I’m gonna lay a provocative claim on the table for you. Most people are cowards.
Are you a coward? You’ll probably say no. No Dejah, how dare you call me a coward! I’m a moral person. I do good things in the world. I’m a good person.
I didn’t ask if you were a good person. I asked if you were a coward.
Coward.
“Someone who is afraid of doing something dangerous or difficult, or who is too eager to avoid pain.”
“a person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.” Oxford Languages
“one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity” Merriam-Webster
As Trump ascends to power as this country’s next President, and the threat of authoritarianism rises, I’ve been thinking a lot about sacrifice, cowardice, and courage.
So let’s talk about it.
I’ll start with myself because I too have been a coward! I am a coward (though becoming less of one)! I can think of many moments in my lifetime where I lacked the nerve to speak up or stand up for what was right. Once, as I waited on the train at the Brooklyn Bridge stop, transferring from the 4 to the 6 train, a white woman emerged from the crevices of the MTA subway system and began yelling at a migrant woman and her child, who were there walking around selling chocolate bars and chiclet.
“I’m calling the police on you! This is illegal, you shouldn’t be out here!”
The woman yelled, as a crew of passerbyers, including myself, looked on in shock. She yelled and berated this woman and her child, as I did nothing. I stood there afraid, afraid to step in, afraid I might become the new target of this woman’s rage. I didn’t want that; I was nervous enough as it was, headed to a date for the first time!
Before I could muster the spine to say anything, a Black woman standing on the platform stepped up and confronted the woman. “Get.the.fuck.out.of.this.woman and child’s face. She’s trying to feed her family… fuck you!”
The crowd on the platform, witnessing the drama unfold, cheered. Our cheering masked the guilt and shame I’m sure many of us felt at our inability to find the spine this woman had, to stand up to the Karen on the platform. We were…cowards.
What drives cowardice? What is the nature of fear and how it inhibits our ability to exert our power and agency? Why are people beholden to strong, invisible group dynamics that force people to cower? And why does it even matter that we’re cowards?
From my own story, my cowardice was motivated by a deep fear of being harmed and attacked. By a deep fear of stepping out of line with the invisible weight of social pressures. To remain quiet. To keep the peace. Like Courage the Cowardly dog, I often sit wrestling in my own fearful and anxious inclinations, about what I ought to do.
We are living in a fucking time. As the cost of living rises, the cost of goods, groceries and gas rise, the cost of rent rises in many cities across the country (as our wages remain stagnant), we just take it.
In 2008, when the banks, under Obama, were bailed out while working people lost their homes and thus hard earned wealth, we took it.
We have lived through disasters, whether it be COVID or hurricanes, or other extreme weather events, and we allow our government to do the bare minimum, while billionaires and corporations flourish. Like, thrive in the darkest of times for the majority of people on this Earth.
As the climate crisis rages on, we allow Big Oil to continue oil & gas production, continue throttling us towards conditions on Earth that have never been seen before, that will become uninhabitable for human life. All while we assume we can continue to plan for children, plan for our careers, retirement plans, and plan for stability when the actions of the oil & gas industry lock us into collective suicide.
In a time where bombs funded by our US taxpayer dollars obliterate entire communities in Palestine, we continue life, business as usual.
Life could be so incredibly beautiful.
Money could be invested in art programs so more students can create and heal through painting, photography, and dance. Money could be used to build green social housing, bringing communities together and providing adequate housing for all. Money could be used to invest in and expand local regenerative food systems. Money could be used to pay people to do meaningful, dignified work, from beautifying streets (lord knows my block in Brooklyn, littered with shit, piss, and garbage could use it) to expanding access to solar panels to taking care of children and the elderly.
I’m not naive (I’m a Capricorn we’re are practical, logical), but some will say what I want of the world is a wishlist. A cute little dream, because “hunnn we live under capitalism and it isn’t going anywhere.” When, no, we live in a corporate welfare state where our government subsidizes the shit out of fossil fuels, private housing, big agriculture, private healthcare, etc. Capitalism as an economic model has not been here forever (in fact, capitalism arose after feudalism during the end of the eighteenth century as industrialization began in Great Britain), evolved during the 80s into neoliberalism, and can evolve into something else in the next 20 to 50 to 100 years.
I know that a world is possible where every person is guaranteed a home, and every person is guaranteed adequate food. And every child born is guaranteed a future that is not plagued by war, climate disasters, or school shootings.
But we won’t get it in a society full of cowards. I’m afraid humanity has allowed itself to remain complicit in its own demise, and if we don’t change course, disaster awaits us.
Cowardice will not help us face some of the most pressing issues in society today. Cowardice will not get us out of a society on the brink of collapse. Cowardice will not stop Trump's fascist and authoritarian regime.
History is full of brave communities and individuals who broke through their fear and stood to bring about a great change in society.
I think of the story of Henry Box Brown, an enslaved man in Virginia who found freedom at the age of 33 by shipping himself, by mail in a wooden crate, to abolitionists in Philadelphia. I think of Fidel Castro, who at 26 years old, let his first attempt at revolution on the Cuban elite in the Moncada Barracks, and then who later, after years in exile, at 33 years old, pulled up to the eastern shores of Cuban in 1956 and started what began the process to overthrow Fulgencio Batistsa, a US-backed dictator, and began the Cuban Revolution. I think of Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, who has shared, through the devastation of war and genocide in Palestine, what’s happening on the ground.
You might say, Dejah, I…….I’m not Fidel or Brown or Bisan. I can’t do that.
But you don’t need to be. You just need to be a little more courageous. A little more disruptive. Have a bit more of a spine; and if all of us leaned into that, imagine what our world might look like?
So.
As the world collapses around us, as Trump’s authoritarian tendencies arise, and as the freedoms you have over your life slowly slip away… will you choose courage or cowardice?