Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Last week, I drove to a polling place at a nearby library. I voted early. There was a small line of folks, a dynamic cross-section of society: a group of college students with backpacks, an elderly couple, a veteran in a baseball cap that said ARMY. People gazed into their phones. Some talked about the World Series. No one discussed candidates or topics. I felt it; what surged through us, what connected us, was this very moment of participatory politics. We were duty bound as citizens. We were exercising our rights, this act so fundamental to the governance of our nation.

But here's an idea — a hope that fills me with joy; that the day after the election would begin a new day to come together, to remind ourselves that the rancor and divisions are a transient state of unrest, that we offer each other our quiet civility and the decency of being neighbors. This day, this new beginning provides us a chance to rebuild connections with family and friends whose values might diverge from our own, but whose presence offer far more. I wish this for us.

I loved watching the volunteers at my polling place. They were cheerful. They lovingly bantered, though they certainly could have belonged to different political parties. They gave me a vision of selfless coexistence that felt like this defined us more than our public debates. I thought of legions of people who volunteer to combat all manner of challenges to society, no matter their political affiliation.

Today’s encouraging poem feels like the most fitting words we can take in today, as we start the beginning of a new chapter in this country.

A House Called Tomorrow
by Alberto Ríos

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen—
You are a hundred wild centuries

And fifteen, bringing with you
In every breath and in every step

Everyone who has come before you, 
All the yous that you have been,

The mothers of your mother, 
The fathers of your father.

If someone in your family tree was trouble,
A hundred were not:

The bad do not win—not finally,
No matter how loud they are.

We simply would not be here 
If that were so.

You are made, fundamentally, from the good.
With this knowledge, you never march alone.

You are the breaking news of the century.
You are the good who has come forward

Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think:

When you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words—

It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.

From those centuries we human beings bring with us
The simple solutions and songs,

The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies
All in service to a simple idea:

That we can make a house called tomorrow.
What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day,

Is ourselves. And that’s all we need
To start. That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must,
Then go forward into the history you will make.

Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease. 
Make us proud. Make yourself proud. 

And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,
Hear it as their applause.

“A House Called Tomorrow” by Alberto Ríos from NOT GO AWAY IS MY NAME © 2018, 2020 Alberto Ríos. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.