My plan, so far

David Rosenberg
3 min readNov 13, 2016

My former colleague Brittany Packnett — who inspires daily with her leadership on a personal and national scale — recently asked her white friends to share our plans in light of last week’s election results. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Some is new, some is not. None of it is enough. But it is my plan, and I hope it is one small set of contributions toward ensuring that, as Dr. King taught, the moral arc of the universe truly bends toward justice.

  1. Stare down hatred. It’s not enough for me to know “that’s not OK” or even to teach my children right from wrong. AIDS activists taught us that Silence = Death. I vow not to be silent in the face of hateful acts.
  2. Shine a light on the evil — and the good — among us. The evidence of hatred is out there. Examples of government stepping beyond its limits shows up regularly. I commit to continue calling attention to these actions. And yes, this often means on social media. Some call it “slacktivism”; I call it teaching and learning.
  3. Never get used to the evil. At some point in this election campaign, I think people got used to the idea that the Republican candidate was astonishingly awful — to the point where they just weren’t astonished by it anymore. The shock value wore off. I vow to check my own passivity in the face of hatred and evil, and to do my part to help others maintain their sense of right and wrong even when wrong seems commonplace.
  4. Show up. Nothing about this election changes who I am or what I believe in. It does make it more important than ever that I make my presence, my feelings and my opinions known. There will be more rallies. There will be more campaigns. I vow to be a part of them.
  5. Seek to understand. Hatred won the day last week. But history tells us that hatred rears its ugly head most prominently and most dangerously when people are hurting — then they look for someone else to blame. I will seek to understand the underlying forces that made the ground fertile for hate in this election campaign. Lots has been written recently (books by J.D. Vance and Arlie Russell Hochschild come to mind); my starting place is George Packer’s The Unwinding.
  6. Support the next generation of leaders. It says a lot our liberal favorites start with the Baby Boomers Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Who will be our next generation of progressive leaders? I’m on the lookout both for those potential leaders and finding real, tangible ways in which I can support them.
  7. Wear my opinions with pride. During the campaign, I wondered if I should just make a t-shirt that said “White Guys for Hillary” and hang out in a coffee shop in some swing county for a while, just to show that we white guys could in fact be With Her. (I didn’t, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered.) I will wear my heart on my sleeve — whether that’s a safety pin, a rainbow flag, a t-shirt with an anti-racism slogan — with joy and confidence.
  8. Practice love and compassion. It is easy to look beyond ourselves in our pursuit of answers right now. But I also need to ensure that my actions embody what I want to see in the world around me. That means practicing love and compassion — with my family, my colleagues, my neighbors, my friends, and yes, with people who are still strangers to me.

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