By Mary Turck
Adjunct faculty member at Macalester College and Metropolitan State University and former editor of TC Daily Planet
Hard to think about dreams after the election — nightmares dominate, 24/7. Thinking about dreams, I remember Langston Hughes:
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
After our brilliantly sun-filled autumn, winter has set in, gloomy as the daily news, barren fields all around.
And yet, and yet — when J. Edgar Hoover persecuted him, when night riders bombed his home with his family in it, when racism was still enshrined in law, Dr. King still dared to dream. When Freedom Riders’ heads were split open, they kept on dreaming. When Congressman John Lewis was beaten to the ground, he held firmly to his dream.
Compared to those dark days, those deadly years, what is the election of even this grotesquerie?
My dream is that we elders will hold fast to our dreams, those dreams baptized by blood, sanctified by struggle, and passed down to us from activists who were our elders. My dream is that we share these dreams across the generations and that then we take new inspiration from the dreams and courage of our children and grandchildren.
My dream is that these barren fields will bloom again.
The prophet Joel wrote that God’s spirit will cause young men and women to prophesy, that elders will dream dreams and youth will see visions.
My dream is that we will continue to march, that we will continue to resist and protest and organize and vote, that we will hold up and support one another, always moving forward, never losing our heart for the struggle.
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