Children, lift up your voice

I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the world last night and sat up writing a blog. I had literally just finished the draft of this when the earth started shaking and blue lights lit up the sky

I couldn’t work out whether it was a sign to publish or not. I could use a distraction though, so I’m going with publish. Warning though this is possibly one of the more emo things I have written

I know my readers come from all walks of life, from all over the globe and with many different points of view. I like that. I like that the readers I have met – be they sailors, mental health advocates, butchers, bakers or candlestick makers – all have their own experiences, their own stories to tell. I like that we can listen to each other and challenge each other, disagree with but still respect each other. That’s really important to me.

That’s one of the reasons why I very deliberately stay away from overtly political posts.

But just watching the fallout over the last few days, the hurt and the hate I am seeing on social media, I feel that silence is complicity.

What shocked me more than the result of the US elections was the immediate aftermath. Not the protests, but the hate.

People being assaulted, threatened with rape and told to go home at knife point because of their colour, their religion, their sexuality. College kids who think it’s okay to put on blackface and pose in front of a confederate flag. And these aren’t just isolated incidents. I’m hearing about it everywhere.

At first I saw this whole situation as a bit of a twisted joke – and yeah, I took part in the Trump memes. But this is real, this is ugly and it frightens me.

And yes, I know there are checks and balances. I know the system will protect itself and that the world really isn’t going to end.

That is not the point. The point is this is happening. All this hate. It’s like a lid has been lifted and people now have an excuse.

Looking at it dispassionately and can see how this happened. I can see why people voted the way they did. The disaffected, the distrustful, the people who are hurting financially, who haven’t had the support they needed from their government. People who have been suffering and whose voices haven’t been heard for too long. But you can’t tell me this is what all these people wanted. This hate, this fear? And the people who didn’t vote because they felt they had no real choice. I can’t believe this is what they want. I wont.

It struck me while listening to Nick Cave’s O’Children yesterday why this bothers me so much.

To me this is a song about the previous generation right royally screwing things up.

Forgive us now for what we’ve done
It started out as a bit of fun
Here, take these before we run away
The keys to the gulag…

…We have the answer to all your fears
It’s short, it’s simple, it’s crystal clear
It’s round about and it’s somewhere here
Lost amongst our winnings

The chorus feels a little hopeful though, which saves it for me (though knowing Nick Cave it’s probably not meant to be!)

O children
Lift up your voice, lift up your voice
Children
Rejoice, rejoice

When I was a kid I had an inherent belief that the generations before us had done just that – stuffed things up. The environment, genocide, wars where so many were sacrificed. I felt firmly that it would be okay because our generation understood. We wouldn’t let these things keep happening. It would be our job to fix it.

I did all the things you do when you’re young and idealistic – bullied my family into recycling, took part in and helped organise anti-war protests, wrote and shared truly terrible poetry. It would all be okay for the next generation. We were going to fix it.

Now I’m the previous generation and we didn’t fix it. If anything it has gotten worse. We didn’t save the world and I am so sorry.

It hit me like a tonne of bricks on election night when I watched a friend of mine’s young daugher say “Mum, is there a chance Donald Trump will get in?” and her Mum had to say “yes darling, there is.” The look of fear on her wee face broke my heart.

And yeah you can say I’m being melodramatic that, again, there are checks and balances. But you try looking at it through the eyes of a child. We’ve all been joking about building bunkers, about what could happen if Trump got the nuke codes. We know it’s not that simple, but children don’t pick up those nuances. They are seeing people on the news spitting hatred, talking about building walls, rounding up people and sending them away. You can’t blame them for being scared.

I remember another friend of mine, a bit older than me, who talked about living through the cold war saber rattling in his teens and thinking there was no point in studying or looking to the future because there was not going to be one.

We can’t let our kids feel like that.

I don’t care what your political beliefs are – they are allowed to be different to mine. But please, please don’t support hatred. Please call it out when you see it. Please love and support each other. People keep saying we are in for a rough few years. Prove them wrong.

Back to Nick Cave. Harry Potter geeks will know that O’Children was the song that Harry and Hermione danced to in Deathly Hallows Part 1. While they were facing the worst kind of violence, hatred and genocide – they listened to illicit radio and danced.

In the face of fear and hatred they fought back.

The same friend who is trying to keep her kids’ spirits up found this quote from Luna Lovegood

“We’re all still here, we’re still fighting”

And another friend this from Dumbledore

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light”

It put me in mind of another song by Jason Webley (which spookily enough started playing on my ipod on shuffle the second I started thinking about it) Dance While the Sky Crashes Down.

It’s also a bit dark but I love it. I love the idea of dancing while everything is going to shit.

But we need to do more than dance. We need to fight. We need to fight any hatred that comes out of this.

That’s all I can offer the next generation. The kids that are inheriting the mess that I inherited and didn’t manage to fix.

Don’t give up on love and hope and peace. Fight for it and we will fight with you.

Stand up for what is good and fair and right and we will be right there beside you.

“Lift up your voice”.