Why I'm grateful despite the history of #ThangsTaken

A holiday with troubling origins deserves remembrance, as does a ceasefire and the historic grassroots mobilization that secured it

The colonial origins of Thanksgiving are not usually the first thing that Americans consider when celebrating today’s holiday. But they’re tough to overlook in a year threatening to repeat yet another indigenous genocide, while bearing witness to an accelerating ecocide engineered by Wall Street and the Pentagon.

Personally, I struggle with maintaining hope given my dismal view of human nature, institutional cooptation, and the various threats facing the future. While there are plenty of reasons to mourn today’s holiday, however, it also offers a useful reminder to recognize blessings that we might otherwise overlook.

First, I’ll offer a few general thoughts on today’s holiday articulated in a previous post.

Reasons we might all feel gratitude in 2023

Despite the multiple crises confronting our country and our communities, 2023 has witnessed some national milestones that are worth widely celebrating.

• Most recently, a ceasefire in Gaza has put a halt (for now) to a murderous bombing campaign by a nuclear superpower targeting a disenfranchised people who were violently forced to flee their ancestral homeland 75 years ago. That victory for peace and human rights was not the product of any official’s acumen, but rather the sustained pressure of a grassroots movement of millions around the world who collectively forced Washington’s hand.

• Historic strikes by workers in the automotive and entertainment sectors brought major corporations to their knees, and secured better contract provisions for hundreds of thousands of workers. They might have also helped foster a new generation of labor militance informed by the broader potential of intersectoral solidarity.

• Two federal agencies charged with enforcing antitrust laws stepped forward more aggressively than they have in decades, filing major lawsuits against corporations including Google, Microsoft, and Facebook / Meta. These lawsuits alone won’t restore any meaningful balance between the 1% and the 99%, but if successful, they could represent a leap towards reshaping the economy and curtailing corporate power.

• Despite profound dysfunction in Washington that has revealed our country’s regrettable weakness to the rest of the world, Congress recently managed to get its act together and actually funded the government…for the next 3 months.

Why I feel grateful in 2023