect union, we must move from racial battlegrounds to economic common ground. And as we make progress on that common ground, we can move towards a moral higher ground.
This is a simple reflection of reality. As Reverend Jackson taught us, America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, and one cloth. “When I was a child in Greenville, South Carolina,” he said. “My grandmamma could not afford a blanket. She did not complain, and we did not freeze. She took patches of old cloth, many textures, many patterns. With sturdy hands and strong cord, she sewed them together into a quilt, a thing of beauty and power and warmth.”
Workers are right to fight for fair pay and security. But their patch is not big enough. Women are right to fight for equality and control of their own bodies, but their patch is not big enough. Blacks and Hispanics are right to fight for civil rights, but their patch is not big enough. Gays and Lesbians are right to fight for the freedom to love whom they choose, but their patch is not big enough.
The Rainbow calls us to come together over economic common ground. That doesn’t mean that clashing patterns, contrasting colors, and different textures are homogenized into one bland color and form. It also doesn’t mean that diversity of colors and textures are an ultimate value in their own right. It means that if we come together, united by strong cords, we can all rise together.
Economic common ground. Think of our factories across the country. There may tensions among workers of different races, different backgrounds. But when the plant closes and the lights go off, we all look alike in the dark.
Economic inequality breeds insecurity, insecurity breeds division. Throughout our history, the powerful and the rich, the plantation owner, and the oil baron have sought to divide us- white against black, men against women, poor worker against slave, straight against gays – to consolidate their privilege. Over the past decades, the US has made progress - slow, incomplete, but progress - on social issues. With the civil rights and women’s and gay rights movements, the culture has become more liberal.
At the same time, America has grown ever more unequal. Since the Reagan Revolution and the elevation of market fundamentalism, this economy has not worked for working people. Whole regions have been impacted; communities shuttered, homes and lives have been disrupted. Trump preyed on the resulting fears, blaming the failed establishments and immigrants, riding on the reaction to social progress over the last decades.
He parades as the champion of the cast-off, but his agenda, his appointments, and his priorities serve the rich and the powerful. He fills his cabinet with billionaires and bounders. His first priorities are tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, tariffs tax that will largely be passed on to consumers, and the dismantling or rollback of provisions for the vulnerable.
In this season of thanksgiving, let us rise together with a spirit of gratitude, a heart for service, and a mindset of justice for all humanity, uniting across lines that too often divide us. We must reject the false narrative of Zero-Sum thinking—the poisonous idea that one person’s gain is another’s loss. At the end of the day, we must recognize that racism exacts a heavy toll, not only on the marginalized but also on poor white communities, binding them in the same cycle of inequity and despair. Policies and practices steeped in prejudice make life harder for all who struggle to make ends meet and impact society at large. The time is now to leverage our intellect, influence, and resources and summon our political will to act. Let us PUSH forward and reject any message contrary to the belief that we are better together.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition