Words Aren't Enough
They never have been.
I've been struggling lately with the insufficiency of words.
This is a difficult admission for someone who puts thousands of words into the ether every week, but it's true. I've written about the despair and anger I feel here before, but I've consciously avoided making it all that I write about. In part, this is because I believe it's important that the things that give us joy not fall away in the face of hatred. To a larger degree, though, it's because I find words inadequate to the task at hand. We're all just screaming to ourselves, and no social media post or email newsletter is going to change that.
The past ten years have been a stark lesson in how little words matter.
Words weren't enough to convince a majority of American voters that this was possible. There's nothing more worthless than an I-told-you-so, especially when it'll mostly be heard by people who were on the same side of the argument from the beginning, but–dammit, we said this was possible. Endless barrels of proverbial ink were spilled in warning of exactly this, of the endgame possibilities of handing the reins of power to a man with obvious authoritarian tendencies and an utter lack of morals or impulse control. Words weren't enough to convince people what could happen if we gave control of the American government to someone who so clearly has never believed in America.
Scott Hines
Words are nothing without action. Alex Pretti was taking action.
It wasn't big, grand action; like thousands of other Minnesotans, he had taken to the streets to observe and document the actions of an out-of-control federal agency weaponized against the people of his community. It was a small yet concrete action, the necessity of which was already plainly clear after the murder of Renée Good weeks earlier. Without observers like Pretti, the adminstration's lies about the material facts of her death wouldn't be so obviously contradicted by video evidence; without observers like both Pretti and Good, there would be no record of the people being swept off the street without process, cause or reason.
He took action to protect the most vulnerable of his neighbors, and to shield a fellow observer with his body when their right to assemble was met with a barrage of tear gas. For this, he was executed in the street, and if not for others just like him bearing witness, the lies the administration again so quickly pushed out about his death wouldn't be so obviously contradicted that even the most timorous legacy media outlets immediately pushed back.
But he had a gun!
This line of defense is sickly hilarious coming from the same people who've told us for decades that nothing in our democracy was more sacrosant than the Second Amendment, that the bloodshed we've long been forced to bear in our schools and churches and supermarkets and temples and nightclubs and concerts was the price we had to pay for freedom, the price we had to pay to protect ourselves should we ever need to resist a tyrannical government. Alex Pretti was a legal gun owner with a concealed-carry permit exercising that constitutional right, and anyone with eyes not clouded by hatred or lust for power can see that he never pulled his gun, that his possession of it had nothing to do with why he was murdered in the street by ICE agents.
We're a few months away from the 250th birthday of this nation, a milestone that will surely be perverted by dictatorial pageantry in service of this unworthy man, should his obviously-failing health carry him that far. For 237 years of that time, that nation has been governed by a Constitution, and for 234 and change, we the people have been supposedly under the protection of a Bill of Rights. We are taught from grade school on that those words are powerful, almost magical; that those words are what holds this nation together.
Those words aren't enough.
There have been dark days in this country before. There have been long stretches of those 250 years where the government hasn't served all its peoples, times where the power of the state was turned violently against the vulnerable, on the supposed other. It's never been more clear, though, that there's no magic in those penstrokes fading on parchment under bulletproof glass, that they don't mean a thing without action. If any bravery existed within our government, that action would come from the elected officials who do still have the power to stop this man and his goons. I could put that wish in one hand and watch my other fill up faster, as the saying goes.
Until that day comes, if it ever does, words won't be enough without people like Alex Pretti and Renée Good. They're not enough without the Minnesotans taking to the streets by the tens of thousands, braving the bitter cold to stand for justice. They're not enough without the average American, the nurses and teachers and restaurant workers and mail carriers, the mothers and fathers and friends and neighhors standing in defense of each other.
Standing up to say that we believe those words still matter.
–Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)
