Thread by @ECMcLaughlin

I don't know why, don't ask, but I have this profound feeling that 2020 is when we shake democracy to its foundations and turn this whole thing around.

I can't tell you why, but I have this sense that it will burn until the ashes birth what's coming next, and this is that year.

Weirdly, I keep having blowbacks to Y2K, when I was in London with the *worst* guy, sick as a dog-- was supposed to be on Thassos, in Greece, but I was too sick to board a plane, and I ended up in a freezing flat in Clapham, watching this whole "disaster is about to strike!". . .

. . . with him & his sister & her new husband, on the BBC. I have this distinct memory of soaking in a scalding tub with peppermint oil, thinking that the worst thing in the world that could happen aside from that misery was (cough) the end of the international banking system.

And now here we are, under more-or-less fascist dictatorship in the US, Brexit looming, democracy shattering everywhere, xenophobic and racist violence on the rise in the most unexpected (and expected) places, with death and insanity all around, and yet . . .

. . . perhaps there is still hope? Perhaps?

Perhaps the unexpected will show itself.

Perhaps this is the year where we burn it to the ground and exorcise all the old demons and rise to make it all the fucking brilliant thing it was supposed to be in the first place.

Perhaps this is the year where we recognize that we are ALL connected, that ALL of us matter, where we finally merge into breakthrough movements, revolutions, all the activist movements that merge together, where we overthrow all those old oppressive structures, . . .

. . . where technology emerges to save the earth rather than mine our data for profit, where we come together as common cause, where those deep old wounds are recognized, repaired, redressed, for fuck's sake unwound, where all at once,

the veil of hatred is lifted . . .

. . . and the best of us rises to lead, everywhere.

Perhaps.

Perhaps.

Perhaps there is still hope.

I'm sitting with that,

for now.

Gonna add one more story: the most interesting conversation I had this yr was with a faith leader this past June, one of @RevDrBarber's folks, about the prospect of a breakthrough moment in activism.

It was a profound moment of the recognition of common cause & what it could do.

I was standing at my kitchen counter about a week before 800+ worldwide @Lights4Liberty events took place that began with a single tweet thread I wrote here. I was working 20 hr days talking to organizers worldwide

What she said to me shook me, and I will never forget it.

She put forward the idea that across every identity & every issue & all the messy world of those fighting for justice, was the possibility of a unifying force, based in a recognition of the same principles & the same values, that might rise to actually do the thing we all discuss

and be an unstoppable movement that would shift and alter the course of human progress and the planet as a whole, through common cause and demand.

Think about that.

It wouldn't take much, truly.

All the great and brilliant minds are here, ready, and waiting for that moment.

I don't doubt that it could be right around the corner.

All it's going to take is THE WILL.

XO

(PS, & because it needs to be said: if you drop into my mentions suggesting that what I've written here isn't based in the work that real humans have been doing for decades in the US and around the planet, I'm gonna assume that that's because you've never spoken to any of them.)