The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Ricky Hernandez
Hey, you, get up. It’s over, some of us lost last Tuesday, and we hate it. But for the sake of those who cannot ... get up! Our need to sulk in the post-mortem that’s anxiety- and anger-filled does nothing for anyone.
Do we think that no one else before us had it this hard? Do we honestly think that what we’re experiencing hasn’t been lived through by generations of Americans before us?
Lincoln faced a country fractured by war and afflicted by the scourge of slavery. FDR watched the world blow itself up to fight fascism, while poverty bludgeoned the American spirit only to see that spirit rise out of the ashes of war and economic disaster. LBJ, a former classroom teacher, had to rise against the abominations of Jim Crow and lift millions of Americans with the wave of the Great Society initiatives we still have today. Barack Obama was the promise foretold by millions who shed blood for us to get to see our first African-American president.
The ugliness has begun to descend upon us and will begin in earnest in just over two months. Get up, because those of us who can need to be there for those who cannot. Think of the women who need to make choices about their own bodies, keeping families together in the face of renewed family separations, helping college students who still need financial aid even when the Department of Education is dismantled.
Our mission for the next four years cannot be about hating “him.” It has to be about doing something for each other.
People don’t need you to tell them what to fear, to know that things are bad, and tha theyt might feel hopeless. The only way out is through, so get up. Stand up straight, wipe away the tears, and know that you and I won’t do this alone. We’re going to stand together.
We need to stop being against something or someone and start being for something. People need to believe in the hope of the future and not be sold a story that we are merely the antithesis of the bad. Get up, each of you must rise, to do what we must because, as Americans, as the children of freedom we have a responsibility to protect that very freedom that has warmed our lives. Get up because the work has not ended, it just begins.
In Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, he emphasized the importance of respecting and upholding the rule of law as a principle to our nation’s stability and freedom. He urged, “Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.” Get up, America, because we have work to do — together.
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