It is 8:43am UK time on November 6, 2024 as I sit down to write this, still unsure if any of the words that appear hear might be worth saying, or if I should even bother hitting “publish” once I get the words out. I don’t have words of compassion or care, or even comfort. All I have left is a wake up call; all I have left is a call to action. That action is a level of deep reflection that is going to be uncomfortable to the people reeling, yet again, from shock and disbelief.

In 2016, post-election day, we saw an uptick in messages about self-care first, then fight again later. Grieve first, then take up the torch. I imagine that if social media had existed in the same way in 2000 there might have been similar messaging. I need to say something that will not sit well with many; fight first. To stop and grieve, to put one’s own self first whether under the language of self-care or mental health, or anything else, is to refuse to engage with community. And we need community more than ever right now; we need community action. Some will be shocked by the results, others will have known this has been a long time coming. Think about it: in Bush vs Gore we saw contemporary voter suppression and the imperfection of the electoral college come to fruition in a way that should have caused a massive reprioritization of how elections were handled. We did nothing in response, a nation of ostriches more content to see within our comfort zones rather than pick our heads up and understand the long-term risk.

That was almost a quarter of a century ago. Do we know how to change? The heart-whispered rhetoric of “it can’t happen here” has always been fated to be our undoing. Of course, even as it is whispered, the truth is ignored: it has been happening here. It has always been happening here. We have had, as a nation and as a world, so many chances to build new worlds into being. But if hope is the thing with feathers, it must fly. It cannot confine itself to a nest and never endeavor to look at the world with a long view. Hope is a verb; verbs must do.

So do we must. There are two months where action can still be taken, where the party that is currently in power might act in a way that recommits them to the people who tried, to act in contrition and prove that they know they have changes to make. Two months is a whole lifetime and also a blink in the aeons; if we want action, we cannot rest now. We the people, the phrase so proudly proclaimed as a heaven-ordained given, need to stop ceding our power in our governing spaces. Shocked? Breathe through it and make a plan. Who of your current sitting representatives at all levels are you going to write to? Where in your local community are you going to build connections? If you really didn’t see this coming, do you know how to interrogate what it is that you missed? We’re going to watch the pundits and the party heads try to pin a loss on one or several minoritized groups, and for several elections there are certain demographics of voters who very happily dance to that tune and promise threats and violence and retribution to those that they point the finger at. They never look at who has been voting across the aisle from them. Can that be changed? How are you going to look at your communities, or the people you feel in community with, and going forward ask who is missing? Ask yourself what you don’t know, or whose perspective you might not understand? Not in the US? Are you looking at your own communities, your own nations, the similar patterns resounding across the so-called West? Do you know what you will do to change course in your own space?

Mourn, but mourn with action. People live tragedies and apocalypses every day without the ability to just stop and center themselves and their feelings. People every day have to bear the worst of their nightmares and not react, not give in to that weight, and keep moving. To collapse under shock is a kind of exceptionalism, a kind of individualism. To collapse under shock of what might happen with no acknowledgement of what has already been happening, well, who is missing from your world that you get that privilege of space from other people’s realities? From other people’s lack of comfort and safety? Until we learn to work, daily, for the safety and comfort of all, to let go of the idea of incrementalism, we’re stuck. We will stay stuck; like fear-frozen statues that will be worn away by time before they consider changing a position.

How are we going to make the next two months count. How are we going to push our politicians and our communities to be better. To learn from this missed opportunity, which was set up decades ago but arguable whose contemporary nail in the coffin might well have been, among other things, certain decisions made in 2022. Are we going to learn to see the failure points from our places of comfort, if we are lucky enough to have them, to think beyond our own personal and professional survival?

I walk a strange line of being a radical optimist in my teaching and being quite cynical in life; my life experiences have shaped that. I cannot let go of the idea that a better world might yet be dreamed into being and then shaped by us all. I am no longer sure that this dream will be realized by those who currently walk this earth – but I would love to be proven wrong. The temptation is always going to be reactive; I am telling you now that we need to find a new method of thinking proactively. And of course, these are not actually new methods but those that have been utilized in the face of surviving the unthinkable by communities for centuries. Because life will continue, and for many, the shock and grief and disbelief of today will fade. So don’t stop and pause today. Use your feelings, use this sense of horror and hurt and pain to really look around at the world we’ve built, at least in my lifetime. Maybe, if you’re older than me, you can take a longer view, look at the patterns anew. With that understanding, we do not have to cede the world. But I know one thing for certain; if we give in to the freeze, the urge to put our emotions above our collective potential to still drive an impact and to learn from this moment, we will be, once again, ceding a world that might have been to inaction.

So, what are you going to do?