when i was a young and naïve student in college learning to be a historian, i used to sit in class and wonder- did the people living through the grand historic events we studied know they were living through an event that would not only shape history, but completely change the world?
in order to answer the question, let’s backtrack a bit to when back when i was in single digits - it’s not surprising i went into history- i remember innocently asking my mom, how the german people could allow the holocaust to occur. my mom’s response haunted me, “they didn’t know.” how could they not know? how could they not see the trains of people being hauled around the country? how could they not see the ghettos, the never-ending smoke from the camp crematoriums, the mass graves... how could they miss it? the answer, i eventually came to, is that they didn’t. they saw it happening and it happened anyway.
the older i’ve grown the more the world has raced through historic events. i started high school the fall after columbine. columbine. that’s all i have to say and a stillness settles around anyone my age. columbine. that’s when everything started to change for us. school was no longer safe. we were no longer innocents to be protected, we were sacrificial lambs in the name of gun profits.
starting high school in 1999 meant i was a new junior when the twin towers fell. “someone just flew a plane into the pentagon, isn’t that cool?” more than twenty years later and those words uttered by a classmate, the words that informed me of one of the most defining events of my life, still ring through my ears. isn’t that cool, isn’t that cool, isn’t that cool… no. it wasn’t then, it was horrifying, and twenty years later, it isn’t now, with countless more dead and billions of dollars wasted fighting “terror.” the world changed overnight. those fuckers had the audacity to attack our beloved buildings! from my current perspective in 2023, i cannot properly express the pain and absolute disgust i feel thinking about this country’s response to 9/11 in contrast to their response to covid. i have never felt so expendable and unappreciated by my society as i did during the height of covid. capitalism first, we discovered. i digress.
the next time i remember the world standing on end was 2008. i was about to graduate with a bachelors in history and my professor handed me a grad school application and said, don’t bother with the real world right now. sage advice, only the job market never came back for me and those like me. my first job out of college in the us, with a master’s degree in history and a year teaching at the university of paris under my belt plus $60,000 in student loans weighing me down, paid $11 an hour and i felt lucky to be employed at all.
i hesitate to even mention trumpocalyse and all that entailed, but it happened and it sucked, and then covid happened and it sucked more. inflation keeps rising, fucking octogenarians are running (ruining?) the government, there’s a looming climate catastrophe. the worst times are all happening now and one right after another. i can tell my 18-year-old self, conclusively, we know we are living through historic times. So, the question now becomes, what do we, as aware members of society, do? what is our role as citizens of a country so obviously so far off the rails?
it seems like every day we discover yet another injustice perpetrated against the american people; lead in our water, trains derailing, bridges collapsing, police brutalizing us and those in government are deaf to our dying screams as they pump endless money into war in all its forms.
we the people don’t want this. we didn’t vote for this. we want safe schools and healthcare and living wages. we want housing that isn’t a commodity bought and sold on a market, we want food we can afford to be available to all. we want corporations to stop destroying this planet in the name of profit. we want our communities back. we want to be able to do things because we love it and not have to monetize it. we are tired of having to pay for absolutely everything, endlessly, with no possibility of being clear. we are tired of watching billionaires burn money while we’re going bankrupt over medical bills.
so, the question returns- what do we do? i can hear marx in the back of my head, “seize the means of production!” but honestly, i feel the answer is more nuanced in this digital world. first, we need to seize the means of communication. right now, the media is controlled by a consortium of ancient, wealthy white men whose entire goal is to keep the world the way it is. they are making so much money with this configuration. they don’t want anything to change, but they wouldn’t have the stranglehold over the world that they do if the people weren’t being fed their lines. the almighty media must be wrested from the grasp of private ownership. we can shape a future where ‘we the people’ steer the ship of destiny, no longer the ancient white men who have held this world in a stranglehold for so long.
we, the custodians of transformation, must illuminate truths, foster unity through shared narratives, and shape a destiny where the reins of the world are grasped by those who yearn for equity and justice. the narrative shifts—no longer dictated by antiquity but guided by our collective quest for a more equitable, just, and enlightened world.