Rattles

Rattles

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When I finally woke up, the nurse handed me my baby. “He’s pretty,” she said, plopping him. His eyes looked slanted.
 
The sun shone in. I squinted. I tried to remember the last thing I remembered. A dance in the OR, people scrambling all around me. A nurse with horns. A doctor with a scalpel, another looking toothless. Their faces, all veiny. My husband, where was he, with a cherry.
 
My baby cried, his voice squeaky. I hurt from where they took him. Shh, I said.
 
Shh. I held him. I was cold. He got quiet, closed his eyes and I asked the nurse where was my husband.
 
She wore scrubs with an array of colored rattles. Yellow glasses. Something smelled like apples.
 
She said, Your baby’s probably hungry. I tried to move my arms, to give him, but a sharp pain shot through me. Ahh! I said. Please, I said to the nurse. Can you?
 
She took him, shushing him, bouncing him out to the hallway.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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