What Is to Be Done

What Is to Be Done

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When asked Why here?
Mao said We didn’t pick it

Here is a slab of If
Here is a set of appropriate roles; armed in cinema

Armed against No one was here
I see you, us. Someday
Our arthropod utterance

Intention alone is not dialectical
or petroleum or vaccine patents

Is it too late for analysis?

What filled me with the limbs of little girls, plumes
of suicide, what fed my grandparents rotting vegetables
rationed in the camp of illegal flowers

Unrepentant, sunlight can lay
eggs like a spider mother, a season before death

Love has ruined my life
Love made useful by class—
remnants of murdered trees, imaginary debts

Translated into adhesive, anemone venom
green slippers at the portal of beetles

I have come to terms with failure
as a contrabass in the spine,
implacable echo of goddamn

I still love the people
more

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.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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