As I watched President Donald Trump’s inauguration final week, I couldn’t assist however take into consideration the previous Black proverb my dad and mom and grandparents repeated time and time once more rising up: We tried to inform y’all.
Add to that the well-known political maxim that elections have penalties and it is best to have some concept of how the day went and what’s in retailer for our American democracy.
Now let’s be very clear, whereas there’s quite a bit to speak about from yesterday’s occasions from Trump’s official and unofficial Inaugural Addresses to his day one government orders and pardons, the peaceable switch of energy is all the time a gorgeous factor, significantly since we’re solely 4 12 months previous the January 6 rebel the place the MAGA mob attacked the Capitol in a final ditch try and overturn the 2020 election.
However that magnificence was solely pores and skin deep as Trump selected divisiveness and canine whistles as a substitute of utilizing this exceptional alternative to deliver us collectively as a nation and even lay out an actual plan for a way he intends to ship on his lengthy line of marketing campaign guarantees.
He may have outlined actual options to decrease grocery costs, minimize housing prices or handle any of the true points working households throughout America face every single day. As a substitute, he made false claims about violent crime, catastrophe response and extra whereas pledging to rename the Gulf of Mexico and “take again” the Panama Canal.
What does the Gulf of Mexico must do with grocery costs, you ask. Completely nothing.
Then, after serving up the reddest of purple meat to a crowd of supporters full with extra threats and conspiracy theories, Trump proceed to signal roughly 200 government orders, memoranda and proclamations that not solely rescinded a lot of the progress we’ve revamped the previous 4 years but in addition pardoned 1,500 folks charged within the rebel and commuted the sentences of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
With one stroke of the pen, Trump ended federal prohibitions of intercourse discrimination, reinstated personal prisons and tried to finish the birthright citizenship that’s been enshrined in our structure since 1787.
He stated federal workers now not must signal an ethics pledge. He withdrew from the Paris Local weather Accords and World Well being Organizations. He launched new assaults on federal workers, ended federal efforts to finish systemic racism and mandate pay fairness and ended this system that’s been efficiently reducing drug costs for People.
Like I stated, we tried to inform y’all.
Since then, Trump has made his intentions even clearer executing the Challenge 2025 paybook he claimed to know nothing about and it has nothing to do with reducing the worth of eggs. He illegally firedthe impartial inspectors basic of no less than 12 main federal businesses. He’s launched reckless ICE raids which, amongst different issues, have falsely arrested Americans. He shut down the White Home Workplace of Gun Violence Prevention. He reversed a 60-year-old, Johnson-era government order that prohibited federal contractors from partaking in employment discrimination. He stopped the stopped all Division of Justice civil rights investigations and police reform agreements together with the agreements in Louisville, KY and Minneapolis, MN reached following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Trump additionally fired each DOJ official who labored on any of the myriad investigations in opposition to him whereas disrupting the lives of tens of millions of People by stopping fee of all federal loans and grants. You understand that grant you had been relying on to your small enterprise or that federal pupil mortgage that helps your child pay tuition? I do know it was already authorised. Nevertheless it’s not coming. Trump stated so.
In the meantime the value of eggs is hovering and so they’re solely going up.
Like I stated, we tried to inform y’all.
Now, let’s be clear. It’s ugly of us. As dangerous as we thought the 2025 Trump Administration was going to be, that is worse. Moreover, whereas the Black neighborhood and different minorities are taking the brunt of it, the ache nis being felt in working households throughout the board.
You understand that bridge that was lastly getting changed or that riad that was lastly getting widened? Effectively, President Trump simply stopped funding for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation. Do you have got one of many greater than 330,000 clear power jobs created by the Inflation Discount Act? Look once more, Trump simply froze your paycheck.
However as a lot as I’m harping on how we tried to inform y’all, our response to those unconstitutional, unAmerican and downright unlawful MAGA strikes can’t simply be a collective “informed you so.” We’ve got to behave swiftly and decisively and now we have to do it the place it issues: on the bottom.
Social media is nice and sounding off on cable information certain is enjoyable, but when we need to shield ourselves, our households and our nation from MAGA run amuck, we will’t do it with commentary or symbolic gestures.
We’ve got to step as much as the plate and now we have to be strategic. Trump wanting to purchase Greenland or change the title of the Gulf of Mexico might seem to be low-hanging fruit, however it’s only a distraction. On the finish of the day, it doesn’t imply something and we have to keep targeted if we need to make a distinction.
Lastly, the group, the outcry and the options have to return from us. Don’t get me unsuitable, I spend a good period of time in Washington D.C. and there are a whole lot of good of us with good concepts contained in the beltway. However our solutions must be greater than that. We’ve got to listen to from the grassroots and rally round community-driven actions or threat being dismissed as politics as ordinary.
You see, this isn’t about get together and even politics. That is about us. That is our lives and our households on the road each as people and as a folks. It’s time for all of us to steer as a result of, if historical past has proven us something, it’s that we will attempt to inform of us all we would like. It doesn’t matter until we do one thing.
Like Thomas Paine stated, “These are the occasions that attempt males’s souls. The summer time soldier and the sunshine patriot will, on this disaster, shrink from the service of their nation; however he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and lady. Tyranny, like hell, is just not simply conquered; but now we have this comfort with us, that the tougher the battle, the extra wonderful the triumph.”
Antjuan Seawright is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Technique LLC and a senior visiting fellow at Third Means. Comply with him on X, previously often called Twitter @antjuansea.