The Urgency of Now

Reflections on Trump's inauguration, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the continuing struggle for a better America

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at the 1963 March on Washington. (Photo via Getty Images)

I know there are many among us who see today as an endpoint. The demise of democracy. The failure of our electorate to commit to self-governance. The willingness to let the richest among us grab power, with the foolish assumption that they would advance the well-being of working people rather than further enrich themselves.

Let’s not doubt: The inauguration of Donald Trump is a cruel slap in the face of every lover of democracy, equality, justice and the rule of law. This event offers the terrible odor of billionaires and kleptocrats who see an opportunity to exploit government resources at the expense of taxpaying Americans just trying to get by.

The convicted felon mouthing the oath to protect and defend the Constitution? It portends an ugly future, enough to convince some Americans that the democratic project is over, they have lost the battle and there’s nothing they can do now besides turn away.

They are wrong.

In fact, normalizing the idea that Trump’s return represents the end of democracy is a useful component of his authoritarian playbook. Feelings of resignation and despair are just what the authoritarian ruler wants his opponents to experience. Giving up—or believing that it is beyond our power to sustain America’s democratic values and principles— accelerates his success. This is anticipatory obedience, just as much as billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg handing over millions and bowing down to the Malignant One.

This is not a time for silence. This is not a time for resignation or despair. This is not a time to be cynical and insist that it’s all over.

This is a time to gather your strength and stay engaged. This is a time to seek out guidance, to be nourished by the wisdom of others, to remember that you are not alone, to keep in mind that we are facing challenges that many Americans have faced throughout our history—and that we can get through this together.

This is not a time to give up. This would be a disservice to all the good people who came before us and fought for a democratic future defined by justice and equality of opportunity.

That’s why I’m grateful that this is the day to celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., rather than dwell on Trump’s inauguration.

These days King is rightly seen as a heroic figure, a widely beloved American who lived a life dedicated to justice, equality and the overcoming of racial discrimination. But the truth is that in his own time he was a deeply controversial figure, a truth-teller who said what needed to be said even when it caused terrible blowback. That included his intensifying criticism of racism, income inequality and the Vietnam War.

As I’ve written previously, as late as 1968, the year King was killed, nearly 75 percent of Americans rejected him. Following his assassination in April of that year, nearly a third of Americans felt he “brought it on himself.”

A decade earlier, in his 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom, King displayed his fierce commitment to speaking the truth, no matter how much discomfort it caused. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it,” King said. “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

Just 29 years old then, King was a leader who both grasped the long scales of time and the need to act with speed. Responding to white clergy who insisted that he should be more patient, King had this to say in his 1963 letter written in a Birmingham jail cell: “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights…There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice.”

Later that same year, on August 28, King delivered his most famous speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. before a crowd of more than 250,000. Usually, the inspirational words toward the end of that speech are recounted, including, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

But I want to focus on the beginning of his “I Have a Dream” speech, when he addresses the failure of America to deliver on its promise and the struggle still to come. He opens by mentioning that “five score years ago,” Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to end for “millions of Negro slaves…the long night of their captivity.” That “momentous decree,” he said, “came as a great beacon light of hope.”

Yet now, 100 years later, “the Negro is still not free…still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” and “lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” This is a “shameful condition,” King said. “In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check.”

He went on:

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men —yes, Black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And after he offered this financial analogy to give measure and shape to the quicksand of injustice, King—a man in a hurry—explained his belief that the struggle must not be delayed.

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” he said. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy…It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment.”

Less than three months later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Less than seven months after that, on July 2, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, confronting discrimination and outlawing segregation in businesses and other public places. The sweeping legislation’s passage was not only influenced by the ongoing work of Rev. King, but also the death of a beloved president who had first proposed civil rights legislation in June of 1963.

That was a start, but only a start for the continuing struggle to bend the arc of history toward justice and increase fairness and equality in a society that suffered then—and continues to suffer now—from intolerable social and economic inequality between Black and white Americans.

I don’t mean to minimize the scale of danger facing our democracy, rule of law and the Constitution with the return of Trump to our White House. We can expect on this Inauguration Day virtually immediate attacks on immigrants and other vulnerable people, efforts to dismantle government agencies, intensified demands to confirm his reckless appointees, pardons of Jan. 6. insurrectionists and targeting of critics. They will release “shock and awe” executive orders to stoke fear.

If we previously could anticipate that major media organizations would do their part to push back, we know now that many of these billionaire-led outlets and tech bro-driven platforms have abandoned their democratic responsibility to serve the public and tell the truth. We have yet to see how the courts will respond once Trump’s Justice Department begins carrying out his demands for retribution with lawsuits, firings and other acts of intimidation to silence opposition. That will put more pressure on independent media and everyday Americans to speak out and oppose the lies and vengeful actions that we see and hear.

So rather than look at Jan. 20, 2025 as the end of the era of democracy, I urge you to see it as the beginning a new chapter in our collective effort to defend it. Today is an important day to resist despair and refuse to lose sight of the values and principles that have built our nation. It won’t be easy, but the struggle for a better world never is.

As Martin Luther King warned from his Alabama jail cell in 1963, “freedom is never given freely by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” His words mirrored those of another great American about a century earlier. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” Frederick Douglass said in 1857. “It never did and it never will.”

We cannot be silent. We cannot give up. We must continue to make demands to create the America that we envision for ourselves and coming generations.

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One last note: Trump moved his inauguration indoors, ostensibly because of the frigid temperatures. He may be afraid of the cold weather and the possibility of his mussed hair, but I suspect it had more to do with his fear of small crowds. That and accelerating his plan to thumb his nose at a public he couldn’t care less about serving.

There have been numerous reports of everyday MAGA types who spent thousands to come to Washington for the inauguration. They are quickly learning that the billionaires will be warm and cozy inside while they are left out in the cold.

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