Finding Our Sumud

On Trump's first two weeks in office

It’s been a pretty disorienting and disheartening two weeks, no?

The first week of President Trump’s second term in office I was away on vacation. But even vacation couldn’t shield me from the news alerts about what the president was up to in his first week in office, and it was hard to turn off all the alarm bells going off in my brain, or to stop myself from making a mental list of all the things I would need to attend to when I got back to work.

The second week of Trump’s second term in office, I tried to jump back into work and instead found myself completely taken out of commission by a nasty bout of the flu. And so I had little to do but take in the news of one horrible executive order after another, feeling particularly powerless, given my mostly horizontal state. Being sick also prevented me from attending an LGBTQ lobby day at the Indiana State House, something I desperately wanted to attend, so that got me feeling particularly down and out.

There is much to feel discouraged about, including an incredibly cynical executive order that is supposedly aimed at combatting antisemitism, but is in reality a thinly veiled attack on the Palestinian solidarity movement. The liberal Jewish community should take note of this, and wonder why it is that they are seemingly the only minority group receiving “protections” from the Trump administration while others are targeted and threatened.

And yet, nothing we are experiencing here can even begin to compare to the horror that the people of Gaza have lived through over the past 15 months. Yet they are somehow finding the strength to carry on. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are walking to their homes in northern Gaza. Many of them are reuniting with family members they were separated from when they were forced to flee many months ago. Video footage shows loved ones running into each other’s arms with great joy. Interviews reveal the plans they have to build tents on the ruins of their flattened homes, because they are determined to endure.

If they can endure genocide, surely we can endure Trump’s assault on our values. Don’t get me wrong, his agenda is dangerous and will do real harm. It already is. But those of us engaged in the struggle for civil and human rights for all people can’t give up now just because we feel overwhelmed. We may need to stop for a beat, every now and then, and take care of ourselves. We may need to find ways to plug into communities that can support us, that can help us carry on when we get discouraged. These next four years will be harder than the first four, I have no doubt. We must be more strategic in our response, in the way we take in information, in the way we act. And that may take a minute for us to figure out. But this is a marathon, not a sprint.

So friends, I guess my point is, be gentle with yourselves in these next few weeks. Get yourself grounded. Center yourself in the values that motivate you. Connect with your communities. Then, get ready to channel your own sumud— your own steadfast commitment to carry on. It will take all of us, united in community and solidarity. It will take all of us.