Inspiration to begin the writing and research project that I have since come to call Unsettling has a few origins. Some are quite personal and long-standing, which I’ll discuss in later posts. But the most recent, and the one that really got things rolling, was the political discourse immediately after the presidential election in November.
Biden and Harris delivered their acceptance speeches on the night of Saturday, November 7th. As was expected, Biden spoke about national unity and bipartisan cooperation, echoing themes from his tweets that day:
A quick scroll through the responses to these tweets, which I don't particularly recommend, is a general representation of how low online "discussion" regularly sinks.
In my own social media bubble, the memes and quick takes on Biden's call for healing likened it to befriending neo-Nazis, or maintained the drumbeat I have heard in left-leaning circles throughout my entire adult life, the one that equates the two major parties and denounces the complicity of all in the inequities and atrocities of justice so well known in America. It's not that there aren't slivers or even giant shards of truth in such points. But the dismissal of calls for healing – writing it off solely as a political ploy or denouncing anyone who suggests it is needed – made me sad.
For we need healing in this country; we need it so very, very much. There are centuries of harm for which we must seek repair and healing in order to have the political transformations that many of us desire. Yet in November, what could have been a moment for a collective discussion of what genuine healing looks like denigrated swiftly into catty call-outs. It was a strategic moment quickly lost: rather than seizing the opportunity to define what healing might take, how we might make genuine repair for our long, violent history and aid in the transformation of the hearts and minds of those who resist such restoration, we satisfied ourselves with cheap laughs and shallow smugness. By Monday the 9th I was dissatisfied enough that I did what is a rare thing for me: I drafted an op-ed and sent it out without any dithering over the matter. A quick search after my first draft alerted me to at least one attempt to use this important moment for something greater: the Quinalt Indian Nation’s Fawn Sharp, in collaboration with tribal adviser Matthew Randazzo V, had a piece that same day calling for the new administration to establish truth and reconciliation commissions. I was grateful for their example and quickly revised my piece to lift up their thoughts before I sent it out to a number of well-known newspapers.
It's not surprising that no one picked it up, but the dearth of productive commentary in the following week made it clear to me how much louder this particular conversation needs to be. My hope is that I might be one additional node in the broader circuitry helping amplify various messages, that they might reach above the general media din. Maybe national outlets aren’t going to publish my op-ed, but I can still make some effort towards shifting the ecosystem of ideas in the small corners of the internet universe I inhabit. If we do pull off something like the passage of H.R. 40, or the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission as Sharp called for, we need a vigorous and rigorous discussion in advance about what acceptable policy action might be, and grassroots organizing around those ideas, to be strong enough to actually win them.
All this becomes more essential because there are some real opportunities coming down the line. With Deb Haaland as Biden's pick for the Department of the Interior, and growing momentum behind movements such as #LandBack, there's an opening for national conversation and policy change on indigenous issues that we have not seen in sometime. Yet as Nick Estes has noted, Haaland is entering a minefield, and there are questions about how well she can integrate broader calls for racial justice in her work at the Interior given some of her past decisions (Estes cites Haaland’s co-sponsoring of legislation that denies housing protections for Freedmen.)
Which is why now is the time for those of us in the grassroots to come in. To pay attention to happenings that might not garner major news coverage, as stories about calls for indigenous sovereignty or matters at the Department of Interior often don't. To continue to increase the support for reparations to Black Americans for slavery. And to make it clear, under the administration of a president who continues to make calls for healing, that we do want it, but that it might look very, very different from what he imagines. When he says healing, does he hear #LandBack? When he says healing, does he think, not just H.R. 40, but the subsequent legislation that implements its findings? Not yet he doesn't. My hope is that as many of us play our parts well, someday he will. Because #HealingMeansReparations.
For the curious, here’s that op-ed from November:
Healing Means Truth, Justice, and Reparations
By Meg Wade
Only a few days after the presidential election was called in favor of Joe Biden, appeals for 'healing' and 'unity' began, followed almost instantaneously by critiques equating such language with notions of forgiving, forgetting, and moving on. The discourse is disappointing, pivoting into the multi-vectored polarization (liberal vs. conservative, progressive vs. liberal, etc.) that has dragged on for too long, leaving those who are civically engaged exhausted and encouraging the unengaged, who remain wary of our public and political institutions, to continue their abstention.
Much of this could be avoided were we to gain collective clarity on what 'healing' actually means. Healing does not mean that those who have engaged in harm of others are allowed to deny that harm and resume their same old actions. Would we consider it 'healing' if someone were mugged on the street, and our public officials called for the victim to offer forgiveness before the stolen goods were returned, apology offered, guarantee against future assaults promised, and any necessary medical treatment rendered? No, we would not say the person harmed in this situation had much of an opportunity for healing.
Healing means truth, and it means justice, and it means collective return of what has been unfairly taken from others: yes, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but also general opportunity, peace, the full gamut of human and civil rights, and most of all here in the U.S., the return of land to those from whom it was stolen. It is time for the U.S. to pursue truth and reconciliation commissions as has been done in other countries.
Fawn Sharp, President of the Quinalt Indian Nation, in collaboration with tribal adviser Matthew Randazzo V, made this same point Monday in the Seattle-based Crosscut. They urge the new administration to "take a full-court press approach and utilize every investigatory and disciplinary tool available to the federal government to reveal the truth, devise effective solutions, bring the corrupt to justice and restore the constitutional balance between the three branches of government." And while they rightfully start their call for reconciliation by emphasizing the genocide, violence and oppression inflicted upon Tribal Nations and Black communities, they also note that:
Truth and reconciliation is not simply a racial matter. Working-class white families are also economically and politically disenfranchised by the inhuman corporate machinery that controls our institutions and toxifies our lands and food, preventing vastly popular reforms like Medicare for All, drug decriminalization, law enforcement violence de-escalation strategies and action on climate change from gaining national momentum.
Truth and reconciliation, genuine healing, will benefit us all. In order for that to transpire, however, the incoming Biden and Harris administration must not conflate healing with forgetting. But progressive critics, rather than simply attacking the new administration on this point, would do better to acknowledge that we do need healing, but of a genuine, collective kind we have yet to see the president-elect embrace. Healing is not two neighbors who are members of different political parties maintaining icy cordiality for the next four years. Healing is hard: it is telling the truth; it is finding new routes for justice; it is finding the possibility for those who have engaged in harm to step back into their full humanity and relationships with others; and it must be, in this country, and honest conversation about how we make genuine reparations.
Many of us are ready for that conversation, and for all the accompanying action that must follow. And we are doing what we can, at the local level, from paying "real rent" to supporting local Black organizing for justice in our communities and more. Yet this is a national, not merely a local, task. For that we need a national stage and national infrastructure, set by the new administration. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: you are calling for healing; show us that you really mean it. If you wish for us to heal, help us repair.