I’d like to share a few paragraphs from Rebecca Solnit’s weekly newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency. This comes from her most recent post, “This Cold Winter, Love is a Superpower.”
In the wake of Alex Pretti’s killing, she writes:
Minneapolitans responded differently that evening, with candlelit memorials and songs. Veterans Administration intensive care nurse Alex Pretti’s name, true nature, and death at 37 will not be forgotten.
The powerful nationwide—and beyond—opposition to Trump and his authoritarian power grabs has come as a surprise to him and his gang. They believe devoutly in the power of violence and do not comprehend the power of nonviolence. They understand the power that the state has but do not understand the power that civil society has.
They understand their own motives—greed, a lust for power, an intolerance of difference—and are baffled or uncomprehending about generosity, about the desires for democracy and equality that are about wanting to share rather than hoard power, the tolerance and more than tolerance of difference. Tolerance is such a mediocre word; I recently saw Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi speak about her early days in the House—she entered Congress in 1987—when she would be told, “Oh, you tolerate gay people in San Francisco,” to which she says she would reply, “We don’t tolerate them; we take pride in them.”
On the other hand, “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” said the dumbest and most unqualified Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, last February. Some of us take pride in the diversity of our cities and country; some of us care about people who are supposed to be divided from us by category but can be united with us by care.
For many in the Trump regime it seems incomprehensible—or a scam of sorts—that those not categorically under attack by ICE are so committed to solidarity with their neighbors who are, and thereby to universal human rights, to standing up on principle, and, since ICE’s murder of Renee Good, will risk their lives to do so.
They can’t understand love as a form of power.
Smuggling Grace 