Note: This piece was written as the introduction to an earlier version of this project.
In October 1871, a fire raged through the city of Chicago. Strong winds, wooden construction, and weeks of drought fed an inferno that leapt streets and even jumped the river, consuming entire neighborhoods in hours. Those who were there described heat so fierce that it blistered skin at a distance and set trees alight before the flames reached them. They dove into wells and rivers to escape, emerging only to gasp for breath in the scorching air. When it had finished, the Great Chicago Fire had killed 300 people and destroyed more than 17,000 buildings.
What was it like, in the smoldering days that followed, to wander through the ash and rubble? To see one's home reduced to a skeletal ruin - charred bricks, twisted iron, scorched trees, and blackened stone - bathed in the lingering smoke? A survivor said: “The whole earth, or all we saw of it, was a lurid yellowish red. Everywhere dust, smoke, flames, heat, thunder of falling walls, crackle of fire, hissing of water, panting of engines, shouts, braying of trumpets, roar of wind, confusion, and uproar.”
But the fire was not the end. Within weeks, relief poured in, and civic leaders worked to put in place measures to ensure it would not happen again. As the city rebuilt, it made ambitious plans to create something greater than what had burned. The buildings that
A fire rages in America now, one that has been alight for a decade or more. It consumes our beliefs, our identity, and our sense that we know our own home. Each day, as this administration does the unimaginable, it destroys a part of what Americans hold precious. Rule of law, freedom of speech, protections for the vulnerable, scientific progress - all of these, and more, are burning. What is most suffocating is not that a man who has nothing but contempt for America has become its president, but that half of our fellow Americans chose this knowing who he is, and cheer him on. Already it feels like we are walking in the ruins.
It has never been easier to be swallowed by the immediate. It has never been more important to turn an eye toward the future. There is urgent work to be done now to defend and to resist, and I want to play a role in that if I can, but resistance is not a plan for a greater future. We might be able to defeat a particular action or win an election, but momentary victories will not get us to the other side of these dark and foolish times.
There is no shortage of opinion on what Democrats and the nation need to do to win: every podcast, social media post, cable news show, and newsletter is filled with them. But everything I hear hear is too small, too facile, too trapped in the thinking of an era that has ended. I want a vision that's bold enough for the moment, that goes beyond electoral strategy to find the spirit we need to win the future we want. I am hungry for it. I think we are all hungry for it.
This space is where I will try to say what I have been waiting to hear. I want to work out the ideas for myself, as a citizen and a voter, but also to find the people who are also looking for something better than what's available, so that we can not only endure but create something greater than what we are losing.