For 47 years, every single year, I've dedicated time to organizing, civic education, and activism. After the 2016 election, I sat myself down to chart a new course. For months I spent three hours every morning searching for direction. I wrote several hundred pages in my journal and read constantly, pushing myself along. At long last, my course took shape and form.

America is in a very dark place and rapidly moving towards an even darker future. All we seem able to do is fight, argue and scream into the black hole engulfing us. Fear and hate is dragging us deeper and deeper into the dark. Well, the future is always a dark place for a reason.

Simply put, the future does not exist. We create the future one second at a time.

Its time to stop reviewing our past mistakes. Now is the time for organizers to start analyzing, reviewing, dissecting, and understanding our victories and successes. Our adversaries were gigantic and we were little and few in number. Our victories were hard won, few and far between and so small hardly anyone noticed - and yet, we succeeded. We gained an inch and held our ground. Anyone who complains, can go straight to fucking hell.

This year I've read hundreds of essays by new activists condemning, criticizing, even mocking old grassroots organizers for letting all this happen. They plan to do a whole lot better than us! They are busy with necessary work - writing rules of engagement, working on language and setting up blogs, websites, mailing lists and organizations. And bless them all for putting out fires – literally and figuratively. I leave the young and brave to their work.

To all my old friends, the old organizers, activists and volunteers of America, I leave you with this quote:

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist.

Children already know that dragons exist.

Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

― G.K. Chesterton

Folks, we need to start telling our stories.