There’s nothing passive about hope

There were protests everywhere that summer, all over the country, all over Ohio. I reported from marches and rallies in Columbus but then focused on what was happening in small towns and in rural communities. It was so unexpected.

Throughout June and on into July 2020, I went to protests in Lancaster, Zanesville, Newark, and many other small towns – almost 20 in total.

There were so many young people.

A boy with a sign that read “Justice for George” stood by a playground in Millersport (pop. 978) in Fairfield County, joined by his mom and siblings.

In Coshocton, a man in his late 20s told me that he should be at home stoned on his couch, but instead, he said with amazement, he must be on the streets protesting racism – again.

A protest I reported on in Mount Vernon was overwhelmingly led by young people. There were more than 500 people marching around the square when a group of 50 or so broke off towards the highway. They wanted more people to see them, they said. They told me they never imagined being a part of such a bold display of defiance and protest in Mount Vernon.

Another frenetic, on-the-street reporting conversation with a group of high school friends stands out. They told me how they found out about the protest, how they had been doing a lot of research on policing and violence. They seemed smart and engaged, locked in. Several asked me about what I was doing, how I came to be a journalist, and what I was learning at all the protests.

I’ve been thinking a lot about those young people this week because they seemed so eager, so full of hope. Indeed, there was a lot of hope in the streets despite the pandemic. I don’t know where those young people are now – working, college, moved on – but I’m hoping they haven’t given up on this 250-year-old project.

Even in Mount Vernon, in the past few months, there has been an ICE raid. There were masked ICE agents on the streets of Columbus and Chicago and Charlotte. And Renee Good and Keith Porter were shot and killed by ICE agents.

I had been to Mount Vernon before, while reporting a story about a man who had died in police custody. I learned then that Frederick Douglass had given a speech there in 1877 – the same year a political compromise ended Reconstruction and ushered in a wave of violence, segregation, and voter suppression against Black people in the South and across the United States. But Douglass defended the ideals of the United States again and again, even when reality showed that the nation had far from realized them.

In his speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” he said, “I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

When Douglass died in 1895, the Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling established separate but equal and ushered in the Jim Crow era. The same year, at least 113 Black people were lynched – and the practice had not reached its zenith. He went to his grave knowing that the justice he had worked for, and achieved, was being undone.

Douglass was our nation’s orator and scribe of hope. But there’s nothing passive about what he offers. It’s determined and relentless. In his memoir, Narrative, he works day after day to learn to read. And in a fight with a man who was supposed to break him, he grits his teeth and finds untapped reserves of strength in a moment where all seemed lost, where it seemed he was defeated.

Douglass writes, “from whence came the spirit I don’t know – I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected.”

They expect you to give up when they “flood the zone,” marshalling chaos and outrage to divert your gaze. Bullies expect submission. 

Focus: She turned the steering wheel away from the ICE agent. Fentanyl is not coming from Venezuela. Greenland is not ours to take. A human cannot be illegal. The Declaration of Independence says that all should live with dignity and human rights.

They don’t expect you to keep coming to the streets.

But you must.