Take Heart: In Social Justice, Victory Is Never Permanent

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. ~ Unknown

Some truths are comforting not because they tell us what we want to hear, but because they liberate us from misconceptions that had been stealing our peace of mind.

This week, as I grapple with the heavy weight of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, I keep returning to such a truth. It’s from an article in the UU World magazine by Canadian blogger Liz James, and it reads:

We don’t fight under the goal of a just world forever. We fight under the goal of a more just world, and the chance for the next generation to fight again.

These words are especially meaningful to me this week.

Because this is a blog about civility, I should pause to say that this post is about perseverance in the face of defeat, and the defeat I’m talking about is one felt on the political left. But James’s words might be meaningful to anyone struggling with despair in civic life, regardless of their bias. I’m just writing here from my own.

Like many others, I do feel a loss this week, in particular as a woman. I can’t remember the days before Roe v. Wade, or the eras when women first entered universities and workforces, or the day we won the right to vote. Growing up in late-twentieth-century America, while I’ve always understood that there’s still a fair distance to travel, I thought certain basic rights would forever be mine: voting, working, education, and control over whether and when to have children.

In the last couple years, as someone who now relies on immunosuppressive medication that would be toxic to an unborn child, that latter right has taken on new meaning. I never want to have to choose between my own safety and that of my baby. But now, that is the calculation I would face if ever forced to carry a baby to term.

And yet, after Kavanaugh’s confirmation—a decision made overwhelmingly by men, over the heart-wrenching protests of a credible woman, and during a presidency that feels stolen from a highly qualified woman—I’m now reading that it’s only a matter of time before this right is taken from me and other women after all. It all feels like a giant, slow-motion leap backwards.

And we thought we’d made so much progress.

But my thinking has partly been wrong. I see this now, and the truth of it is strangely comforting. Although progress has undeniably happened for women in the past century, such progress is never guaranteed to be permanent.

As James reminds us in her piece, battles won by previous generations can be lost anew. Presuming permanence only leads to complacency, and to despair when a win is overturned.

We who live now are not entitled to keep all the rights our predecessors won for us. Instead, we must recognize that democracy requires an ongoing fight, ongoing work, ongoing conversation.

This is one of the prices of our imperfect system. (It was Winston Churchill who said that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”) Because it’s the people who rule, it is we who must safeguard our power. Each new generation must carry on this work or risk losing ground to other powerful forces—wealthy interests, hostile countries, systemic oppression, patriarchy.

This isn’t exactly a happy truth. It’s not what my generation was raised to hear after coming of age in the peaceful, prosperous 90s—at least, not those of us who were white and sheltered. But it is a weighty truth. Understanding it involves a bearing up, a squaring of the shoulders and a stiffening of the spine.

We do have more work ahead, for women as well as in many other civic realms. There will always be more work. That is, as James says, what previous generations truly won for us: a more just world and the chance to fight again.

This thought gives me patience in the wake of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Impatience is also vital to activism—but with this loss, I take a sturdy, abiding comfort in understanding that both loss and victory are always temporary. The important thing is to refrain from despair, find nourishment for the long haul, and keep the work going.

So take heart, take a breath, and square those shoulders. Seek comfort in each other and practice self-care. As midterms approach, show up however you can.

And above all else, vote, vote, vote.