Call it unity, call it opposition, go on, call it an anti-Trump rally. But call it out. For what it is. Not normal. Not equivalent. Not in line, certainly, with the values of Oak Park and River Forest.
Yes, Donald Trump is the president-elect. Voters in our region of America, together with the electoral college, made it so. He deserves the respect of the office. All else must be earned.
The hate-speech and the fear-mongering, the racism and the misogyny, Donald Trump owns those. He spent 18 months spewing endless lies and bald division. It is on tape. It was not misunderstood. And he doesn’t get to ignore the consequences of it. And already there are consequences. Street-level hate crimes. The ascendency, from under a rock, of white supremacy rhetoric, of Confederate flags at Veterans Day parades. The preposterous appointment of an alt-right flamethrower to a leading White House post.
This is different. This is not Barack Obama winning the White House in 2008. This is not George W. Bush being gifted the White House in 2000. This is different.
Americans in the streets to protest is not sour grapes. Oak Parkers marching on Harrison Street or gathering in Scoville Park is not a failure to accept reality. The reality is stunningly, appallingly before our eyes.
Acquiescence is not required under the Constitution.
Oak Park need not apologize for voting for Clinton over Trump by 85.54% to 9.5%, River Forest by 69.91% to 23.69%. Those are clear-eyed votes based on true values.
Those values of diversity, welcome, inclusion, active debate and sometimes a little fight, have never been more important. Our villages need to remain unified in living out those values in our individual lives as neighbors and friends and as a community in the choices we make about sustainability, criminal justice and public safety, economic diversity, racial diversity, academic equity, connections to Austin.
Last week, Carol Kelley, the superintendent of the District 97 schools, wrote a letter to parents and the Oak Park community (see Viewpoints, page 39). She wrote about the presidential election and the response she felt ricocheting across the district.
She wrote, “What has emerged for me is a renewed belief in the importance of unity. … unity that rallies our community around the virtues of diversity, tolerance and mutual respect. … It is also the belief in unity that helps drive our district’s vision to create a positive learning environment for all students that is equitable, inclusive and focused on the whole child.”
Well said.
Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb described his door being shut to Donald Trump but not locked. He wrote, “The burden is on you [President-elect Trump] to show us that you can be a president for all of us, a president for all Americans.”
Ray Johnson, the former Oak Park village trustee whose work took him to New York a couple of years back, is as ardent a Democrat as I know. He is an activist who spends the hours needed working for the candidates he supports — most recently and intently Hillary Clinton. I follow Ray on Facebook and noted that last week after the stunning election result, after the Midwest went largely for Trump, and Ray is a native of small town Michigan, he said it was time to get out of his bubble.
Also good advice and always applicable to Oak Park. We revel in our 80+ percent turnout for Democrats in elections. We burrow in to the comforts of our progressive idyll. But we make a mistake if we too readily categorize all Trump backers as Steve Bannon protégés in the white supremacist movement. Too many are, that’s right. But most are disaffected and scared by a political system most of us would agree is bollixed. If we’re sincere about inclusion, if we want to build an alternative to the legitimate worries of Trump’s authoritarian talk, then we need to do more listening than it takes to mount an anti-Trump rally in Oak Park.
