For many of us this is the season to turn toward family and friends. It is a sacred time, calling for reflection and affirmation of our deepest longings for peace on earth. Rarely has such a hope been so far from our daily reality. We are living in a moment when relationships among people are marked with causal violence and intentional brutalities. Since 2001 we have been a people at war. It has been the backdrop of the lives of an entire generation who have never known a time without active US military interventions.

The undermining of democracy is accelerating in Michigan. A new frame is emerging from our business owners and their publicists. They claim that business, supported by public money, is better for people than political decision-making.

People in Michigan can celebrate a small victory this week as public outcry forced the state legislature to scale back its latest attack on local government. The Emergency Management Team provision was withdrawn in the series of bills aimed at pension finances. The proposed package of bills sponsored by right-wing republicans to deal with pension commitments would have established a new level of emergency financial managers, setting aside basic local control in the name of financial responsibility. Both Democrats and moderate Republicans balked at the provision, acknowledging the new legislation was more emergency management by a not very different name. Since the disaster in Flint, Emergency Management by any name has not been a popular idea. So the provisions attempting to expand this were withdrawn. Few elected officials are willing to support extending Emergency Managers.

The Michigan State Legislature is no friend to democracy. Nor is it a friend to cities. Dominated by right-wing ideologues, the State Republican majority is once again mounting an assault on all those who believe in local democratic control.

I recently received three emails that raised concerns about what is happening in our city. The first was about a young student at Wayne State. She is living in temporary housing, working full-time, and going to school. She is looking for a place to live close enough to campus so she can either walk or take public transportation. The second email was about a family looking for a house because they are renting from an absentee landlord who is refusing to provide even minimal upkeep on the home, making it unsafe for a mother and her children. The third was from a grandmother who has recently taken custody of her grandchildren and now faces eviction from her building as children are not welcome there.

This week I attended two gatherings that offer much hope for our future. The first was the annual Fall meeting of the National Council of Elders at Haley Farms in Tennessee. I was reminded how much we need the combination of place and memory to think about the future.

Last week Detroit re-elected Mike Duggan as Mayor. It was a lackluster election. Coleman Young II offered a weak alternative. His immaturity and lack of finances combined to provide little challenge. Duggan had a $2.2 million campaign fund and Young $39,000. Young, however, did give voice to much of the dis-ease in the city and forced Duggan to address tensions between downtown and neighborhood development.

This past week survivors, family, and friends gathered at a quiet cemetery in Greensboro North Carolina to remember the 5 young union organizers killed in 1979 by members of the Ku Klux Klan and America Nazi Party. Over the nearly 4 decades since this massacre, the roles of the local police, FBI, Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco agents, and the mill owners who opposed unionization have slowly come to light. In spite of a video clearly showing members of the Klan taking rifles from their trunks and carefully aiming at organizers, the shooters were never held accountable for these murders. All criminal defendants were acquitted in both state and federal trials. Often in media and public comments, the victims were blamed for being shot. After the recent killing in Charlottesville, the Greensboro City Council finally issued a formal apology for its role in the violence.

This week Detroit hosted two major conferences, the 13th Annual Great Lakes Bioneers and the 1st National Women’s Convention. I shuttled between the two, getting a sense of the new energy emerging in our country.

Charity Hicks has been on my mind this week. She was killed in the early summer of 2014 while waiting for a bus in New York City. She was on her way to the Left Forum to make a presentation about the water crisis in Detroit. Charity left us many gifts as she worked to create deep local resilience and global connections. She moved easily between landless activists in Brazil and emerging youth leadership in Detroit, inspiring us all to see connections and expand our consciousness. In her last speech to us that sparked the UN investigation of human rights abuses in Detroit, she challenged us to “Wage Love.” It is that challenge that has been echoing with me this week.

What we choose to honor in our past shapes our future. That is why efforts to rethink Columbus Day and establish Indigenous Peoples Day are welcome. Across the country this year, the first holiday since the massive resistance to the Dakota Pipeline, people are reflecting on how we look at our history, whose voices we care about, and whose lives matter.

This week, as much of the nation’s attention has been riveted to the devastation of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, the Michigan Legislature is quietly continuing its efforts to destroy local democracy.

This weekend, the Detroit Independent Freedom Schools joined 25 communities around the country in a national conversation about the crisis in public education. The national effort was organized as part of the #WeChoose Campaign of #Journey4Justice. The conversation was designed as an opportunity to focus resistance to privatization and an opportunity to talk about transforming education so that all our children can learn in “loving educational experiences” that “cultivate community strength, self-determination, and build movement-based futures.”

Denying scientific data. Attacking the press. Claiming stories questioning you are a hoax. Exaggerating election results. Denying a history of racism. Embracing business interests against all else. These appear to be the hallmarks of those in political authority today. And these are not limited to Donald Trump, corporations, or right-wing conspiracy nuts. Consider Democratic Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. He is more of a denier and defender of corporate power every day.

In the spring of 1968, I joined thousands of other people occupying the Washington Mall. Still in shock from the murder of Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference decided to move forward with Dr. King’s dream of confronting the soul of America on racism, materialism, and militarism. The Poor People’s Campaign was a difficult, dispirited, and confused effort to keep the movement alive after the death of King.

Donald Trump will not last. In two, four, or eight years, he will be gone. In the meantime, he will destroy people and places we hold dear. He has already done so. But his extraordinary vileness can trap us into thinking he is the problem. Rather, he is a crude, visible expression of ways of thinking and being that are normal in the United States. Yes, he is a racist, self-aggrandizing, arrogant man willing to do anything to advance his own self-interest. But so is the system that produced him.

While outrage, anger, and the acknowledgment of the moral vacuum of the White House dominated the media this week, another story of Nazis, the Klan and killing emerged in Greensboro, North Carolina. There, after nearly 40 years, the Greensboro City Council voted to apologize for the murder of 5 people who gathered to peacefully protest the Klan and Nazis in 1979.

Before the tires screamed in Charlottesville, many Americans were deeply troubled by the images of white men, holding torches against the night, chanting, “You will not remove us.” “Jew will not remove us.” These are images we had hoped belonged to a distant, bloody past. Now it is clear. They intend to seize the future, returning the country to its worst, most violent, and vicious days.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are a key weapon in privatization. This is a soft-sounding term for a vicious set of practices. PPPs are often the vehicles that shift public dollars into private hands, turning essential goods and services into profit centers. Healthcare, education, water, energy, public safety, housing, transportation, and even military services are turned into profits at the expense of people. The justification for this is the logic that companies, driven by competition and business imperatives, will provide better, cheaper services.

Mayor Duggan is acting like a mini-Donald Trump. This week he went after scientists. Duggan simply refuses to accept the fact that his policy on water shutoffs is a failure. He is risking the health and safety of the city by refusing to declare a moratorium on shutoffs. He ignores the advice of economic experts that shutoffs make no economic sense. He denies clear evidence that his assistance programs are not adequate to protect people. This week he demonstrated a new level of bullying and paranoia, spying on activists and confusing a meeting of health professionals with potentially violent protests.