While authoritarians promote division and hatred, we will promote unity, inclusion, and justice. ON NOVEMBER 19, 1863, STANDING ON THE BLOODSTAINED BATTLEfield of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln declared that “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
One hundred and fifty-five years later, under an authoritarian-leaning president, a right-wing extremist Congress, and a corrupt campaign-finance system, I fear that Lincoln’s vision is fading, that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” is beginning to perish in the United States of America. Today, the richest 1 percent of American families own a greater portion of…
