Why do some of us stick with it, continue to organize and take action for a better world? The longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve come to believe that for many of us, children are, at root, the primary reason.
Long-time peace and justice activist Daniel Berrigan concluded one of his most well-known poems, “Some,” with these words:
Why do you stand?” they were asked, and
“Why do you walk?”
“Because of the children,” they said, and
“Because of the heart, and
“Because of the bread,”
“Because the cause is
the heart’s beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread.”
I remember how, about 15 years ago, the thought of my two nieces, at the time ages 1 and 4, Abby and Ellie, was what allowed me to overcome my fear of heights and to scale a ladder 25 up from the ground and sit on a narrow ledge for four hours as part of a 2006 climate protest. The last words of the poem I wrote after that action were: ”Abby and Ellie, children everywhere, future generations, need us now.”
And I remember reading, somewhere some time ago, about an African American young person asking a grandparent who had been active in the deep South fighting brutal Jim Crow segregation how they were able to take the risks which came with doing so. The grandparent’s answer: I kept thinking of you and the world you would be living in.