“To the Stars, Through Struggle”

Kansas, the Harbinger of Something Better, and a Sliver of Hope

Photo Cred: Lily O’Shea Becker

At bedtime last night, and as we awaited election results in primary results around the country, my kid and I were talking about bullying. 

My kid is non-binary. Recently, they’ve been told by other kids at camp that they are going to hell, or that church or those kids’ parents said that God only made boys and girls and nothing else, and that for my kid to decide to be something else (as if it’s a decision) is a violation of God’s will and going against God.

We’re not big God people here for a variety of reasons. My kids have set foot in a church only once, with their progressive grandmother, at her presbyterian church that led the way on gay marriage decades ago. 

We’ve been strategizing lately on how to respond to this latest round of indoctrinated bullying on the playground.

“Ok, do you think,” I said last night, “that even if we were to believe in a magical all-powerful being like some of your friends do, that a God like that would make mistakes?”

“Well, no. They say God made everything in his image.”

“Right, so that would mean God made you perfect, exactly as you are.”

“Really?”

“Yes. So why don’t you ask that kid if they think God makes mistakes? I bet the answer is no. And if that God makes no mistakes, then that means that God made you perfect, exactly as you are, no notes.”

My kid smiled. “So can I say it just like that?”

“Yes, because it’s true, honey,” I said. “You are perfect exactly as you are.”

My kid paused.

And then came something that took my breath away.

“Hey mom,” they said, smiling. “You know what else?”

“What, honey?” 

“Did you know that we are made of the same thing as stars? The stars are our ancestors. And no one says stars are mistakes. Stars aren’t ‘not normal’ or wrong or bad.

“Stars are just stars.”

Sometimes, in tiny unexpected moments, in the dusk of any given day, life is miraculous.

---

---

The state motto of Kansas is ad astra per aspera– “To the Stars, Through Struggle.” 

As with everything in America, the historic choice of that motto is laced with white supremacy. The Kansas Secretary of State’s office notes that the motto was meant to “represent[] the struggles Kansas faced with issues such as slavery, Indian attacks, and the inevitable war.”

While Kansas was a part of the Union during the Civil War, joining on the brink of it in 1861, Kansas was the site of so much indigenous genocide that the Trail of Tears ended there. 

Not surprisingly, it has historically been a deep red state for purposes of elections.

Last night, however, Kansas may have been a harbinger of a different course for democracy in the near future.

In a state that went for Trump– in the 2020 election, no less!— by more than 15 points, Kansas rejected last night a constitutional amendment that would have removed the right to abortion from the state constitution.

It did so with record turnout, typical only in a presidential election year, with an unprecedented number of new voters, and by more than twenty points.

I’m cautious, usually, about the idea that women will save democracy, given that 53% of white women voted for Trump in 2016, and white women have historically voted with white patriarchy more than with the rights of anyone else.

That said, what is fascinating about last night’s outcome in Kansas is that the ballot initiative wasn’t a Democratic or Republican vote. It was a straight shot vote on whether the rights of all those with a uterus should be rolled back in Kansas, and the vote on that was an absolute bombshell of a vote that those rights should be preserved.

Kansas, of all places, is not going back.

---

---

I’ve thought a lot lately about struggle– about how the far right white supremacists in this country have stacked the deck against the rest of us through voter suppression and gerrymandering and packing the courts and state legislatures, about how complicit Dems have refused to even say the word abortion while women bleed out on operating tables and twelve year old rape victims have to travel to another state so they won’t be forced to stay pregnant with that rapist’s baby.

I’ve thought a lot about why we who are not white cishet rich men always have to advertise our trauma to try to convince those in power that our rights matter, about how exhausting it is, how often it feels like we are beating our heads against brick walls to just convince our own party to fight for us.

We should not have to convince the leaders of our country that all of us matter, that all of us deserve bodily dominion, that all of us are worthy of being free.

I have longed, and fought, and worked every day for years, for the possibility of a real breakthrough movement– a revolutionary movement across identities and issues that fights back against white supremacy with the understanding that all of us matter, and that until all of us are free, none of us are free.

Could it be, perhaps, that some of those who have historically voted against their own interests are finally waking up to the fact that we’re all in this together?

Could it be that together we might finally be able to shoot for the stars and build a real representative democracy?

We’ll see.

---

---

So what would it take to create a real sea change in America, and to create a democracy that represents all of us?

In the immediate future, we need to elect at least two more Senators and hold the House.

We need every elected Democrat to commit to the passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the codification of the right to birth control, privacy protections and the right to marry who we love.

And that’s for starters.

We need an understanding that all politics is local, and local elections are as important, if not moreso, than national ones.

We need an absolute societal overhaul of safety nets, including for healthcare, housing, food access, and the rights of workers.

We need radical court reform, including the expansion of the Supreme Court to at least thirteen seats and, potentially, term limits.

We need real reparations and real reconciliation for slavery and indigenous genocide, and to root out at every level the legacy of that history that lives in our government and its policies.

We need massive reforms to our democracy to backstop the exploitation of loopholes by any demagogue who may yet seek to rise.

And make no mistake about it: even if we succeed, even if we manage to pull America back from the brink of its own destruction and to create a more perfect union, there will never again be a moment in America where any of us can become complacent.

DeSantis is still going to run. The battle wages on. Struggle continues.

But this morning, there is a tiny crack in the doom, a sliver of light, which we all must nurture with everything we’ve got.

Someone I love once said to me that nothing that is worth it comes easily.

---

---

I left my kid’s bedroom last night to watch the election returns thinking about what it means to be made of stars– to have come from something light years and millions of miles away, with no understanding of how we got here or why. 

Sometimes, I think of the mess we have made of this miraculous opportunity to be here, this gift of life.

And then sometimes, there are moments where the veil drops, and the perfection of possibility presents itself.

Sometimes, you leave the bedroom of your child with lyrics ringing in your head to find that all hope is not lost.

And I’ll celebrate Venus
I’ll celebrate Mars
And I’ll burn with the fire
Of ten million stars
And in time, and in time
We will all be stars.

Here’s to the prospect of ad astra per aspera.

Thank you, Kansas.

Let’s aim for the stars.