In 1988, I was fresh out of college with a terrible perm and my first real job, working as a “newswoman” at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, D.C. Basically, I served as an exalted gofer, my primary job being to gather the daily schedules of all the presidential wannabes (the crowded field included 14 major candidates that year), which I collected at the fax machine and transcribed for distribution to news outlets across the country.
I also got to type up transcripts of speeches and debates, and thanks to my crack typing skills, I had the great fortune of attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. A lot of stumping and grandstanding took place in Omni Coliseum that week, including Bill Clinton’s famous “speech that ate Atlanta” and Ann Richards’ deliciously caustic “silver foot in his mouth” keynote address. But the speech that brought down the house, the one still resonates, was delivered the evening of July 19 by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Jackson, whose death at age 84 was announced earlier this week, had lost the presidential nomination to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, and his address in Atlanta carried the oratorical flair and heft of a sermon. He reflected on the “face of America: red, yellow, brown, black and white” and extolled the importance of finding common ground. His words brought many delegates to tears.
But I didn’t have time for tears that evening. I had a job to do: transcribe that speech exactly as it was uttered so it could be pushed over the wires ASAP. I’d hoped to work off of Jackson’s prepared remarks, but the good reverend veered off script so early and often as to have rendered my printout useless.
Jackson’s stemwinder went on for 53 minutes. My fingers flew. I was never so grateful for the skills I’d learned in 10th-grade typing. (Thank you forever, Mrs. Rumberger!)
But despite my single-minded desire to GET ALL THE WORDS DOWN, Jackson managed to pierce my self-absorbed skull with his final, electrifying chant:
“Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!”
Some 37 years later, as I re-watch the closing minutes of his speech and hear his words free of deadline pressures, I’m struck by their pure, joyful fire. Jackson raises his right fist in the air, channeling his mentor, the Rev. Martin Luther King, as he shouts:
Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high.
Stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes.
Don’t you surrender. Suffering creates character. Character creates faith.
In the end, faith will not disappoint….
…We must never surrender. America will get better and better.
Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive!
Honestly, that’s not so easy right now. Here in Minnesota, more than a week after border czar Tom Homan announced the imminent end of Operation Metro Surge, our own eyes and ears are telling us otherwise.
On the same day as Homan’s announcement, female ICE agents faked car troubles to lure a target out of his Brooklyn Center home. (The man they abducted, Jesus Flores, has been sent to a detention camp in Texas even though is family says he’s not a criminal.)
Despite the announced drawdown, videos have shown fleets of new vehicles, most with Minnesota plates, being brought to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling. There are reports of potential new ICE/DHS headquarters being installed within an office park in Minnetonka. And ICE agents continue to harass legal observers in their communities while disregarding traffic laws and safety.
On Friday, Minnesota Democratic Reps. Angie Craig and Ilhan Omar said they continue to hear reports of ICE agents profiling neighbors and increased activity in the Twin Cities suburbs.
Here in St. Paul, ICE has been spotted all over the place this past week, driving hither and yon—hanging out in church parking lots and near day cares and schools. Maybe they just want to intimidate, to let us know they’re still here. There are also reports of confirmed ICE vehicles at Airbnb’s around the area. None of this sounds like a drawdown to me.
So about this hope the Reverend Jackson spoke of nearly 40 years ago? It’s certainly not blind optimism. But despite its fiery invocation, perhaps he was speaking of something quieter and calmer, something with staying power, a touchstone we can rub when doubt creeps in. Hope takes work and searching. It’s about finding the glimmers to counter the bleak. To wit:
St. Paul passed a law late Wednesday night that bans face masks except in limited circumstances and requires laws enforcement, including ICE agents, to wear identifying badges.
Plans to turn warehouses into detention centers for immigrants have failed in Minnesota and elsewhere. In Shakopee, Democratic state Rep. Brad Tabke credited early awareness and strong opposition for derailing plans there. “We got it killed,” he told MinnPost. “Our community pushed back really hard.”
Lawyers have filed more than 1,000 individual challenges to detentions since the start of Operation Metro Surge, and federal judges have issued hundreds of release orders after finding arrests and detentions unlawful. Writes local journalist Sean Snow: “The hope is simple and stubborn: case by case, order by order, the rule of law is working because people refuse to disappear quietly.”
Indeed, people are out there, calmly persevering, keeping the pressure on, standing on bridges and street corners day after day, handing out cocoa and cookies and generally reminding people that none of what’s happening is OK, that change is possible.
“How do we get back to the struggle over the future?” Rebecca Solnit asks in her wonderful gem of a book Hope in the Dark.
“I think you have to hope, and hope in this sense is not a prize or gift, but something you earn through study, through resisting the ease of despair, and through digging tunnels, cutting windows, opening doors, or finding people who do these things. They exist.”
We have to keep finding ways to stand up and find others who are doing the same. Because action sustains hope. And hope will only stay alive as long as we keep feeding it.
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