People on the Move!

Saturday January 18, 2025 Washington, D.C.

https://map.peoplesmarch.com/events/dcpeoplesmarch?attendee_token=hminDWnYbqtN22bMZ9daQaX6

Local marches are planned in many areas. Use this link to find your area:

https://map.peoplesmarch.com/local

WHAT TO EXPECT

The People’s March will be a day of joyful resistance, community building, and powerful action. You’ll hear from inspiring speakers who will energize and unite us. You’ll connect with resources to sustain long-term resistance and participate in trainings that will equip you with critical skills to protect yourself and your community. Together, we’ll march to remind the nation that real power lies with the people—and our resistance is unshakable.

What’s the difference between the Women’s March and the People’s March?

The name “People’s March” reflects a broader, more inclusive movement—a call to community and unity. This is your chance to be part of something bigger—a movement of hope, resilience, and equality for ALL PEOPLE.

eo.wixstatic.com/video/dab25a_5633a9693e9c4719ad8715721308ea05/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Book excerpt: https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny

The Book of Hope

Whenever the New York Times Book Review interviews an author, they ask: "What book is on your nightstand"?

Currently on the top of my pile is The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. It is not a memoir of the 90-year-old activist author, it is a dialogue between the two authors exploring the question:

What is hope? Good question.

The first sentence of the book is "We are going through dark times". Written in 2021, one might see this as a prophetic statement. It is also an understatement.

Last week, Jane Goodall was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Biden. It is the highest civilian honor given for exemplary work and life. Goodall herself is known through her relentless support of the chimpanzees which led her to speak out about climate change in early days. She is still as vocal in her efforts to turn the tide, metaphorically and physically. She says of those who stand up against it ". . .even when they lose their lives, their voices still resonate long after they are gone, giving us inpiration and hope . . ."

In Goodall's view, hope is possible because of four reasons: 1) the human intellect, 2) the resilience of nature, 3) the power of young people, 4) the indomitable human spirit.

Each of her reasons is supported by experiences over a lifetime of living with chimpanzees as compared with human beings! She cannot see how anyone of us would use our superior intellect to destroy what nature has provided us free of charge, except by greed. Young people figure into hope as next to come with lots of new ideas, technology, and energy, unless consumed and subsumed by social media. And, last but not least is our own "indomitable" human spirit. She is no Polyanna. She recounts story after story of ordinary people facing formidable challenges and their indomitable spirt playing out in crises after crises. Her life is one notable example. But what IS hope?

An author from another era gave hope a name: "The thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all", wrote Emily Dickinson. This morning I heard the birds singing when I stepped out in the 39 degree dawn. These song birds have come from climates far North of this tropical place, flying through the dark of night. Darkness does not deter them from making the trip. What does hope have to do with it? Everything!

All projects, whether writing, baking (though I wouldn't know), painting, drawing, studying, are built on hope. Without hope we would not begin, could not imagine anything, may not finish a darn thing. Hope keeps us alive -- keeps us going when obstacles loom large. Hope is precious. In times of multi-crises, we have four options, says Professor Marshall Ganz*: 1) to leave, 2) to fight (which may be necessary), 3) to build (by finding sources and others with similar value systems and spirit), 4) to give up. These four reflect the four elements of hope that Goodall spells out. I noticed the word spirit in both analyses of the "idea" of hope, which may be all that it is like democracy itself. We need hope to sustain such big ideas. The idea of living without hope is born in darkness. When confronting dark times, the absence of hope is the the absence of light. How would we find our way out without hope?

Have you ever watched a bird on the nest? Sitting still through a rainy day, drops running off her back? She is not enduring something, she is ushering in hope through fragile eggshells that could never withstand the elements without her warm body. She has a single purpose in sitting silently, not singing her song. She is committed to seeing it through, no matter the wind and rain storms. Nothing could convince her to abandon her cause. She knows instinctively that she must see this through. She is hope herself!

*https://books.google.com/books/about/People_Power_Change.html?id=oLYMEQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=1

DIY Project 2025

Twenty years ago on Christmas day a tsunami took 230,000 lives in eight minutes. At the time, I lived near the ocean and decided to do something to help. Habitat for Humanity trained me in Plains, Georgia to become a Global Village Team Leader.

While there, I (third from right), met President Jimmy Carter (far left) and Mrs. Carter (far right) at church that Sunday where President Carter delivered the sermon before teaching Sunday School, as he always had in his home church. Afterward, I visited the home, now a museum, where he had grown up directly across from the railroad tracks. Everything about the house was as humble as he was when I stood up to shake his hand and he smiled that wide familiar smile and said: "Please sit down". He was not a tall man, but he was a big man.

Many people think President Carter was the founder of Habitat. He was not. The non-profit Christian organization had its beginnings in his hometown. The Carter's became life-long volunteers building affordable houses around the world. It was a project close to their hearts. They put their hands and hard work into it because they believed in Habitat's mission that everyone deserves a decent, affordable place to live.

I have had a long relationship with Habitat for Humanity. My first build was with my daughter's youth group who helped build a home for a friend. When the walls were raised, we wrote messages to the family on the studs. They lived in that house with our names in those walls throughout their school years. Working alongside others for a common cause taught me the value of community. I learned something about painting, too!

This coming year seems like a perfect time to have a Do It Yourself Project 2025.

There are many, many worthwhile projects meant to help others in our own communities. Most are looking for volunteers, people like you and me, to help fulfill humble missions: delivering food, tutoring children, teaching reading, growing food.

Last week I visited my son in Asheville, North Carolina. It was three months to the day that Hurricane Helene had taken that mountain city by complete surprise in the same way the Thai people had been met with a rogue hundred-foot wave in 2004.* Nothing could stop the water from rushing over their homes and town, taking everything away within minutes. In Asheville, the aftermath of strewn cars, trucks, shipping containers marks the landscape. Tree trunks and boughs and limbs once standing tall have been reduced to piles of sawed logs. Mud-filled shops and restaurants still struggle to clean up. Conversations with store clerks, cafe workers, hotel staff each referenced the pain of a year none will ever forget. In Thailand, the fateful day when life changed from a peaceful place to a project, could be seen six months later in that "thousand-mile stare" replacing their "land of smiles". Despite the trauma, these people were very grateful for volunteers from around the world who came to help in what was the greatest response ever to a natural disaster. Many have helped the city of Asheville by donating needed water, clothing, food. Habitat Asheville has begun its work on the ground building homes and hope.**

During my flight home from North Carolina I spoke with a woman my age who like me had grown up in Massachusetts. She had been visiting her own family in Asheville. Neither hers nor my family had suffered damage for which we were grateful. Knowing where she hailed from signaled to me it was probably safe to comment on the upcoming 2025 changes we will be facing as a country. She immediately said that she and her granddaughter had decided to"plant a garden, read books, play games and do something in the community". She had already created her own DIY Project 2025!

If we each create our own Do It Yourself Project 2025 we will not only help our community, but we will reap the rewards of reinforcing the positive in our lives, in our family, in our neighborhood . . . in our country. Together we can build hope!

I would be interested to learn about your own plans to face down a rogue wave that is on the way. Please share your DIY Project 2025 in the comments section below.

Happy Hopeful New Year!

*https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/2004-indian-ocean-earthquake-tsunami-facts

**https://www.ashevillehabitat.org/how-to-help/volunteer/