I resist “us and them” thinking in my own spirit and I urge you to resist it in yours. That is no small ask in a time when so much that we affirm is under attack: Children dying in cages on our border, reproductive justice hanging by a thread, massive transfers of wealth to the rich, our election systems compromised not only by Russian influence but by voter suppression and gerrymandering…

But it was a report this morning of one more “small” affront that has me steaming.

The image of Harriet Tubman was scheduled to replace that of Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. This was an Obama era decision to honor the former slave, woman, abolitionist, “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, advocate for women’s suffrage.

Treasury Secretary Steve Manuchin, yesterday, announced that those plans will be put on hold until at least 2026.

The treasury Department is apparently far too busy NOT responding to lawful subpoena’s for our President’s tax returns to devote energy to moving forward…

Actually Manuchin claims that the department’s energy must be focused on preventing counterfeiting. We have heard so many reports about counterfeiting recently…

The fact that our current President has a bromance with Andrew Jackson, that he has hung Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office…has nothing to do with the decision of course.

Right.

Slave owning Jackson orchestrated the theft of Native American land east of the Mississippi and sent the Native American population marching west on the Trail of Tears. What does his image on our currency say to us about who we are?

Symbols matter.

But it is the smallness of this decision that hooked me this morning. This insistence on clinging to the narrative that would lock us in the past, even in its smallest elements, is a reminder of just how threatening who we really are must be.

Those currently in political power should feel threatened. They know that their desperate rear guard action will fail in the end. Change has already come.

We are the change they fear. Our embodied presence makes them tremble. We need to understand the power that is ours.

Blessings,

Bill