Something no one prepared me for when I was growing up was that history doesn’t stop happening just because we’re alive to see it happen. It seems a little silly that I thought it might, but we teach history as if it’s part of some distant past. I didn’t even think about that far off positioning for a long time. But now that I’m deconstructing (and hopefully wiser), I can’t help but think: what would make us so special that history would stop for us?
I didn’t know that every few years there would be a pivotal moment in history that we will live through. I didn’t realize that the trajectory of our futures pivots all the time and if you’re not paying attention you’ll miss it. I didn’t realize how powerful it would be to watch history happen as it’s happening. To see people come together for the liberation of all of us, today.
I didn’t realize how crucial it is to pay attention to what’s happening in the world and to recognize monumental moments for what they are. I didn’t realize until more recently that revolutions are moments in time that historians gave a name to in retrospect. When they were looking at mass movements of the past and realize something pivotal change. But that we could see change happening in the present, even if it doesn’t have a name yet.
It’s easy to see it in the past, but no one told me that revolutions are happening all around me all the time. It didn’t make sense why revolutions have contested beginning dates and contested end dates. Not until I started to consider that they could be ongoing. That they could be happening every day at dinner tables, in community centers, in our music, in our literature. That they exist all around us even when we’re not paying attention. That when you start to pay attention, revolutions could be both the most excruciating and the most beautiful thing you will ever witness. If you’re fortunate enough to recognize them when they’re happening.
Redefining Revolution
When you start to see it when it’s happening, you learn that revolutions are moments when we all start to remember that we’re in this together. When we collectively start to remember that the people in the streets are a part of a generations old protest. It’s when we all start to remember that our disobedience is only an extension of all other civil rights movements. It’s collectively understanding that we walk side by side, hand in hand with social justice giants, not behind. When we recognize that we’re not fighting just our own fight, we’re fighting the same one they were fighting for. Because it’s always been the same fight. Because history is today.
I remember when I started to see it, when I started to learn how many things weren’t taught to me. No one told me that revolutions are happening when we’re presented the opportunity to test our friendships to see if our values truly match up. No one told me how much it would suck when they don’t. No one told me that revolutions are built on lending a hand to your neighbors and helping people be open to listening. That revolutions are built on fighting to make spaces safe enough for every single one of us to understand each other.
I’m proud and honored to have learned how deeply it takes every single one of us. I’m better for learning and better for fighting to win back my empathy that was stolen from me. I’m deeply moved to recognize the shifts in cultural narratives when they happen, but no one told me how lonely and hard it can be when no one else seems to see it. But what I’ve learned most of all is that these shifts present us with the beautiful opportunity to find solidarity with new people you never thought you’d find solidarity with.
I see it so clearly now that there isn’t really a time in history when nothing was happening. Wars are always being waged for preventable reasons. Western hegemony will always do anything to maintain it’s power. Power corrupts even the best of us, leading us to a constant state of violence, all the time, every year, every day, all the way to now. But the way that I was taught about history, I believed that history is entirely in the past. That the present is completely detached from all the events that lead us to where we are today. Almost as if the virtue of teaching history in and of itself stops time. Or maybe it’s that it’s strategic to make us believe we’re entirely detached from our social justice heroes and the atrocities of only a few generations past.
The Revolution Has Always Been Now
They say hindsight is 20/20, that we can learn from the past, but the disconnect tells us it could never happen again. But what are we learning from the past if we think that it’s stopped? If we think we’ve already learned from the past and that’s that? We will learn from the past only to spend our days fighting out the semantics of war to prove it’s not the same as the last time. Only to realize once it’s over that maybe that was just as bad as last time. We’ll fight each other over language and intellectualize the dehumanization of entire peoples while those same people die because we’ve distracted.
We’ll leverage the disconnect of history to disconnect our histories from our reality today. We’ll turn a blind eye when the world needs us, because the enemy of progress is comfort and complacency. And that’s when we’ve lost, when we think we’re above history. We’ll miss the act of actually saving each other as we bicker over who has a right to live, yet again. Because we don’t think it’s the same problem today as it was 5 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, 80 years ago. We will see armed resistance in the past and cheer them on, but we will see it today and think it’s different. We’ll use the disconnect to emphasize the nonviolent pieces, the palatable pieces, of resistance. So we selectively forget how we won our freedom. So we forget that we have to keep fighting to maintain it. So we forget we’re holding hands in resistance with our grandparents and our ancestors.
But when we realize that history is happening now, when we realize that history repeats itself and that we’re fighting the same fight as they were fighting in the past, something changes. We realize that the social justice heroes are our comrades today. When we realize we’re comrades, we realize that we have their hindsight to guide us. And maybe their hindsight actually grants us the wisdom to know that we’re all in this together. That they’re guiding us, arm in arm, in the fight we’ve been waging for decades, generations, centuries.
It’s far too often that when people become aware of social issues they think, “why isn’t anyone talking about this?” as if they’re the first ones to rise up from the knowledge. That disconnect of history makes so many of us believe that the world has given up and once we realize we’re alone. But imagine a world where we are all fully aware that those that come before us are fueling us and guiding us today. Imagine if we all understood that we’re handcuffing ourselves to bridges with our heroes. We’re leading a hunger strike at the gates of the White House right next to them. That we’re crying outside the doors of congress, all of us together, woven throughout time, begging to be heard.
Imagine if we knew that our collective marches, boycotts, and tears transcend time itself. That our actions today will leave echoes for that will reverberate far beyond our lifetimes.
Imagine if we knew that the revolution that Gil Scott-Heron said won’t be televised is the same one that they’re refusing to broadcast today. Imagine if we truly understood that we too are Marching on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with Martin Luther King Jr, today. Imagine if we understood that when we’re refusing to engage with the system that we’re also refusing to ride the bus in Montgomery. Imagine if we knew the story that we’re writing for ourselves is the same story they were writing for us all along. That we’re walking together to create something better together. Imagine if we knew that our collective marches, boycotts, and tears transcend time itself. That our actions today will leave echoes for that will reverberate far beyond our lifetimes.
Imagine if we understood that the act of resistance is the same as the act of creating. Revolution takes thinking about possibilities that are outside of everything you’ve ever known. This system that we’re forced to use is the only one so many of us can even see. But imagine if we understood that, just as art evolves through the ages, building upon itself into new iterations as we learn and grow collectively, revolution does the same. That we are building from the same building blocks as everyone else who has ever had a dream of a better world before us, and everyone who will ever dream of a better world beyond us.
