Pathways to Power
Sometimes, I think about my grandfather. What I remember of him is that he was a proud, solitary, no-nonsense kind of man. Like an old lion watching his pride. He rarely spoke. I remember he drank whiskey, often alone, in front of the television watching documentaries about World War 2. His favorite were videos about the air war. My earliest memories of him involved silent and contemplative witness of bomber fleets over the skies of Europe and Japan. No one asked, and he never explained. He belonged to a generation that did not explain themselves. I never even knew what he did until I was older.
Later in life my grandfather suffered from cerebral palsy - a debilitating nerve disorder. While I was overseas during the Iraq war, his condition took a turn for the worst. I received a rare morning phone call on the commander’s tactical phone as my unit was getting ready to convoy into Iraq, on the eve of the invasion. My grandfather had died. I didn't know him all that well, and I felt guilty. I took that guilt with me into the desert, and I thought about him then: all the things he must have seen and participated in in his life, the poverty and the sacrifice. How history asked so much of him and his generation, and how they responded in kind, asking for nothing in return.
One of the perks of working in military communications is you are often close to command with a fair amount of free time. The unit would sometimes let us use the satellite phone to dial back home for personal calls, so later that month I took advantage and called my mom to ask about him. I was interested in what he did when his nation needed him to go to war. I wanted to know more about a man I barely knew.
He never served in uniform. During the war he received a draft deferment because he was an educated and skilled industrial engineer. He built Turbo-superchargers for airplane engines at the General Electric Plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. These were sophisticated, precision manufactured devices made without the benefit of computers. These devices required careful calibration and machining to perform their function - compressing air at the correct pressure to allow for high altitude flight using piston engines. They are small and invisible features that enabled fleets of these mighty planes to do the bloody work required to liberate a continent from tyranny.
He ran the production lines, 12 hours a day, six and sometimes seven days a week. It was back-breaking work with ambitious production targets and setbacks. The ravenous appetite of the American war machine was fed primarily with hard labor, luck, and skill. It was brutally difficult and precise work done under impossible deadlines.
The Second World War defined the destiny and identity of an entire generation of Americans. Everything about our grandparents can be understood in the context of that struggle. Though he was a quiet man, I came to appreciate later that he was driven by a sense of duty. He believed doing the work is more important than talking about the work. He was committed to a cause like none other in human history, before or since. I later realized he watched those Documentaries because he was proud of the work he did. One fourth of the superchargers in the sky passed under his careful eye in that factory. He was watching his own work crest the heavens and bring light where there was only darkness before.
I sometimes wish he would put in the effort to develop more of a relationship. He was gruff, and I was young and intimidated. There are lessons I could have learned that unfortunately passed with him and I regret that absence. I’m poorer having not realized who I was descended from. I think a lot about him now, and his generation of Americans. The world we now live in, with all its flaws, but also its achievements, owes much to the quiet labor of millions of ordinary Americans who believed in something larger than themselves.
My grandfather was a good man, but he was only an ordinary one—one among millions of his generation. Though they spent their youth in horrific poverty and the prime of their life fighting an existential war, they did not know how extraordinary their time and place in history was. They just did the best they could in their imperfect human way. To this day, their sacrifice is honored.
It can be difficult to suss out the cruel tides of history when you are swimming in its black water, but there is something dangerous happening in America today. My grandfather did his duty when his nation called for his service and his sacrifice. So did an entire generation of Americans. The question that keeps me up at night is how I can do the same, to be worthy of the legacy we inherited. How can we, as ordinary people, do our duty like our grandparents’ generation did?
So, what is our Pathway to Power? The No Kings movement exists in all corners of this great nation. It marches along the streets of worn cobblestone. It stands in the fields of amber waves of grain. It gathers in the great squares in uncountable numbers and it screams a demand - that our rights, as citizens of a free nation - ought to be protected. It is a quintessential American movement, made up of our best from all walks of life committed to the simple project that all human beings within our borders and beyond are entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
It’s been a difficult year for most of us in this movement. The news is always some new horror because we understand the implications better than most. The divisions within the opposition to MAGA are surmountable, but they are deep and real and require patience and energy to manage. The art of politics is hard and the sacrifices all of us have been required to make in time, energy, and money, has taken its toll. Some of us struggle with estrangement from our families. Some deal with illness or death that stress an already difficult struggle. We worry incessantly about the economic damage, the wars that may turn into something larger and more dangerous. We are assaulted by insults and desecrations daily in our social media feeds. Most of all, we know we are being tested by the crushing weight of history and we fear that we will be found wanting. Each sacrifice represents a kind of trade off—a debt that we incur to our loved ones and our future—to ensure a prosperous future for all of us.
We are at the beginning of this struggle - we are not at the end. America is now at war with Iran due to a toxic mix of hubris, idiocy, and the religious zeal translated into corruption and whispered into Trump’s ear. The Strait of Hormuz has reportedly been filled with explosive mines and with it, 20% of the lifeblood of the world economy, crude oil, has stalled. The world trading system is starting to break, and the people at the helm have not demonstrated an inch of concern for the second and third order effects of the decisions they make. The world my grandfather helped to build is fracturing and transforming into something new and more frightening.
Trump has recently ordered a blockade of the Island of Cuba, and experts are on the record stating he intends to attempt to topple the government. This would be the third attempt at regime change in as many months. Trump, in his foolishness and carelessness, is plunging the world into violent conflict absent any of the institutional and human guard rails that restrained him the first time.
On American soil, the Administration's Gestapo engages in daily outrages against citizens and non-citizen alike. Flush with money, DHS is now constructing gulags sufficient to imprison hundreds of thousands of people indefinitely, and you are a fool if you do not think he won’t try to use it against his political enemies. Daily, the assaults on cherished freedoms like speech continue, while the economy groans under the strain of random tariffs, capital flight, and the instability the administration is creating through its actions.
It can be hard to find hope when these titanic forces of history are at work, when ordinary people are confronted with extraordinary circumstances. The full accounting of the damage has yet to arrive at our shores, but hints of catastrophe now haunt our psyches.
During his troubled time, my grandfather worked in a factory and built engine components. That was what America needed at the time, and he did it without complaint or braggadocio. His name is not on any buildings and he did not distinguish himself in any way beyond the ordinary labor of his trade. He simply performed with competence and intensity until the deed was done.
At No Kings you will have the opportunity to learn from the many organizations doing the work required to protect this nation. At each table you will gain insight and friends, and perhaps an opportunity to do good will appeal to you. You may find work that matches your skillset, your capacity and your temperament. Our combined contributions, each on its own humble but given in good faith to a great project of American renewal and redemption will become the cement that holds our civilization together while the storm passes.
We have succeeded already at the first step in the long march that will be required to achieve victory against American Fascism. Our sacrifice was worth it—because in one week's time, the largest protest in the history of America will have been planned, executed, and launched by ordinary citizens from all walks of life. We use that energy over the spring, summer, and fall to grow this movement to legendary proportions, to ensure democracy survives the midterm elections, and to assert our collective will to ensure a better future for all of us.
This is our Pathway to Power. Find your place, your anchor, your community, and embed within it with all your strength. The most powerful thing the generations before us did during troubled times was to bind together as one to endure the troubles. Ordinary people in extraordinary times can achieve truly awesome things if they work together.
Maybe one day when I am an old man, I will watch a documentary about this era of history—and feel a silent pride for our achievements. When the young and the fearful who don’t understand why I am a patriot will wonder why I spend so much time reflecting on a distant past. I probably won’t be able to explain it to them either.
Now is not the time to rest. The power to make history is in our grasp and it is the power to break a tyrant before he is crowned.
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