There are more of us. There are so many more of us.
Recently, I’ve been reading the news, as you do, and I was engaging with an essay by Rebecca Solnit, an author I really appreciate. She writes a Substack called Meditations in an Emergency, and in this particular essay, she was reflecting the reality that we’re fighting a global oligarchy.
I think that’s true. But as she mentioned, this is not without hope. We are not without the ability to shape our future and change many of our directions.
We’re not always thinking about the numbers. We feel overwhelmed, frightened, deflated, or numb at times. But there are so many more of us than there are oligarchs who have an unbelievable and outsized amount of money and power right now.
I guess what I’m saying is that we have power, too.
Right now, a film called Being Heumann is having advance screenings. It tells the incredible story and legacy of Judy Heumann, a disability rights icon. Growing up, Judy attended Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled young people. There, she and others formed meaningful bonds, and as they grew into adulthood, many of them began organizing for disability rights.
In 1977, Judy Heumann and fellow disability rights advocates participated in an extraordinary act of civil disobedience. They occupied a federal building in San Francisco, holding what became the longest occupation of a federal building in American history.
Their efforts helped secure the enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in federally funded programs, including educational institutions. Some of these same leaders went on to help shape the Americans with Disabilities Act.
We are seeing many challenges to these rights now. But there is a community that is emboldened and refuses to go backward in time. A relatively small group of people helped make those changes happen.
And so we have our own small circles, too. We can make an impact on each other’s lives and well beyond those very lives. And when we look at all those circles, all those actions, and all those forms of advocacy, we belong to a community that is immensely large.
We see oligarchs grasping for power.
But we are empowered, too.
—Renee Roederer
