Excerpt
The Time Is Now
My friend Kevin Fong, who is a healer and weaver, once shared a story with me about Grace Lee Boggs, a Detroit-based Asian American activist and scholar. At the start of community meetings, Grace would begin with a question: “What time is it on the clock of the world?” When I reflect on that question, I often have the palpable and sometimes urgent feeling that the time is ripe, the time is now, the time is immediate for social change.
We are living through a time that demands our attention and requires our consistent action. People around the world are confronting wars, climate disasters, and economic inequity at unprecedented levels. Here in the United States, we face an almost daily barrage of attacks and restrictions on the rights, bodies, and livelihoods of people. The violent insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021 came on the heels of a polarizing presidential election that followed four years of bans, walls, and raids against communities. The global pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of public systems and institutions that we have long relied upon, from education to housing to public health. The visible presence of white nationalist groups is spurring fear. Transgender youth feel unsafe in schools and on streets. Climate change is a continual threat to everyone on the planet.
As I finalize this guide, we are in the midst of a six-week period that includes the massacre of Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed young children and teachers, an economic crisis leaving many people unable to pay their monthly bills, a mounting crisis of homelessness and mental illness related to the pandemic, and the evisceration by the United States Supreme Court of the right of people to make reproductive choices. All of these overlapping crises stem from similar root causes: anti-Black racism, imperialism and colonialism, extractive capitalist models, and histories of oppressive treatment towards communities. People over generations have been addressing and eliminating many of these root causes, and there is still much more work to be done. I am often reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about “the urgency of now,” a phrase that is in conversation with Grace Lee Boggs’s question about the time on the clock of the world. In his famous 1967 speech on Vietnam, Dr. King said: “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.”
How can each of us contend with the urgency of this time with effectiveness, sustainability, and strong connections?
How can we embody grace, joy, and accountability even when the external forces of division and inequity are relentless?
Being part of social change is one of the most important ways we can connect with each other at a time when society insists upon compartmentalizing us into silos of identity, thought, political alignment, and geography. When we engage in social change, we resist these silos and choose connection and solidarity. Together, we can change unfair and unjust systems, increase access and opportunity, share knowledge, celebrate and express joy, and create pathways to sharing power.