Inside The Loop with Christian Perry: Perspectives on Power, Politics, and Progress in Chicago
Former Vice President Kamala Harris accepted an invitation from Mayor Brandon Johnson to be the keynote speaker at Chicago’s 40th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Interfaith Breakfast.
Harris hit a refrain in her speech that resonated deeply with the capacity crowd:
“This is a moment not to throw up our hands, but to roll up our sleeves… The people of Chicago, you uniquely understand that the fight requires courage, it requires stamina, and it requires commitment. It requires us to show up even when we are sick and tired, because we are sick and tired.”
Her words drew on the emotional and historical weight of the civil rights struggle, reminding attendees of the tireless efforts required to advance progress. It was a short, poignant speech that remembered America’s most revered civil rights leader and reaffirmed the relevance of Dr. King’s vision in today’s political climate. She laid out the assaults on our democracy that have been constant, led by a president who called the protection of civil rights reverse discrimination, and challenged the audience to resist complacency in the face of these threats.
Love and Power
Mayor Johnson was the final elected official to grace the stage. His speech centered around King’s final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, and how apposite the question he posed 59 years ago is today.
When we think about the state of Chicago and the state of our politics, we all should be asking that same question. Americans, by nature, are distrustful of those with power. Given our country’s history, especially with what Dr. King fought and died for, that distrust is warranted. Power has been wielded to oppress Black and Indigenous peoples since America’s inception.
Our relationship to power, who we think should have it, and what we think they should do with it, is worth deep examination. If you’re like me, you didn’t have mandated civic education in school, much less a breakdown of the different types of power and how they operate in the world. There’s a reason why the Trump administration is waging war on higher education, public accommodations and cities like Chicago. Because they understand power. Johnson offered this King quote to highlight the need for us to wield power, with love.
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
What does one call the shooting of Renee Nicole Good? What about the abduction of immigrants into vans by masked men or the gutting of the Department of Education and the threat to starve children by withholding SNAP funds? These incidents are not isolated; they reflect a broader pattern of systemic injustice and abuse of power that continues to impact the most vulnerable members of our society.
You call it reckless and abusive.
American sentimentality is a fickle thing. Public opinion sways, and as we live through the attention-deficit era, thanks to social media, communication and connection become difficult. People are frustrated, movements are fragile, and the American right had conditions that Trump hoped would usher in an everlasting era of unitary executive rule. On power, there are essentially four types: Power Over, Power With, Power To and Power Within. We are living through an experiment by the president to see how much power we will allow.
The Trump administration has enacted policies that will make the wealthiest among us even more wealthy. The corporations that benefit from America’s labor force are granted even more opportunities to avoid paying their fair share. This all happens with inflation remaining stubbornly high and unemployment across the board (particularly among Black Americans) rising rapidly. King also said white supremacy can “feed their egos but not their bellies.” Can we get our hands around who’s fighting for us and who isn’t before the November midterms?
If we believe the recent polling by some of our most esteemed institutions, it suggests that we can.
The Revolutionary Spirit
The Brookings Institution published an article at the end of last year that examined surveys conducted by Harvard-Harris, Siena College and the Pew Research Center on the public’s opinion of Trump’s expansion of executive power. They found that a majority of Americans believe the president is operating outside of his legal authority and that our institutions were built to protect liberty, not maximize efficiency.
“Sixty-nine percent of Americans responding to a recent Pew Research Center survey said that Trump was exercising more power than previous presidents, and most of them thought that this was bad for the country.”
This is a cause for hope.
America, for all her ills, was founded via revolution, emancipated through war, and refined during the Civil Rights Movement. Americans writ large do not want a dictator, and yet the question remains: where do we go from here?
Dr. King, in a speech delivered almost 12 months to the day of his assassination, gives us a charge that is frustratingly relevant today.
“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth… A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”
Together is our way out. The beloved community is not some naive, utopian fairy tale but rather a resilient collective of diverse peoples bringing forth transformation rooted in the highest ideals of human dignity. That work lies before all of us, and nothing well-earned has come without struggle. If we are to honor our ancestors and make our progeny proud, we, working-class, poor people, need power.
As Chairman Fred taught us, all power to the people.